Akshat Shekhar | Not just another game

So Many Activites | Years of neglect have turned spectacular sports events into pedestrian affairs

By Akshat Shekhar 09/07/14 6:04pm

A t colleges across the country, Saturday afternoons serve as causes for celebration. Color themes abound and cornhole bean bags fly about. For those of Southern persuasions, ladies pick out sundresses and gentlemen don blazers and color-coordinated ties. Fight songs ring out, overpowering the whistles and grunts of the game below the crowd.

But not at Franklin Field. Enthusiasm for the spiciest matchups at the Palestra in the winter will be similarly tepid. The fortunes, talent and competitiveness of various Quaker squads may change throughout a season, but student apathy will be the one true constant.

Many reasons have been  pinpointed as driving our collective indifference. Although football has seen recent success, men’s basketball has rarely been competitive since its last Ivy title in 2007. The stakes can seem nonexistent: The Ivy League has barred itself from postseason football and, unlike every other college conference, hosts no basketball playoff tournament to crown its champion. We have no  historic rivalry to spur us on, excepting the unrequited one with Princeton that they seem to have even less interest in than we do. The windfall of television money into college sports has largely spared Quaker teams; ESPN College GameDay almost never comes to town, and even the most illicit streaming websites can’t be bothered to carry TV coverage of our games. No one really knows if tailgating is allowed, and even if it were, the locations of Franklin and the Palestra hardly lend themselves to rowdy pregame socializing.

However, the biggest reason sports don’t register on Penn’s radar is simple: The administration doesn’t want it to. Now, it’s not as if the University is anti-sports or anti-student athletes; rather, they treat athletics as just another performing arts group. Non-marquee performances are attended by athletes’ close friends and some community members, with the occasional boost from a particularly aggressive Facebook campaign or  Bill Cosby gimmick.

Overall, though, the student body does not fear missing out on athletic contests because the University refuses to treat sports as anything out of the ordinary. We all know athletes and wish them well, in the same way that we hope for the successes of our friends who are a cappella singers and dancers. That hope, however, carries no urgency. Sports are just one of our several hundred student groups; they are just another building to point to on a student tour; they are just another flyer on Locust.

Most other schools refuse to treat sports this way — they understand its potential as a driver and showcase of school spirit. Anyone who’s taken a Megabus out of Philly has seen Drexel’s larger-than-life basketball billboard, even though the team hasn’t made an NCAA tournament appearance since 1996. Several schools throw massive Midnight Madness pep rallies to kick off their winter seasons, hosting an array of festivities for fans and inviting celebrities to share the stage with their athletes.

At Penn, the vibe could not be more different. We welcome our new students to campus during NSO with academic meetings and club fairs by day and with party flyers by night, implicitly telling them what they ought to care about. There are no pep rallies, athletic showcases or logo-painted bursts of school pride. It’s no wonder students don’t know the words or tune to “Fight On, Pennsylvania!” — no one’s ever taught it to them.

It’s a mistake to think that Penn students have self-selected into the apathy that pervades campus; that we’re just not the kind of people who would care about athletics. On the contrary, many of us marvel at the bombastic school pride colleges with more developed athletic programs show when we visit them and wonder why we can’t have something similar at home.

I have no illusions in the near term about how much this attitude can change, and I don’t think this problem is an emergency. I do know, however, that  open fora and  ticket giveaways won’t change the core issue of Penn sports not establishing itself as, to quote Ron Burgundy, kind of a big deal.

Until that attitude changes, the best game on Homecoming Day will be on Chancellor Street, not 33rd.

Akshat Shekhar is a Wharton and Engineering junior from Boston. His email address is ashek@wharton.upenn.edu. "So Many Activities" appears every other Monday. 

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