2005年NPR美国国家公共电台四月-One March Madness Drawback: The Fans

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In case you haven't been paying attention to sports, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament begins in earnest tomorrow. College students, proud alumni and plain old fans will all be glued to television sets, rooting for their favorites. Commentator¹ Laura Lorson just wishes they would get a little more creative with their support.

I like watching college basketball as much as the next person, maybe a little bit more. I've actually attended 2 schools with very prestigious² college basketball programs. I live in a town where the inventor of the game coached, died and is now buried. I love watching a well-coached, well-played game. I love the annual NCAA Tournament. I love the way people stop what they are doing every March to watch the first-round games and how co-workers who normally could not identify the pick-and-roll of their lives to paint on it, stop by the water cooler and engage in complex discussions about the 8 9 10 seat matchups and the underrepresentation of mid³ major conferences. But there is one thing I absolutely don't like about the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament and that's the fans.

They show up, they yell. And if they happen to get in front of a television camera, they go nuts; it strikes me up a "Wow". Now in their defence, when you are on camera for only 5 or 10 seconds, there is not all much that they could actually say to express their admiration⁴ for their chosen team. But this is America. We sent a man to the moon. We can make a million Twinkies in an hour. We should be able to come up with something more compelling than shrieking⁵" Number 1, We'll hue⁶" and shaking our index fingers at the camera.

Everytime I'm watching a game and the camera pans the crowd, I start shaking my head. The common crazes of duke, "psh", How do these kids get in the duke. I always think if I were at that game, I'd try to work in something legitimately⁷ great about my school. Something like "Yeah, KU, the Chancellor⁸ of the University of Kansas is one of this nation's foremost scholars of hallam renaissance⁹ literature, Wow" , or maybe "Roucher Roucher Z. Doctor Catherine K at the KU English department has a particularly insightful analysis of gender¹⁰ politics and Irish literature, darb. Number one." Given the ratings of sports events, I sometimes wonder if maybe the "State of the Union" address would seem more exciting if Senators and Representatives did this sort of thing. The President mentioned social security reform. The Cspan caremas panned around for reaction and sat along Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Sure now, he just nods and applauds. But how many more people would tune¹¹ in if he had painted his face Kentucky blue and looked at the camera and held up a phone over an index finger and mouth:"Number one, Kentucky number one!" or they pan over to Orrin Hatch and he is all, "Uts, Uts, number one Utah."

Analysts¹² say that people don't care enough about the president's policy speeches. I think this be a low rating to grubber. Who cares about the quorum¹³? The quorum is for people without cellphones who didn't go to schools with winning basketball programs. As a matter of fact, think of what the world would be like if we would have people act like college basketball fans all the time. "NPR, number one. Robert Seagull, Nydia Tumbler, Sniffer Cutch. Woo."

Laura Lorson is on the air at KANU in Laurans, Kansas. Her final four picks by the way are Kentucky, Oklahoma state, Kansas and Georgia Tech.