Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com

There is an article in the BG News that I think perfectly sums up how the majority of BGSU students view the men's basketball team. Opinion columnist Andrew Harner writes that "men's basketball's recent success may be deceiving."

http://media.www.bgnews.com/media/stora ... 5151.shtml

Aside from his over-reliance on margin of victory in his argument, I can't really argue. We have been just squeaking by our MAC West opposition for the most part. That I don't care about, because at the end of the day a W is a W. But what interests me more is that judging by the lack of student support for the team and by the general perception in the student body that "BG sucks at sports," it seems that Mr. Harner is just echoing the opinion of the student body at large. To me, it seems as if most students that follow the team considered our win at Ohio a fluke, and then chalked up our win streak to poor competition. They've all been waiting, waiting, waiting for the team to inevitably collapse, and now that we've lost to EMU at home, they smell blood in the water.

Harner concludes the column by saying "as the seemingly low-scoring Falcons re-enter East play tonight at Buffalo, their fall from grace seems pretty imminent." Translation: Watch as Buffalo, Akron, Miami, etc kick the sh** out of us. We're done.

It is a damn shame that this is how people feel about our team in the midst of our best season in almost a decade.

If he keeps writing articles like that, while mostly true, he might not have anything else to write about. Heck, people will just stop going to men's games all together.

The pessimism of BG fans is overwhelming sometimes

So if I can gather all the brow-beaten posts on student support together... the students don't care about the MBB team, but they're "waiting, waiting, waiting" for a reason not to care?

The comparitive margin of victory argument is only a shade more relevant than the "A beat B and B beat C, so A is better than C" argument.

We've already beaten the division leader once this year, that's more useful to me than any margin of victory BS.

"It is a damn shame that this is how people feel about our team in the midst of our best season in almost a decade".


Or how one person feels about the team. This doesn't help influence others in a positive way. I wonder if he is one of those students that root for other D-1 teams as his team over BG?

Its not his job to influence students in a positive way

Feelings of the student body to the team will continue as is until they Win the Mac Championship and get into the Big Dance. It is that simple. Football and Hockey will be top two on this campus with Womens B-Ball being third as far as recognition on this campus. Men's basketball has to win in order to get any sort of support. They havent been in the dance in some 45 years. We've never won the MAC tourney title and it will continue until we do win it and get to the tourney. It's that simple. People just need to save their breath (myself included) and quit beating a dead horse as to why nobody shows up to games to support out team.

I enjoyed that EMU game last Saturday, too.

It seems that college newspapers spend much time trying to tear down the institution they represent than writing a coherent article with a point. I know I have been interviewed by BG News staff and it pains me to see an inability to ask questions that can be understood and to use follow up questions. Who's teaching these guys?

I'm not tearing him up about writing the article because the BG News is independent and can write whatever the hell they want. It's actually better in my opinion that they have that freedom.

To me though, if you're going to take a beat as a student writer, think about what topics you choose when attendance sucks. Every one already knows attendance is terrible, but to tell them again after losing one game after a 6 game streak and making it seem like the rest of the season has no hope is pretty shady. He's killing his audience while trying to boost his writing. If no one comes, you really think anyone else on campus is going to want to read about the games?

Soon he'll be sitting on press row with nothing but a story about Grant being the only fan left. Freedom of the press is great, just use it wisely if you want to get somewhere. Find something unique about that makes people want to care about what you're writing about, not something that we've heard a million times.

Globetrotter wrote:Its not his job to influence students in a positive way

It also isn't his job to be negative either. The team won six straight in the MAC, including four of those on the road. No matter what conference you are in, any road victory is huge. The last game against Eastern was bad, but give the team some credit for the recent success. It is way too easy to be negative and try to make a name for yourself.

BGorDeath wrote:I enjoyed that EMU game last Saturday, too.

It seems that college newspapers spend much time trying to tear down the institution they represent than writing a coherent article with a point. I know I have been interviewed by BG News staff and it pains me to see an inability to ask questions that can be understood and to use follow up questions. Who's teaching these guys?

It sounds like you are tearing down the BG journalism department

BGorDeath wrote:I enjoyed that EMU game last Saturday, too.

It seems that college newspapers spend much time trying to tear down the institution they represent than writing a coherent article with a point.

Yesterday, the BG News was the first media outlet to post a story on the new mens soccer coach. It was a well written article with several interesting quotes from the press conference, which also happened to be posted as a YouTube clip.

I thought "Wow, good for them! That was some excellent reporting" before navigating back to the main page and finding, in horror, the online poll question: "What is the biggest negative about the Stroh Center?"

The non-morons just have to do a better job of keeping the morons from ruining the reputation of their paper.

0-15 or 15-0....students should pound down some "beverages" and go to the game...period. Make it a social outing if nothing else.

I get it now, he wrote this to motivate the team