Student section and profanity in your school's arena

[Bullmoose]

Hi all,

I am just curious, does the student section in your university extensively use chants containing profanity? Has administration ever done anything drastic about that? Were their measures successful in reducing vulgarity? Did it negatively affect the arena atmosphere?

I know about the security folks that supposedly throw some people out at the Agganis arena (I believe BU people affectionately refer to them as "Agganazis"). Having been there, I don't think their atmosphere suffers from it though. However, I don't know how Walter Brown used to be like. I also didn't really hear BU students swear, except in the notorious "eat/rough/**** 'em up" chant.

I've heard that at Michigan administration throws some students out on regular basis when the do the "C'ya" chant, but, having never been there, don't know that for certain. I also heard that they harshly police the Denver student section, which reportedly resulted in library-like atmosphere -- however, again, that's hearsay and I think it was from someone not particularly fond of Denver. I've never been to Denver either.

At Dartmouth we had an occasional problem with our coach cussing the refs out, but the students don't swear.

At UMass student section does use profanity extensively. There was a "Keep it clean" campaign at the end of last year (after numerous f-bombs were dropped from the student section on BC) but that died down. I didn't see anyone get kicked out during the "Keep it clean" campaign and I don't think it made any difference on the amount of swearing...

Anyway, any thoughts/info is appreciated.

[Brenthoven]

At Mariucci, they've apparently instructed the band to not cue up the WPoS chant after an opponents' penalty:

Whoo, whoo...whoo, whoo... whoo, whoo
You buddy, you're outta here, ya hack, you suck!!!
You Worthless Piece of Shhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii......... (you don't actually finish off the word, technically)


But that only made the student section louder when they decided to start it on their own.

[Gomer]

****

[startthebus]

They don't monitor it at all at SCSU..

[Dirty]

UND is looking to add profanity to their student section. I think they had a meeting on it a couple weeks ago after there was not enough swearing during the Gopher series.

[Twitch Boy]

We used to be EVIL sons of *****es. No Beer and Engineers actually have over fifty verses each, ranging from squeaky clean to X-rated to misogynistic to anti-Semitic. Heck, I had a look at some of the Carny sculptures from the 60's in old yearbooks. At least two every year portrayed a lynching. Must have been the "in" joke at the time, I don't know.

Nowadays, the Misfits and band pride themselves on emphasizing creativity over outright vulgarity. Some pushing of the envelope is acceptable if it's clever; vulgarity for vulgarity's sake is worthless. A clever joke or chant that is funny or hits home and stings is worth a thousand "eff you, you suck, gay fag"s. The line can be accidentally crossed in heat-of-the-moment situations, such as chanting "eff him up" during Matt Siddall's Punch-Out at NMU back in 2007.

The Institution does a lot to curb this as well. As part of an attempt to make the Mac a family-friendly venue, they've recently cracked down on some of our classics such as S-E-X (score score score,) O-R-G-Y (teamwork,) and A-N-A-L (come from behind.) We use those sparingly as a result.

My personal line is gay jokes, as I had a ton of GLBT friends at Tech and I almost became persona non grata within tSBFitW after making a little-too-close-to-home verse of No Beer about one of our more...campy directors during my rookie season. If I make one, I'm gonna make it ****ED good.

[Farce Poobah]

Originally Posted by Dirty

UND is looking to add profanity to their student section. I think they had a meeting on it a couple weeks ago after there was not enough swearing during the Gopher series.

We were playing Profanity Bingo in my section last weekend. I went the whole game without getting a single effing f#$%, and everyone was missing c*c$%Sg M$%F#$^r.

Of course, when Denver comes to town, we'll all be blacked out by the 15 minute mark of pregame warmups.

PS I agree with Twitch Boy that ridicule and the unexpected can get inside the opponent skull. F-bombs just don't.

[Runninwiththedogs]

Originally Posted by Farce Poobah

We were playing Profanity Bingo in my section last weekend. I went the whole game without getting a single effing f#$%, and everyone was missing c*c$%Sg M$%F#$^r.

You need to sit near me. You'd be a winner every time!!!

[ZYanksRule]

At Quinnipiac, couple years ago, beer-infested students started a "F... you Harvard" chant. Which was made worse by the fact that NESN was televising the game. Quickly after that, there was a huge push by admin to cut out profanity. For the most part, it's been successful -- there's no more F-bombs flying around,

[crazypotatoes]

Originally Posted by Twitch Boy

We used to be EVIL sons of *****es. No Beer and Engineers actually have over fifty verses each, ranging from squeaky clean to X-rated to misogynistic to anti-Semitic. Heck, I had a look at some of the Carny sculptures from the 60's in old yearbooks. At least two every year portrayed a lynching. Must have been the "in" joke at the time, I don't know.

Nowadays, the Misfits and band pride themselves on emphasizing creativity over outright vulgarity. Some pushing of the envelope is acceptable if it's clever; vulgarity for vulgarity's sake is worthless. A clever joke or chant that is funny or hits home and stings is worth a thousand "eff you, you suck, gay fag"s. The line can be accidentally crossed in heat-of-the-moment situations, such as chanting "eff him up" during Matt Siddall's Punch-Out at NMU back in 2007.

The Institution does a lot to curb this as well. As part of an attempt to make the Mac a family-friendly venue, they've recently cracked down on some of our classics such as S-E-X (score score score,) O-R-G-Y (teamwork,) and A-N-A-L (come from behind.) We use those sparingly as a result.

The Misfits tend to get away with the spelling ones for some reason, even though we do them a lot. But other than that and the refs verse of no beer (ends with "our friends will be B****ING AT THE REFS"), it's mostly pretty clean. We do push the line in clever ways though. Examples include "Bullsheet" (pointing at a sheet with a bull on it), "You suck on the PP", 4Q ref, etc.

We do get complaints occasionally though. Ask F2B&G about the incident with the whiny parent who wrote a letter to the editor about us. Also, a "we stole your land" chant drew some flak recently after the UND series. But overall, I'd say we're cleaner than most student sections.

[Yager]

If possible, the Misfits have been trying to regulate ourselves and correct any problems in our sections without having the administration need to talk to us. We still do the banned Pep Band spelling cheers and some others (cum - finish strong or just shoot, boobs - check 'em, tip - just put it in, etc). But for a student section that does actually cheer (this excludes places like Mercyhurst), we have to be one of the cleanest in the nation.

Of other places I've been...

Wisconsin - Could get nasty in the heat of the moment but almost all of their stuff is perfectly clean and they are VERY good with the cheers they do.

North Dakota - Security will remove students for almost no reason. so students leave their balls at home and, thus, their sections are pretty clean but only make noise when led during play by the single drum in the band.

Alaska - Anchorage - Haha, cheering, what's that?

Minnesota - 2-4 student sections, depending on the night, do a good amount of cheering and are pretty clean and I haven't heard them do anything vulgar.

Mankato (Minnesota State) - Don't mind throwing out some vulgar language and don't really have a ton of cheering going on except for olay olay olay when they score and a***sssssssshole, a***sssssssshole when security takes their beachballs.

Minnesota - Duluth - Struggling lately, they did a "purple fagg0ts" cheer to mankato a few weeks ago and that made them threaten to take away student season tickets. they also have been using f-bombs and *****, from what I have read from their student section forum.

St. Cloud - I don't remember any specific problems, they are usually pretty controlled from what I've seen in my 2 games there.

Northern Michigan - The student section is pretty clean, sometimes they have some iffy stuff but it is usually creative enough to pass.

Lake Superior State - If they had a student section, we were not aware. Therefore, there really is no cheering other than individuals yelling out things.

Michigan - My second favorite team but my god, Yost arena is a cesspool for bad language. The majority of people in attendance are students, however, it is still pretty bad. A lot of f-bombs and what not but I've never really heard of any type of crackdown, as it's been like that forever.

[GoDanGo]

Hop on over to the Wisconsin season thread. We were all just griping about the same topic. While the cheers that the entire student section participates in are generally fairly clean, a very vocal minority - bordering on a majority sometimes - is adding things that start to cross the line. Our "drop the puck" chant is especially getting out of hand, as a lot of people have discovered that there's another four-letter word that rhymes with "puck."

As for RPI, things are usually pretty clean in my experience. The one exception comes after bad calls by refs, at which point the entire crowd will usually let them know what we think.

Originally Posted by ZYanksRule

At Quinnipiac, couple years ago, beer-infested students started a "F... you Harvard" chant. Which was made worse by the fact that NESN was televising the game. Quickly after that, there was a huge push by admin to cut out profanity. For the most part, it's been successful -- there's no more F-bombs flying around,

I wonder if that was before or after the game I went to there (whenever RPI played there in the 07-08 season, I think early Dec. 07). While outright profanity didn't jump out at me, there seemed to be an awful lot of chants about certain... transmittable diseases... that RPI girls supposedly had. Struck me as a little classless, but hey - at least you guys acknowledged that RPI has female students. That's more credit than a lot of people give us.

[kdilks]

As others have said, Michigan doesn't do much to stop the profanity. A few years ago they really cracked down on "c-sucker" at the end of the C-ya cheer, and were kicking people out until it stopped. It's already back. I've heard that there have been a few isolated incidents this year where people were thrown out (something about a guy dressed as a chicken with a bullhorn?), but no mass administrative movement like last time. There have been a few other times where the student section was asked by the athletic department/Red to tone things down, but no real enforcement and no real effect. I think that ultimately nothing is going to stop the swearing, since so many students get up-in-arms about it being a free speech issue (even though it really isn't).

[MinnesotaNorthStar]

When I was at North Dakota we've really tried to cut down on using words such as Gophers, Badgers, and Bison...there are kids in attendance after all...

[Nick Papagiorgio]

At Boston College, despite the fact that they scan tickets and actually count the number of people that go to the games (rather than tickets sold) and that BC annually is top 2 in attendance in the league, no one goes to BC games. At least that's what I heard on the interwebs (therefore, it must be true!).

So basically, unless those empty seats are swearing, the "fan" behavior is quite good!

[Arpod]

Originally Posted by kdilks

As others have said, Michigan doesn't do much to stop the profanity. A few years ago they really cracked down on "c-sucker" at the end of the C-ya cheer, and were kicking people out until it stopped. It's already back. I've heard that there have been a few isolated incidents this year where people were thrown out (something about a guy dressed as a chicken with a bullhorn?), but no mass administrative movement like last time. There have been a few other times where the student section was asked by the athletic department/Red to tone things down, but no real enforcement and no real effect. I think that ultimately nothing is going to stop the swearing, since so many students get up-in-arms about it being a free speech issue (even though it really isn't).

I was at Yost last year when tOSU was in town and the final 2 minutes of the Saturday game (MI whipped tOSUs azz) the student section chanted '*u*k OHIO' (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap). It was loud and clear and the house was full, as it generally is at Yost. Lots of families and kids. Although I understand the fundamental hatred/rivalry between the schools and all, that did not reflect very positively on the students or the UofM IMHO. Not sure it can ever be reigned in though...

[goldy_331]

Originally Posted by MinnesotaNorthStar

When I was at North Dakota we've really tried to cut down on using words such as Gophers, Badgers, and Bison...there are kids in attendance after all...

But you insisted on the using the worst word of all, just ask the NCAA.

[BCWH Superfan joe]

Swearing? Ha. BC barred the band from doing the 'sieve' chant.

If you casually say the F word to the person next to you in a conversational tone, like, 'what the ****** just happened?,' you can expect 15,331 bored security guards to swarm over you within 9.2 seconds.

BTW, I think swearing in chants sounds really stupid, not just because it reflects poorly on the fans but also because it's really uncreative and dull. But at BC, we don't have that problem because everyone just sits on their hands anyway. No need to tell us to tone it down!

[MinnesotaNorthStar]

Originally Posted by goldy_331

But you insisted on the using the worst word of all, just ask the NCAA.

Sober?

You're not likely to hear that word uttered much at The Ralph either...

[wolverineTrumpet]

Ok, so Michigan students will occasionally break out the "***k Ohio" chant. I don't participate, and I'm not sure what can be done to stop it. Last year was an incident where FYS (**** you state) was very loud...but almost warranted. And of course there's the penalty cheer (which the band has been instructed to try and play over). And if you sit in the student section at Yost wearing colors of the other team you will have many people chant "*hole" at you.

As mentioned by others, they occasionally kick people out. There was one time that Red came out and addressed the student section and it got toned down a bit that season.

As awful as the profanity is, I still love Yost and the fact that it is always loud and sometimes crazy.


I can tell you that wearing profanity on your clothing will get you kicked out of Michigan sporting events (or you'll be asked to remove the offensive clothing). I was shocked at Munn over the weekend when a few Spartan fans actually had the f word spelled out on their clothing.


Edit: Oh, and back when I was in the band (and I believe still) the band students aren't even allowed to say "suck" so instead of "Phone! hey [opposing goalie], it's your mom, she says 'you suck!'" we'd have to say other things like "she says, 'she's not sure who your father is'")
Supposedly Ryan Miller's mom once stood up and said "I did not say that". At least that's the story I've heard.