Originally published December 7, 2011 at 3:43 p.m., updated December 7, 2011 at 3:43 p.m.
To call me a casual sports fan would be an overstatement.
Throughout my life I’ve generally been ambivalent about sports. Watching a game, whether it be football or basketball, holds about as much interest for me as mowing a lawn. Sure, there are moments of excitement, but for the most part I have trouble feeling invested in the game at hand.
While I’ve been a pretty regular attendee of football games and an occasional attendee of basketball games, what I absolutely love, regardless of the game, is the experience of sports.
I love crowds, and I love stadiums. A sports crowd is a mirror to society. You’ve got celebrities, leaders, average folk, police (ushers and actual police) and criminals (that idiot who stole your seat, for example). So when it comes time to pay attention to the big play, I usually find myself asking everyone around me, “What happened? I was too busy watching Lew Perkins.”
The other sideshow of sports that occupies my attention is the band. I absolutely love it. When it comes to things that are right in the world, bands rank somewhere between ice cream and Ferris Bueller.
I played a mean clarinet in high school. But you already knew that, right? There is, after all, something about my dashingly handsome mug shot that screams “clarinet player.” My high school had both a robust marching and pep band and I attended as many games as I could.
But once again, it had almost nothing to do with the game itself. For me, it was about socializing and feeling the energy that comes through music. When I get to hear the KU Band, part of me is and always will be envious.
Throughout my entire life, I’ve primarily experienced sports as a social and musical event. It goes without saying, though I’m saying it anyway, that this university is the best place I can imagine for a sports fan like myself.
Allen Fieldhouse offers a thunderous band and an even more thunderous crowd. At Memorial Stadium, it’s hard to not swell with pride when the drum majors charge, batons hoisted into the sky, onto the field before games. For a brief moment they help the crowd hope against hope, even though deep down everyone knows it will be another slaughter.
So I’m a bit perplexed at how I’m going to handle my current situation. See, I’m graduating at the end of the semester and will be leaving Lawrence. I’m grateful to have found a reporting job in another city, yet for me this means the end of Kansas sports as I know it. No more crowds of thousands to watch for hours. No more band to admire. Just me and ESPN 3. This is life.
For me, sports at Kansas has never been about T-Rob or Bill Self, Todd Reesing or Turner Gill. It’s been about you.
And I will miss you all dearly.
— Edited by Stefanie Penn
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