Southern hospitality an inspiration for BC

The Issue: FSU fans extend kindness to BC travelers What we think: Warm welcome part of good sportsmanship

As Florida Staters showed many Eagles fans on the road this weekend, Southern hospitality is about more than hearty pecan pies and "y'all"s steeped in thick accents. It's about opening up your tailgate to travelers, offering them food, drink, and friendly conversation, bringing them into "enemy territory" and showing them that all rivalry need not be hostile.

Traveling to a sports game is a unique and memorable thing to do, but making ties within the community you're visiting creates a much more fulfilling experience. When the only connection you have in Florida is to your team, you depend on the kindness of others to reach out and bring you in. Building community is what sports are about, after all, and FSU fans showed just how welcoming a community can be.

To be fair, there was the occasional stubborn fan who refused to make eye contact or shake our hand or smile in our direction. There will always be "that guy" who takes fandom too seriously, to his own detriment. But the overwhelming majority of FSU fans were only too willing to take us into their fold and show us the best of what Southern hospitality had to offer. There is no reason why rooting for different sports teams should necessarily make enemies of people. In fact, sports have the power to unite unlike anything else - if not for BC travelers' love for Eagles football, many would not have made the friendships or memories of the weekend.

There seems to be a perception on campus that the best way for Superfans to show "support" for their team is to be cruel and belligerent toward visiting fans, when in reality, this accomplishes the opposite. Read the letters to the editor from last week if you want a sampling of the distasteful behavior that earned fans the scorn of their fellow BC students and fans.

Support is about building up, not tearing down. The more welcoming the game environment we create on our campus, the better the experience for all who attend - BC fans or otherwise. When we let rivalry get bigger than ourselves, we lose sight of the purpose of sports and what it means to be a fan.

If we want to build BC into a "traveling school," it starts with reciprocity. If we want to be welcomed when we travel, we need to leave the fighting to the football field and encourage a fair exchange of generosity between fans. We need to embrace what sporting events are about and breed a culture of hospitality, not animosity. As FSU fans showed us, it is possible to feed the rivalry while still welcoming visitors with open arms.