As a longtime season ticket holder to University of Oregon men’s basketball, I was naturally in attendance at the UO-UCLA game on Thursday, Jan. 24. I must say that I was appalled by the lack of creativity shown by the Pit Crew at the game.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with harassing the opposing team, and in particular Kevin Love, the local boy who went out of state to play his basketball. Students at Mac Court have been doing that kind of thing for nearly a century.
As a student at the University in the early 1970s, I was a member of the Pit Crew before that moniker existed. I’m not sure what we were called, though “Kamikaze Krazies” comes to mind. I do know that we were described as “deranged idiots” by UCLA basketball coach Gene Bartow. We teased Richard Washington, the Benson High School product, incessantly for his traitorous act of attending school in Los Angeles.
My disappointment is based in the lack of innovation shown by the Pit Crew. Come on people, you are supposed to be college students, not a bunch of transients yelling out slurs and epithets at passers-by on the street.
My advice to the Pit Crew is to use their education. Be more creative.
John Mitchell
Eugene