The first thing I saw when I woke up Monday morning was a text from a friend informing me that someone had quite literally broken into Memorial Stadium, torn the goalpost down in the south end zone and dumped the broken metal in Potter Lake, as is the custom when the KU football team pulls off a victory that sets off a rockin’ celebration.
I get the whole kids-will-be-kids narrative and the lighten-up-what’s-wrong-with-having-a-little-fun mindset. But I gotta tell ya: The whole schtick did not sit right with me from Minute 1.
I’m not going to judge you or even call you crazy if you choose to applaud the way a few dozen fans — whether they’re Royals fans, KU fans, both or neither remains unknown — celebrated Kansas City’s first major sports title in 30 years.
But can we at least agree on one thing? You have to admit it looks a little foolish.
https://twitter.com/nobrokebrospls/status/661087022908579840
I mean, did supporters of Stanford tear into the school’s football stadium and do more than $10,000 worth of damage to celebrate the Golden State Warriors NBA title last summer?
Did anybody hear about a bunch of UMass students breaking into the gymnasium and cutting down the nets last winter when the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl?
Of course not. And if they had, it would have made each of those schools look stupid the way this made KU look lame.
And that’s to say nothing of the automatic and unnecessary shots that people across the country since have fired at KU football over this whole mess. What do those guys do? All they’re trying to do is find a way to climb out from underneath one hell of a mess created by the past two football coaches and going about it rather quietly and respectably.
Kansas football has got enough problems without the rest of the country being given a gift-wrapped reason to make fun of the struggling program.
Look, I’m not so old that I can’t remember what it was like to be a kid, to celebrate with wild abandon or even to do dumb things that I now look back on and scratch my head about. I’m not sure you ever actually get old enough to lose sight of those things. But you do grow up. And I’m pretty sure I never thought it would be OK to represent my school or town by damaging property, trespassing and putting myself and a bunch of others in harm’s way while celebrating the accomplishments of a team in another city.
Huh?
Sure, a huge chunk of KU’s enrollment is made up of Kansas City kids. And good for them. Whether they’ve been pulling for the Royals since their mothers and fathers first introduced them to baseball at age 5 or just jumped on the bandwagon and only have been Royals fans for the past 18 months, their team winning the World Series is good reason for a great celebration.
And to the credit of hundreds of KU students and Lawrence residents, celebrate is what they did. Downtown, with chants and screams, high-fives and hugs. Not vandalism. Thousands more did the same thing across Kansas City.
So to let the action of a few hardcore party people — many of whom might actually be decent people — ruin what otherwise was a pretty cool scene, would be unfair. That’s not what this is. Instead, this is the voice of logic and reason, something that was clearly missing when these guys and gals blew their own minds by deciding to wreck Memorial Stadium because a baseball team from a city 40 miles away won the World Series.
Huh?
