Let's Pray for No Injuries

Those who love me know two things about me, I love letters to the editor that babble on about how the modern college sports fan isn't nice enough to the other team and letters that find ways to blame the Bush administration everything, no matter how tenuous.

The first type of letter usually falls into the "back in my day" category, something like "back in my day, everyone was just there to have a good time. Why, if an opposing player lost the onion off his belt, the game would stop and the whole crowd would help find it before the game could resume." These stories were at least plausible when I was young and the author could theoretically be talking about sporting events in the 1920s. But then the 1936 Olympics changed everything. From then on out, sports have largely been about competition.

The second type of letter I love is usually from a lefty liberal sees connections between mundane life events and the larger world around them. Every freakin' minute is a teachable moment. These letters usually describe some every day situation, "I was riding my bicycle down the street and I ran into a pile of leaves in the bike lane. Forced to swerve, I almost fell," and then they make a sudden leap to larger forces at work. "I couldn't help but think that if the Bush administration didn't support Israel and the slaughtering of all those very innocent Gaza Strippers, then people wouldn't be so callous about where they put their leaves." That these people actually do make these connections is why I hate love and fear them.

Well, one of you all must have gone and told William A. McConochie about my twin letter-related loves, because this is what I found in today's Register Guard:

Poor sportsmanship brings loss

Are the Oregon Ducks suffering from bad karma? What goes around comes around.

For years Duck fans have blatantly booed and insulted visiting teams at Mac Court and Autzen Stadium. On Jan. 17, coach Ernie Kent was ejected from the basketball game against Washington State University for misbehavior. Our players fouled the Cougars repeatedly, giving them 28 free throw opportunities. The Cougars set records, making all 28 of them, for 28 free points. We lost the game by 12 points, 74 to 62.

If we hadn’t fouled and given away 28 points, the score would have been 46 to 62 and we’d have won. Do our university and community teach winning at any cost, even breaking the rules?

We’ve seen the effects of this policy in the George W. Bush administration. Human rights and human dignity are swatches from the same cloth. Let’s treat our athletic opponents with respect and dignity and see what happens. At 0 and 6 in Pac 10 men’s basket­ball, we have nothing to lose by trying a new approach.

William A. McConochie

Eugene

As Tom Cruise said to Timothy Hutton, "It's beautiful, man. Beautiful."