Mike Waters, one of the caretakers of the Syracuse.com basketball blog, had some discussions over the supposed chants coming from the student section during last week's Cuse-UConn game. Specifically, chants directed at Paul Harris. Apparently the Harris chants revolved around his drug-related arrest from five years ago and colorfully included crack, cocaine and variations there-in.One reader noted the hypocrisy since UConn has a few guys on its time (coughcoughAJPricecoughcough) who are easy cannon fodder themselves. Mike tries to take the high road and hope that Cuse fans don't follow suit (more on that in a minute).
But its this (assumed) UConn student's email that really says all that needs to be said:
I think UConn fans should shout whatever they want at this kid, as a matter of fact, I was one of them.
Comparing AJ Price, who stole some laptops, to Paul Harris, who sold crack and beat up his girlfriend, is a weak analogy. They are both criminals, but I give the edge to Paul Harris here.
Also, most of the UConn fans don't even like AJ Price. A lot of students wanted him and Williams kicked off the team last year, and this year, we'd rather have other players start in his place, just because there are better basketball players.
So print this in your ugly orange blog
Jeffrey Kittens
Waters responds by saying Harris never sold crack, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time (I don't know much about it myself but I'll go with that). But I applaud Mr. Kittens (who I assume is the cutest-wutest-wittle-heckler around) for his stick-to-his-gun-ed-ness.
As a former member of the Syracuse student section, I'm not going to berate UConn fans for being uncoothe. We used to tell Khalid El-Amin he was a fat-ass, we would rain down boos and excessively negative chants on players who had been arrested and we even got Troy Murphy so mad that he gave us the finger during the game (Where was YouTube in 1999 when you needed it?).
Say what you will about how classy it is, its just part of the college sports experience. You can take the high road if you like, but if I were still at Syracuse I'd probably be down at the Schine Center right now making 1,000 photocopies of a laptop image to distribute at the UConn game.
(Ed. Note - Kittens has since kome klean)