U of A trying to address "Fan Behavior"

[Hawkeye101]

Having purchased tickets through the U of Arizona ticket office, I now get their weekly push email. Interesting tidbit from Greg Byrne their AD openly trying to address their poor fan behavior. Excerpts below from the email I received yesterday:

September 21, 2010

PLEASE READ THIS & SHARE WITH FELLOW WILDCATS – TIME TO STEP UP

I want to thank everyone who made last weekend a very special time for our university. There was an electricity in the stadium and at the Wildcat Walk that would match or exceed any I have seen in the SEC, Big 12, Big 10 and of course our Pac-10. Thank you for showing up in such force, giving us a tremendous foundation to build on.

There were a number of issues we evaluated at length yesterday that made us believe we needed to send this week’s message out a day early. The two major issues from Saturday that must be addressed are fan behavior and issues within ZonaZoo.

Before we get too far into this, we understand that the behavior issues arose from only a small part of the fan base.

Since Regina and I have come to Tucson we have been amazed at how wonderfully welcome everyone has made us feel. People have treated us like we have lived here our entire life and we are proud to say that we are part of the University of Arizona family.

Saturday, we saw some of our fans not be as welcoming to our visitors from Iowa. Bad language and taunting of fans is not how we want to be portrayed. We want to be known as having one of the loudest stadiums in the country, but we should also be known as having one of the classiest and most welcoming. I want to ask everyone to Step Up and encourage the people around them to represent our university in a first class manner and welcome people to our campus as we would want when we are traveling.

 

[DuffMan]

Something tells me the 4 people in the video I saw aren't going to get this message, or care. Hopefully all those silent around them get the clue.

 

[Hawk4Life25]

I know it's a buzz kill in the stadium on gameday but there should really be some sort of video taped message from Kirk or Gary Barta that airs prior to kick-off encouraging good sportsmanship. I'm not talking 60 minutes before Kick-off, I'm talking 20 minutes before kick-off when there are about 50 thousand people in the stadium.

 

[Hawke]

If they want to be known as having the classiest fans in the nation, they have a very long way to go. Having spent time in the hellhole known as Tucson I would go so far to say Mission:Impossible.

 

[PeoriaHWKI]

That was by far the worst place ever. I couldn't believe how we were treated by some but it was often. Now there were many that were pretty cool but to be swore at every 5 minutes for just walking down the street was ridiculous.

 

[doubledeez33]

yeah their fans are horrible, not classy at all. I guarantee that if we would have won the game we would have stuff thrown on us in the stands as well as our players. I'm not sure if you guys saw that when they lost to Oregon last year, even when Oregon scored a touchdown on them they threw bottles of water on their mascot and cheerleaders running the flags around. Then after the game the Oregon team got pelted with all different kinds of debris as they were walking off the field. Just ridiculous!

 

[homes]

If they want to be known as having the classiest fans in the nation, they have a very long way to go. Having spent time in the hellhole known as Tucson I would go so far to say Mission:Impossible.

I'd say that Mike Stoops is not much of a role model for them either. Former Hawk or not, he needs to turn it down below 11.

 

[AHawk1]

I think the U of I needs to address the Az fan behavior with a short note to the AD. "We are done".

 

[JPOHawk]

I know it's a buzz kill in the stadium on gameday but there should really be some sort of video taped message from Kirk or Gary Barta that airs prior to kick-off encouraging good sportsmanship. I'm not talking 60 minutes before Kick-off, I'm talking 20 minutes before kick-off when there are about 50 thousand people in the stadium.

If you would go to a warm up at Kinnick, you'll see KF do just that on the Jumbotron

 

[racerhawk]

That was by far the worst place ever. I couldn't believe how we were treated by some but it was often. Now there were many that were pretty cool but to be swore at every 5 minutes for just walking down the street was ridiculous.

This was my exact experience as well. I've been to every b10 stadium (some of them several times). B10 fans are downright gentlemenly compared to the trash talking U of A fans.

The sad part is, they were all probably in grad school there. Kidding