COMMENTARY

The first leaves of the season are changing. It is beginning to get just a little too cool outside to wear the shorts and flip-flops around campus. College football is hitting full stride. And this Saturday marks another Homecoming at Saint Louis University.

I hope that this was not the first time you were informed of the upcoming Homecoming festivities. SAB has done an admirable job this week to make students aware of Homecoming.

We were treated to a band that has name recognition with Better Than Ezra. Friday night is the big dance at the Hyatt, and Saturday will bring us the marquee match-up between SLU and the Horned Frogs of TCU. And yes, it will be a soccer game serving as our “Homecoming Game.”

It seems that every year I have been here at SLU, there is always at least one plea for a football team. And this could very well be filed as the annual “Please give us a football team” column. I’ll save all the other arguments for why we should have a football team for a different day. Right now, all I’m concerned with is having a football team for Homecoming.

Homecoming can serve as a base for school spirit for the rest of the school year. A good showing at Homecoming can be a sign that the campus will be cheering its teams throughout the year.

A big Homecoming win cannot only energize fans of that sport, but it can pump up everyone. It serves as an issue of respect. No one comes into our house on Homecoming and beats us. Unfortunately, here in America, soccer does not garner respect like football.

This should not be interpreted as an anti-soccer message. I encourage every single soccer fan at SLU to go out and support the soccer team Saturday night. These Billikens are ranked No. 4 in the nation and are looking at a realistic shot at winning a national title this season.

Even people who aren’t soccer fans should respect the job coach Dan Donigan and his team have done so far this year.

I hope it’s a standing room only crowd this Saturday. Very few schools in the nation have a top five team in any sport, even if it is soccer. They deserve our support and respect.

But how many people think of soccer when they think Homecoming? I realize there are soccer fans here at SLU and that we draw as big of a crowd as anyone.

I think it would be great to get 5,000 people into Robert R. Hermann Stadium on Saturday night.

I hope we stomp TCU into the ground and the crowd goes into a frenzy. Maybe the crowd can rush the field and topple the goal posts. We can all hold up our index fingers and scream “We’re number 1!” into the television cameras. But things like that don’t happen in soccer.

Now imagine for a second that this Saturday’s Homecoming game was a football match-up between SLU and TCU. There aren’t 5,000 people in the stadium, there are 45,000. You can’t just hear the crowd from the Marchetti Towers, you can hear the roar from Lindell Towers.

It’s not just the students who are excited, the entire city is pumped for the Homecoming game. When the game is over, and SLU is victorious, we aren’t just happy to have won; we charge out onto the field, ecstatic.

Perhaps someday that dream will be a reality. Maybe when it’s our children enjoying college life at SLU, they can enjoy the beauty of a college football game on a Saturday afternoon.

For now, we will take what we have. Let’s go cheer our hearts out Saturday night. Even if you aren’t a fan of soccer, you should be a fan of SLU.