Basketball season is over and done with, but there’s one lingering image I have from it.
It’s not a big-time play, not a fiery coach yelling at a referee or player. It’s an image that was never shown on SportsCenter or the front page of a paper’s sports section.
The image in my mind comes from one of UF’s home games.
I had to sit in the farthest back row of the Stephen C. O’Connell Center because it was the only seat I could find. I could barely see the court, so I pulled out my Nintendo 3DS and started playing it when UF jumped out to a large lead.
But despite the game being over halfway through the first half and not entertaining me whatsoever, there was a fan in front of me cheering and chanting and carrying on as if he were in the front row. That is the image that stuck with me, where someone was so passionate that it didn’t matter what the score was or if the players, coaches and referees could even hear him.
Fast-forward to April 8.
It is Monday Night Raw after WWE’s WrestleMania — the Super Bowl for wrestling fans. Their Daytona 500, their Stanley Cup finals and so on and so forth. This Raw was a much better event than the WrestleMania from the night before for a single reason: the crowd.
The crowd at Raw was incredible. They chanted all night and even sang the entrance song to one superstar when the actual events of the evening became boring.
That song, “ChaChaLaLa,” is just an instrumental. All the crowd did was change the pitch of “do”as they kept time with it. Furthermore, there are multiple studies that prove a raucous crowd at a sporting event can change the flow of the game. The changes are not from visiting players underperforming on the road but from refs who are more likely to make the popular call.
All of this comes together to prove a single point: When crowds come together, they can completely alter whatever reality, be it scripted or otherwise, was in store before the gathering.
I can foresee the response already.
“Well, duh,” you think. “Of course a group of people will change more than what a single person will change.” In response to you, dear (hopefully nonfictional) reader, I have but one request.
Gainesville will elect its mayor in a runoff election Tuesday. City elections have horrible turnouts, so a good crowd on this day, of all days, will result in one group exerting its will upon the city.
Local elections have much more impact on a citizen’s day-to-day life than national elections, yet they get ignored because they lack the appeal of a national election.
Everyone and their cousin wants to weigh in with their views on gay marriage, abortion or gun control, but issues like lane reduction, biomass and public transportation fall to the wayside.
Every UF student rides buses for free, so there’s one issue we should be concerned with. Lane reduction usually generates more traffic, which should be on the mind of every UF student who lives off campus.
I’ve got nothing regarding biomass. I can’t make that interesting. Regardless, two of three major issues can impact UF students, yet there is no buzz on campus whatsoever except from the daily Alligator article that usually ends up on page 3.
Speaking of three, if two’s company and three’s a crowd, I’ll take that crowd to their polling location myself if I have to.
Logan Ladnyk is a journalism junior at UF. His columns run on Fridays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
