Where’s the bandwagon?

Lourdes Ginart/Staff Writer

The University, like many others, has most of its athletic attention drawn to the football team ― a team which, while it’s been on the rise, is really just OK.

Athletic fees have been raised, renovations have been made to the stadium, and billboards have been celebrating the rise of our football program.

But what attention has been given to the other sports that have been on top of their respective standings for some time now?

As a student, I’ve noticed – not that this is a secret – that the University wants students to have an affinity towards the school and not just take classes. But it’s pretty hard to do that when you have all of your eggs in a single basket.

So I dare to ask, what’s the deal with our other sports?

Football game attendance easily trumps that of the other athletic programs, and in no small part because of the University’s own marketing campaigns.

On multiple occasions, I have been offered the opportunity to gain extra credit if I attend a women’s volleyball game. The professors that have done this are supporters of the volleyball team and only wish to see a bigger crowd. So in order to support the team, they bend the no-extra-credit rule on their syllabus to help out one of our many undervalued sports.

This shouldn’t happen.

Professors shouldn’t be giving out points in order to fill bleachers. Students should be going on their own accord.

The same goes for our other sports. Swim meets, track meets, tennis matches, golf tournaments and basketball games can be just as, if not more, chaotic, competitive, and stimulating as any football game.

The University’s swimming and diving team is a great example of an undervalued, yet extremely victorious, sports team.  According to Staff Writer, Sissi Aguila of the Office of News and Communications, the swimming and diving team has “[broken] 10 program records, four Sun Belt Conference records, claimed five Sun Belt championships and swept the conference swimmer, diver and coaches of the year awards” this past season alone.

Not only are such sports victorious, but they also produce great athletes.
Iva Ciglar, Arlene Semeco, Feoma Dieke, and Ronald Forbes – University alumni – respectively represented Croatia; Venezuela; Great Britain; and the Cayman Islands at the 2012 London Olympics.

I don’t see any University football players on that list.

With any luck, this year’s Olympics shines a spotlight on the underrepresented sports at the University as a result of the Golden Panther squad that bore the flags of the world on the global stage. Hopefully this puts fans in the stands for programs that truly deserve the support.

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