Pomona is a pretty nice place, but I gotta say, sports fans here suck. There were more people watching the Michigan-Notre Dame game than there were watching our football team go 7-1 on their way to their best record in God knows how many years. I’ve been to a bunch of sporting events here in hopes of getting excited about some good action, which the athletes always provide, but it’s real hard to show your excitement as one of a group of only a few folks who happened to go to the game before dinner to cheer for their roommate or friend. What this student body lacks is a general appreciation for sport: the thing the Greeks used to measure a man’s worth.

I went around campus this week talking to people about this lack of school spirit in hopes of discovering what about Pomona-Pitzer sports is less than exciting to the average, run-of-the-mill non-athlete. Here’s what I found out:

Joseph Koch With the exception of the homecoming crowd that came out to support the Sagehen Football Team, the sidelines for many games have been empty.

Well, for those of you who are curious, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, a sagehen (saj hen) is a chickenlike bird (Centrocercus urophasianus) of western North America, having long, pointed tail feathers that can be spread like a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ragging on Cecil. The guy’s got spunk. But you know what I’m reminded of? A movie where the president of a college changed the school’s mascot to the whooping crane — the movie? PCU. Wait a sec… PCU? Pomona College? Is there a connection? Perhaps, but plenty of other colleges with even more ridiculous mascots than a chickenlike bird with pointed tail feathers drum up support by the thousands on a weekly basis. Hell, UNC has the Tar Heels. Purdue has the Boilermakers. Nebraska has the Cornhuskers. ‘Nuff said. It could be worse than a Sagehen.

I want to contribute a third way in which Pomona-Pitzer fans need improvement. If you go to South Bend, you’ll know it because of all the Notre Dame signs. Go to Ann Arbor, and you’ll find little boys playing tackle football at the park in their Wolverine t-shirts. Step into the village of Claremont, and guess what you will detect not a single trace of a college town. There is no town surrounding us to support sports here. There could be, but it would have to begin with making connections between the colleges and the town of Claremont. Honestly, I’m not sure how to go about this business of making connections. I walk through the village and see a bunch of stuffy, retired folks with their antique shops and their Cadillacs and Continentals, and I think, sweet Jesus, this is hopeless. But just the other day I saw something which gave me a glimmer of hope. A bunch of local kids were playing basketball on the courts behind Wig. There is a younger generation of Claremont citizens with an appreciation for sports. Maybe we should have a homecoming parade through town. It might be lame for a few years, but over time it could drum up support for our teams. I have to believe that a town that was able to produce Mark McGwire could produce fans who can cheer as hard as Big Mac nails the baseball.