Sports Illustrated made the same point in last week's issue. Prominently displayed in both stories were accounts of the vile treatment heaped on UCLA's Kevin Love and his family by the student section at Oregon, and similar actions by Illinois fans when Indiana's Eric Gordon played there.
In both stories, this state's flagship campus was referenced, another reminder of the lousy national reputation it has earned in a very short frame of time. It's a reputation UMBC isn't interested in having.
In fairness, though, Steel did not use Comcast Center as an example of what not to do, and he praised Maryland for exemplifying how great sports teams can raise the academic profile of a school.
"I saw how the [grade-point averages] and test scores and entrance standards rose when they started competing for the national championship," said Steel, who tended bar near campus during a hiatus from college before re-entering this year.
Under president Freeman Hrabowski III, UMBC has strived to raise the bar of success for its athletic programs while maintaining the high academic standards. Now that it is happening, Hrabowski said yesterday, keeping the school's public image clean as the spotlight on it grows -- going national if the Retrievers earn the conference's automatic NCAA tournament berth -- is an additional challenge.
But, he said, the students themselves met it. "The students were the ones who were saying, `How should we support the team and support the university, and what is our responsibility as representatives of the university,' " Hrabowski said.
"From my perspective, it's students using their education and applying it to their support of the basketball team."
It kind of sounds like what colleges, and college sports, are all about.
And like what other colleges ought to consider enforcing. If they don't think that acting like well-educated adults in public "sucks."
david.steele@baltsun.com
Listen to David Steele on Tuesdays at 9 a.m. on WNST (1570 AM).
