I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I’m not a real sportswriter.
Maybe that’s not a secret. I think the soccer team has been saying that for a year now. But I’m not. I can’t be a real sportswriter.
Real sports writers aren’t allowed to cheer for a team. They can’t stand up and clap or shout at the referee. They’re not allowed to taunt the coach or yell obscenities at the other players.
A real sportswriter has to stay professional and unbiased at all times. I’m more like a spy. A fan in sportswriter’s clothing.
But underneath, I am a fan, just like you. I love cheering on the Billikens. I stand up and yell. I shout at people, I explode out of my seat when there is a good play. I am a fan. There is nothing I can do to stop that.
However, when I was given a few opportunities down on “press row” at the Savvis Center, I was not allowed to show any emotion. I just had to sit there with my pen and paper and cheer as loud as I could in my head.
But this also gave me an opportunity to see the SLU fans from an outside perspective. When the game got boring (and given SLU’s knack for going eight or nine minutes without scoring, it did get boring), I started paying attention to the different fan sections within the student section.
Obviously, the first group I noticed was the Blue Crew. SLU’s answer to the Cameron Crazies and Mizzou Antlers. While it isn’t the only fan group in the student section, it does give off the impression of being the “official Billiken fan.” They all wear their blue Billiken jerseys with numbers on the back. It is the Blew Crew who gets most of the SLU-fan publicity. If ESPN is doing a game in the Savvis and they want to focus in on a particular group of students, you can bet it’ll be the Blue Crew who gets picked out.
At the particular game I attended, it looked like the Crew stood at about 25 strong. I have no idea if this is a good showing or a slow night, but I figured 25 people was a little low for a two-year old, 100-person organization. They stood the whole game, did lots of yelling and peppered the opposing team with a few comical insults.
Not a bad idea, but not exactly blowing the roof off the arena either.
The next noticeable group was a few guys wearing hard hats. I was later informed that these were the Bricklayers. Hopefully they didn’t take their name from the Billikens, who didn’t shy away from laying a few bricks during the season.
They seemed to want to distinguish themselves from the Blue Crew. I can’t be sure if there is a sort of feud brewing between the Blue Crew and Bricklayers, but it was nice to see diversity out in the stands. At least everyone was cheering for the same team.
Finally I saw one more group. I missed them at first because I didn’t think they showed up until halftime. It looked like there were around 8-10 of them, all wearing powder blue shirts with the word Eskimos on it. I can only assume these are the fabled Eskimos.
Not much is known about these Eskimos. From the reports I have heard, they sometimes spend more time talking to the men in blue suits than they do watching the game. But I saw a lot of enthusiasm in the Eskimos. They really got into the game and cheering for the team. I’d like to tell you what they were saying, but I couldn’t exactly hear a lot of it. Either that or it was unprintable. The important thing is that they were there in support of the Billikens.
These are the groups I saw. Each one was a little different from each other, but each was there to cheer on the Billikens. Or at least to support SLU by heckling the other team. In the end it doesn’t matter how you’re dressed or what you call yourself. If you are at the game cheering on the Billikens, you’re doing the right thing.
Just be glad you have the opportunity.
