To say that John Silber has faced some criticism during his tenure as chancellor of Boston University is like saying Michael Jordan scored a few points during his NBA career it is a bit of an understatement. In a few short months though, Silber will relinquish his chancellor’s throne, leaving behind a legacy at BU like no one else before him. Some will choose to remember him for the work he has done to establish Boston University as one of the top schools in the country, currently the fourth largest private institution in the United States.
Many will not remember John Silber so kindly though. A number of people will remember him as the man who didn’t allow us to watch SportsCenter or caused us to become all too familiar with the term ‘swipe.’
There are also a lot of people who will choose to remember John Silber as a staunch enemy of sports. Of course, this tag makes perfect sense. It was Silber who sacked the athletic department a few years ago when he cut BU’s storied football program.
Despite Silber’s actions against the football program, this label of an athletics-hater is unwarranted. For proof, just stroll down to West Campus. There you’ll find the multi-million dollar project to build a state-of-the-art arena for the basketball and hockey teams. Head a little farther down to Ashford Street, and you can see the year-old Track and Tennis Center and recently renovated softball field. Or if you happen to be taking a stroll down the river at night, just look at the bright, beautiful building that sits across from you. That’s the DeWolfe Boathouse, which opened in 1999.
So even though students and alumni alike criticize John Silber’s stance on sports, these projects show a commitment to sports teams and to the rich athletic tradition at Boston University. This is a commitment that we as a student body lack.
John Silber got rid of the football team because it was a struggling program the team was losing money year after year and failed to draw much interest from the students. Silber’s decision was more about money than it was about personal prejudice.
So, in a way, the loss of football isn’t John Silber’s fault, but that of a student body that couldn’t be bothered to support the team. To be blunt, Boston University students suck as a fan base.
BU has an enrollment of 15,305, yet home games for our Terriers routinely fail to sell out. For those of you that didn’t know, last year the BU women’s basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time in the team’s history. Care to guess how many people filled the seats of ‘The Roof,’ which has a capacity of 1,800? A Dec. 21 game against Stanford drew 889 people, the season high. And that game took place after most students had left for winter break. The average home attendance was a gaudy 396 fans per game.
In all fairness, those numbers may just reflect something that is true in our country: women’s basketball just hasn’t caught on yet.
That seems like a reasonable explanation until you look at the men’s basketball team.
Coming off a season in which the Terriers captured the America East Championship and made the NCAA Tournament, there was a bit of buzz surrounding the team. With stars like Rashad Bell, Matt Turner and Billy Collins all returning, the Terriers seemed primed for their second straight tournament berth. Fans should turn out in droves to see them, right?
Wrong. Home attendance averaged just over 1,000, and the season high came in the America East Championship game, played at ‘The Roof.’ During spring break, 1,738 rabid fans showed up to cheer the Terriers on to victory. Even in such a huge game, there were still a few empty seats to be had.
As we all know though, BU is a hockey school. So many of us live and die with each goal scored or penalty called. It may surprise you to know that Walter Brown Arena, with a capacity of 3,806, sold out only five times all of last season only once after winter break, college hockey’s home stretch. Most surprisingly, the second home game against Boston College didn’t sell out either.
We’re the fourth largest private university in the country and we couldn’t even manage to get 3,806 people into the arena to watch the Terriers play our biggest rival in our biggest sport. That is utterly pathetic.
Of course, there are still the legions of diehard Terrier fans. The fans who camp out overnight to ensure their seats in Walter Brown Arena when the Eagles invade, or the fans that never miss a basketball game. But there are simply not enough people like them.
As the Terrier athletic teams embark on a new season, it’s time for Boston University students to step up to the plate and support their teams. Enough complaining that John Silber hates sports or that we don’t have football. Instead, take advantage of the highly successful teams that we do have on campus.
And when John Silber bids his chancellorship farwell, we can all join together and thank him with a thunderous ‘sieve’ chant.
Joe Rouse, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly sports columnist for The Daily Free Press.