HoyaNyr320
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Post by HoyaNyr320 on Feb 10, 2005 12:57:26 GMT -5
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 13:57:10 GMT -5
I think everyone needs to lay off the crazies already. Everyone is dying to find ways to insult them and make them look stupid but I think its pretty ridiculous to do so.
Even though they may be a little stupid at times and people find it funny to pick on them, you have to respect the atmosphere they create and the level of organization they have.
Now, if the article is true that they are starting to become more interested in themselves than in the game, thats a problem. However, I think almost everyone would die to have an atmosphere like that and such incredible support.
Even though most people can't stand them I still respect them in terms of how succesful they have been at creating an extremely succesful and organized student spirit group and I think we should all strive to reach such levels.
The fact that they have ESPN articles about them and that ESPN recreates their cheer sheats on line is enough evidence to show that they are damn good. Otherwise no one would care.
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SFHoya99
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
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Post by SFHoya99 on Feb 10, 2005 14:03:01 GMT -5
'07, the atmosphere is nice, but we're going to have to differ on "the level of organization."
The point is to be loud. No one has to understand a darn thing you're saying. Who cares if cheers are witty? Do you really think that a witty comment is what it helping your team win?
It's noise. That's it. Just be loud. And plenty of places in sports -- college and pro -- have it without cheer sheets, insulting comments, moving the band, reserving seats.
How fricking hard is it to shout? The average SAT at GU is now something like 1350. You should know how to make noise.
Get people to the game. Get noisy. That should be the focus. I give Duke credit for that. As well as New Mexico, and yes, Santa Barbara (don't knock it). USF up the hill is as loud as anything. Bad or mid-major teams with a loud atmosphere is even more impressive than Duke.
I really don't understand why anything beyond being loud is all that important.
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HoyaNyr320
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
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Post by HoyaNyr320 on Feb 10, 2005 14:03:47 GMT -5
Yeah '07, I agree with you in terms of organization and intensity. However, the reason that ESPN put their cheer sheets on their website is because the cheers they suggest are really dumb and were not used at all during the game. The articles show that even the show called "best fans in college sports" have trouble executing game specific cheers and have lost some of their luster.
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Hank Scorpio
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
You're gonna die now!
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Post by Hank Scorpio on Feb 10, 2005 14:05:02 GMT -5
i think you overestimate the "Crazies" impact. do you really think Sean May was shook by a bunch of kids going "oooooh" and jumping up and down? the place is loud b/c it squeezes 10000 people into what looks like a library. it's hot as hell in there, too...couple that with the noise and it's an intimidating place. but it's the noise...not the "clever" cheers that they come up with. most are completely lame. I think everyone needs to lay off the crazies already. Everyone is dying to find ways to insult them and make them look stupid but I think its pretty ridiculous to do so. Even though they may be a little stupid at times and people find it funny to pick on them, you have to respect the atmosphere they create and the level of organization they have. Now, if the article is true that they are starting to become more interested in themselves than in the game, thats a problem. However, I think almost everyone would die to have an atmosphere like that and such incredible support. Even though most people can't stand them I still respect them in terms of how succesful they have been at creating an extremely succesful and organized student spirit group and I think we should all strive to reach such levels. The fact that they have ESPN articles about them and that ESPN recreates their cheer sheats on line is enough evidence to show that they are damn good. Otherwise no one would care.
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GUHoya07
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 14:10:48 GMT -5
SF- when I say organization I'm not referring to witty cheers.
There are a lot of things that go into organizing an effective student section. Having an organized and effective system to a student spirit group is really important and not many schools can say that their's is as good as the Crazies'.
Trying to really improve the student section has made me realize how much work it takes and that is why I respect the crazies to some extent. It has nothing to do with the witty cheers they dont actually chant or whatever. Just getting people to be loud is extremely difficult even though it should be the easiest thing.
We have a lot of work to do if we want our student section to be truly impressive and thats what I plan on accomplishing.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Feb 10, 2005 14:18:03 GMT -5
SF- when I say organization I'm not referring to witty cheers. There are a lot of things that go into organizing an effective student section. Having an organized and effective system to a student spirit group is really important and not many schools can say that their's is as good as the Crazies'. Trying to really improve the student section has made me realize how much work it takes and that is why I respect the crazies to some extent. It has nothing to do with the witty cheers they dont actually chant or whatever. Just getting people to be loud is extremely difficult even though it should be the easiest thing. We have a lot of work to do if we want our student section to be truly impressive and thats what I plan on accomplishing. Give credit to the Crazies when they show after five years of losing. It's easy to draw people when winning. You really wouldn't believe how loud the Cap Center used to be. And we didn't have a cheer group. There was a decibel meter there - I don't remember the numbers but it was well up into the Rock Concert/Jet Engine/Ear Damage range. I understand there are challenges to organizing this sort of thing, which is probably why it shouldn't be entirely student run. You might want to think about getting someone who is paid to oversee it and drive it. All in all, from what I've heard, you guys have done a great job. I just think focusing on the cheer sheets, or where the band sits is a red herring. The lack of noise is not because you aren't as organized, I don't think. A lot of it has to do with the size of MCI and the # of non-students, who haven't yet seen much to get them vocal.
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TBird41
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Post by TBird41 on Feb 10, 2005 14:34:27 GMT -5
I think that if GTown is going to make cheer sheets work, they need to be cheer sheets-they need to have actual cheers on them. Right now the student section needs some direction and to add some things to its playlist-right now, there's about 3 cheers we can do for offense and 3 for defense. After a while, it just gets old. It'd be nice to have some more variety. That's what a cheer sheet is for-get the entire student section to know about a game specific cheer, so if it starts, they can join in (ex: knowing to chant "Brandon Bowman" after he scored his 7th point against SH-or "flush the johnnies"). Ideally, that'd be what the cheer sheets would do. I think the "cameron crazies" have lost that and are trying to be too cute w/ their cheers instead of keeping it simple. That and it seems like their "media whores" now-at least that's what the ESPN guy accuses them off.
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SoCalHoya
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No es bueno
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Post by SoCalHoya on Feb 10, 2005 14:35:54 GMT -5
A winning team certainly helps to bring the kids out to cheer. But I think 07 (and others) have done a good job of creating momentum, and I think that is important. It only takes a few people to be sincerely excited, about anything (e.g., work, teams, volunteering), to pump up a group of others that would be otherwise apathetic.
I still remember the home stand against UConn we put in '96. The decibel reader said "136" and I could hardly hear myself think. One of the best moments of my life! And we all took the bus 2 hours (rush hour) to get to the stadium. Insane!
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GUHoya07
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 14:40:04 GMT -5
SF-Thanks, but that's not completely true in my opinion. Our organization is still pretty terrible in general and a huge portion of the student section is made up of just horrible fans. A lot of work needs to be done in terms of organization and although MCI doesn't help we can't be blaming it all on the place.
The comment about non-students not seeing enough yet to get them vocal is just crazy in my opinion. I'm not saying that you are necessarilly wrong, but that people must be mentally insane if they haven't seen enough. Sadly this seems to be true for a lot of places around the country, but what do people expect to see before the team "earns" their cheering? Do we have to go undefeated and win every game by 20 before people get off their asses and start making some noise? I don't think the team could possibly show any more. This has been a truly magical run and the team deserves to be supported.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Feb 10, 2005 14:55:56 GMT -5
SF-Thanks, but that's not completely true in my opinion. Our organization is still pretty terrible in general and a huge portion of the student section is made up of just horrible fans. A lot of work needs to be done in terms of organization and although MCI doesn't help we can't be blaming it all on the place. The comment about non-students not seeing enough yet to get them vocal is just crazy in my opinion. I'm not saying that you are necessarilly wrong, but that people must be mentally insane if they haven't seen enough. Sadly this seems to be true for a lot of places around the country, but what do people expect to see before the team "earns" their cheering? Do we have to go undefeated and win every game by 20 before people get off their asses and start making some noise? I don't think the team could possibly show any more. This has been a truly magical run and the team deserves to be supported. Well, if you use professional teams as an example (and that's a good proxy for non-students fans), the attendance lift almost always comes the year after a etam starts winning. People are slow to react. And I think people are waiting to see if it is real. More attendance in the non-student seats allow for more groupthink which allows for more cheering.
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KHoyaNYC
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Post by KHoyaNYC on Feb 10, 2005 15:23:56 GMT -5
I dunno, maybe its just me, but I don't think having a "leader" is really critical for this sort of thing. If the team wins, people will come and cheer. Having a more basketball friendly venue would help, but regardless, its the team's performance that will dictate the crowd level and noise.
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FLHoya
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Post by FLHoya on Feb 10, 2005 16:52:37 GMT -5
SF-Thanks, but that's not completely true in my opinion. Our organization is still pretty terrible in general and a huge portion of the student section is made up of just horrible fans. A lot of work needs to be done in terms of organization and although MCI doesn't help we can't be blaming it all on the place. There's two ways to get noticed and be intimidating as a student section in my view: NOISE and/or UNITY. Unless you have one of those, it's not happening. I could care less how much research Duke's cheer czars put into their cheers. The crux of that article's right--they don't use 90% of the stuff on there on a game-by-game basis, and a lot of it isn't clever anyhow. It seems like Duke runs on about a 1-per-3 to 4 game ratio of hitting on something good, and often times they're handed something on a silver platter (thank you Nik "I'm From Maryland..." Caner-Medley). That was a good one. But only because they got everyone in the arena to cheer it. If it's like 50 scattered face-painted stuck up white transplants from north of the Mason-Dixon line chanting it, no one cares that "nobody can beat" NCM. Everyone in the arena chants it, ESPN picks it up...now all of a sudden that was "intimidating" in the eye of the viewer/media. Or you can just be flat out loud. I think the fans at Wake Forest and Kansas are nuts. The sound guy for Wake Forest really knows how to keep the crowd amped, all that high-energy music during TOs and such. I really don't like cheer sheets. I just don't think it's practical to expect a fan base like ours, which tends to be more fluid and change in #s by the game/opponent and takes a largely a la carte approach to basketball attendance (as opposed to the Old Time country buffet approach), to want to LEARN stuff at a game. Our goal for this year in the student section was supposed to be to introduce (and reintroduce) student fans to coming to MCI as a fun thing to do. Let's save the lesson plan for later after we've gone through Orientation. Simple chants are fine--everyone can remember two syllables. Even better, you don't need someone with a dry erase board, hand signals, or semaphore flags to get people on board. Now, we're still having problems even doing the simple stuff, like getting people to make noise in the first place. But rather than calling them "horrible fans," maybe we all should look inward and wonder why we haven't reached them yet (and saying they're unreachable is NOT the correct answer--if they show up in the first place it is not a tough leap to work on getting them to say something as mundane as "DEFENSE").
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GUHoya07
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 17:03:16 GMT -5
FL- a huge portion of the student section is horrible, and I'll call them horrible if that's what they are. That doesn't mean that I won't do everything possible to reach them and try to correct the problem in the future.
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HoyaSox04
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Post by HoyaSox04 on Feb 10, 2005 18:40:40 GMT -5
You know what 007? At least those students are there. So not all of them are like you or the other people in the front row. Maybe not all of them know as much about basketball as most of us here on the board do. Maybe some of them come more for the atmosphere than to be involved in every single second of the game. Maybe some of them are girls and dont know better (not intended to be sexist I promise). But you know what? At least they're there, and making noise, and rooting for our team, and soaking up the fact that for once in the last 4 years we are SOLID. I think you should get off your high horse and give them a break for once. At least they're trying.
In terms of the Cameron debate and whatnot, I personally think that the Cameron morons are very overrated, now. Three, four years ago? No way. They were crazy loud. I'm not sure they're even in the top 5 anymore (Kansas, Wake, OK St., Wisconsin all have to go above them). In terms of the best student section at any school for any sport, it has to be Notre Dame and the student section at football games. If you've never sat in it or at least seen it, I can't describe it. Let's just say everyone knows every single cheer, they all cheer in unison, and they are SMART. Hands down the best student section in the country.
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Feb 10, 2005 18:40:45 GMT -5
"You're horrible! I can't believe how terrible you (large group of people) are. Now change to be what I want you to be!"
It's a tough strategy to pull off IMO. (Ask Ralph Nader, he's been trying it for years).
How about something like "I know you haven't had much of an exciting team to watch for the previous 1-3 years that you've been at Georgetown, and now, thanks to Coaches and Players, we're changing that. Now let's all work together to mirror that on the fan side."
Talking about how people are horrible doesn't make you friends, and it doesn't make you an effective leader. Realizing that different people have different priorities in life, and that for those who aren't like some of us who spend extremely large portions of our life dedicated to Hoya Hoops, maybe the better approach is to help them maximize the time and energy that they do put into G'town basketball, so that it becomes a more rewarding (and therefore, increasingly passion-laden and time-consuming) part of their lives.
-------------------------------------- Rant finished.... thank you for indulging me.
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HoyaSox04
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Post by HoyaSox04 on Feb 10, 2005 18:46:02 GMT -5
"You're horrible! I can't believe how terrible you (large group of people) are. Now change to be what I want you to be!" It's a tough strategy to pull off IMO. (Ask Ralph Nader, he's been trying it for years). How about something like "I know you haven't had much of an exciting team to watch for the previous 1-3 years that you've been at Georgetown, and now, thanks to Coaches and Players, we're changing that. Now let's all work together to mirror that on the fan side." Talking about how people are horrible doesn't make you friends, and it doesn't make you an effective leader. Realizing that different people have different priorities in life, and that for those who aren't like some of us who spend extremely large portions of our life dedicated to Hoya Hoops, maybe the better approach is to help them maximize the time and energy that they do put into G'town basketball, so that it becomes a more rewarding (and therefore, increasingly passion-laden and time-consuming) part of their lives. -------------------------------------- Rant finished.... thank you for indulging me. EXACTLY. Thanks THB.
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GUHoya07
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 18:48:13 GMT -5
You know what, why dont you get off my freaking case. I'm not saying that everyone has to be a die-hard and completely into every second of the game, but the fact is that there are a lot of horrible fans. And when I say horrible fans I mean people who don't pay attention to the game at all and sit around talking on their cell phones or to their friends. FLHoya knows about this as he complains about those types to me all the time. So you know what, those people aren't there making noise and rooting for the team.
I guess you're one of the people who doesn't like me because of some comments I've made, but give it a break dude. The fact is that there are a lot of really bad fans, and Im not saying they all have to dress up like the Cameron Crazies, but I am saying that they have to pay a little bit of attention to the game and make some noise.
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GUHoya07
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 18:51:59 GMT -5
"You're horrible! I can't believe how terrible you (large group of people) are. Now change to be what I want you to be!" It's a tough strategy to pull off IMO. (Ask Ralph Nader, he's been trying it for years). How about something like "I know you haven't had much of an exciting team to watch for the previous 1-3 years that you've been at Georgetown, and now, thanks to Coaches and Players, we're changing that. Now let's all work together to mirror that on the fan side." Talking about how people are horrible doesn't make you friends, and it doesn't make you an effective leader. Realizing that different people have different priorities in life, and that for those who aren't like some of us who spend extremely large portions of our life dedicated to Hoya Hoops, maybe the better approach is to help them maximize the time and energy that they do put into G'town basketball, so that it becomes a more rewarding (and therefore, increasingly passion-laden and time-consuming) part of their lives. -------------------------------------- Rant finished.... thank you for indulging me. WOW! I obviously don't go around telling people that they are horrible fans and that they have to change. This is a talkboard and we discuss the current state of things as well as what we want to improve. When you actually go about trying to improve things you take the diplomatic approach. I think there's a bit of a difference between stating the reality of the situation on a talkboard and the strategy you plan on using to improve something in reality.
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GUHoya07
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by GUHoya07 on Feb 10, 2005 18:53:37 GMT -5
I guess because I state the reality of a situation on here it means that I am going to go around insulting people at games in order to get them to change....great logic guys.
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