West Virginia fans show why we should ease up

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It didn’t take long for the chants to start.

Just a few minutes into… MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It didn’t take long for the chants to start.

Just a few minutes into last night’s game at West Virginia, the Mountaineers’ student section got a little too personal.

As Levance Fields dribbled down the court and looked for his next move, the crowd’s chants became evident.

“Taser, taser,” they screamed.

They were referencing the night of Sept. 15, 2007, when Fields was arrested and tasered by a police officer outside a nightclub in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.

Some things simply don’t need to be said.

Without question, the sport of college basketball is a great one.

Win or lose, no other sport has fans so intense and involved with their teams. At the same time, no other sport has fans so disrespectful and vulgar.

It’s not just from fans of West Virginia, but of fans from almost all schools.

All over the country, fans are guilty of taking heckling one step too far. Because of how much people care about their teams, there are instances when a fan rooting for his team can get out of hand.

There’s no doubt that this was one of those instances.

Fields had to deal with the unsportsmanlike chants nearly every time he touched the ball.

But he handled it well. He didn’t yell back or get flustered. He didn’t talk trash or give up.

The chanting and pointing didn’t stop, but neither did his hustle or effort.

Instead, Fields played with the pride he’s always had – the pride he brought from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh and has played with his entire career.

He scored a team-high 15 points in 36 minutes.

Despite the loss, Fields played like a man.

But on this particular night – senior night for the Mountaineers at The Coliseum – Fields and Pitt just didn’t have enough in the tank to pull out the win.

The Panthers never found a way to stop West Virginia forward Joe Alexander, who erupted for 32 points.

They also couldn’t find a way to stop the referees’ whistles, which were blown an astounding 45 times for fouls.

While the refs did call the game both ways, Pitt just couldn’t get in a rhythm with the constant ringing in its ears.

Still, the whistles weren’t the worst thing the players had ringing in their ears.

After the game, Fields said that no crowd has ever changed the way he plays the game.

“No effect,” he said, shaking his head.

“The crowd is never a problem.”

But whether or not it was a problem for Fields last night, the crowd’s lack of respect was a slap in the face to the game of college basketball.

What fans need to understand is that they can give their teams a boost while still having respect for the players and for the games they’re watching.

And when the West Virginia fans weren’t attacking Fields, they did a great job of that. They were as loud and as deafening as ever, just, at times, in the wrong way.

People sometimes forget the pressures to which student athletes are exposed.

They’re put under a microscope so intense that nearly every move they make is documented and reported. Every mistake – nearly every move they make – is run on the bottom-line of ESPN or talked about in the papers.

With the expansion of the media these days, those things are inevitable.

And in college environments where these students have to deal with pressure socially, in the classroom and on the court, it’s sometimes hard to stay out of trouble.

It’s not to say that Fields’ incident should be completely forgotten.

It was a problem that he and the team dealt with internally, and then they moved on.

Maybe some fans just need to put themselves in a similar situation and have some more class when rooting for their teams or rooting against their rivals.

They might say that they’re just having fun, and that it’s just a game. But there’s more on the court than that.

No matter how intense the rivalry might be, there are real students and real people out there on the court – just like the ones in the crowd.