Athletics keystone of St. John Fisher College

I was thinking about writing another edition of weird sports that we should add to the Fisher athletics program. Last year, I made the proposal to create cricket, elephant polo, and Russian roulette teams . . . and no one ever got back to me on it.

Oh well.

I thought they would be exciting at least.

This got me to thinking though, what would happen had no one responded to the initial requests of basic sports at Fisher? You know, the first time a really tall kid brought up the idea of creating a basketball team? Or, the first time a kid who could throw a ball really far brought up the idea of creating a football team?

Actually to answer that last question, just see Nazareth. Or RIT. Go Tigers football! It’s grrrr-eat!

Anyways, just try to imagine this campus without any sports teams. What would Fisher be like without the athletic aesthetic?

Well, alumni and family weekends would be kind of strange without the football team to watch. What would the slew of visitors do in lieu of this activity? Hmmm . . . well . . . Fisher doesn’t have much going on on-campus does it? I guess everyone could hang out in the campus center . . . and . . . well . . . yeah, there’s not much there either. I guess alumni and family weekends would be just a little bit pathetic without the football team, huh? I pretty sure my family wouldn’t want to hang out in the campus center and watch COP work through the windows. Boring.

How about that rivalry with Nazareth College? Could we still hold onto that without athletics? Maybe we could start up a math league or something. Does anyone know if mathletes fight each other? I’d hate to be the security officer assigned to the multiplication matches.

“Daddy, what do you do for your job?” little Bobby would ask his father.

“Well son, your father works security at the Math Olympics,” the father would say. “It’s my job to make sure the fans don’t get into fights. You know son, there’s a lot excitement at those math matches – without me there, who knows, fans might get out of control and start throwing abacuses or something.

Little Bobby would look up at his father now. “Daddy? Am I adopted?”

Okay, so the idea of taking athletics out of the Fisher-Nazareth, ahem, equation would leave us with little to fight about. I mean, there really isn’t much to fight about when everyone already knows that Fisher is the superior institution.

So without athletics here at Fisher, we’ve so far checked off any excitement on alumni and family weekends and kicked the Fisher-Naz rivalry to the curb. What else could we examine?

How about the use of the space that the athletics facility now takes up? Imagine if the strip of land between the old Fishbowl up to I-490 was empty. Short of building a landing strip – Fisher International Airport anyone? – what could we use that area for?

Well, what could Fisher use? What are we missing? And you can’t say a pool or ice rink since that defies the purpose of this exercise. Hmmm . . .

I know. This is the answer to the biggest problem on this campus right now – besides the ladybugs that have invades my room, that is – a parking garage. We could use that space to put up a massive, leviathan of parking garage.

Only one problem. Without athletics on campus, without teams and players to rally around, we wouldn’t need to house all those cars. Why? No one would stick around if we didn’t have the athletics that we do.

Yeah, Fisher might not be perfect when it comes to athletics. Some of our facilities might be a little outdated or over-packed. We have teams that lose. We don’t have a pool or a track or an ice rink. But we’re doing pretty well.

Now how about that elephant polo team?

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 6-Issue 4; November 1, 2006)

Slim Gyms

Our gym is small. Way too small. How many of you saw the recent Naz game? Good for you if you did. I wasn’t able to get in. I forgot that because of our gymnasium’s capacity, you basically have to start camping out the night before a big game if you want a chance to get in. And we shouldn’t have to do that. This isn’t American Idol.

Now, I’ve researched 25 colleges and crunched some numbers to figure out how our problem compares to other colleges, both local and from around the country. If you don’t want to read a bunch of numbers, then this might be the time for you to read something else. Check out the Papa John’s ad (Papa John’s, please note this mention – send free pizza).

To illustrate the fact that our gym is too small, I’ve created the Student to Seating Ratio Index. The SSRI represents the number of seats a school has at their basketball venue compared to the student enrollment at that school. Basically, it’s students vs. the number of seats available. Here’s what I’ve got. The home of our basketball team, Manning & Napier Varsity Gymnasium, has a capacity of 1,200. The college itself has an enrollment of 2,075 which gives Fisher a SSRI of .58. For every one student here at Fisher, there’s .58 of a seat waiting for them at the gym. Find a buddy, since you’re sharing a seat.

Now let’s take our rival, Nazareth College. Enrollment of 1,800 and a gym capacity of 1,200 equals a SSRI rating of .67. Better than Fisher. Hear that, administration, Naz is better than Fisher at something.

On a bigger scale, look at Duke University. For a school of 6,500, they can pack 9,314 Cameron Crazies into a basketball game. That leads to a SSRI of 1.43. Almost one-and-a-half seats per student. Bring Star Jones to a game and she’ll be comfortable.

And the prize for best SSRI? Out of all the schools surveyed, Syracuse University is our champion. With 18,247 students and a basketball capacity of 33,000 at the Carrier Dome, ‘Cuse brings a 1.81 SSRI to the table. That’s almost two students per seat. Now Star Jones can bring her husband.

So what am I trying to say here? Ah, that’s right. We’ve fallen behind when it comes to taking care of our fans here at Fisher. And that’s a problem. We’re a school that prides itself on our athletic prowess yet those in charge have let this problem continue on. Let’s fix it. Let’s build a gymnasium that has a capacity bigger than my high school alma matter – Rush-Henrietta, SSRI of 1.11 – and welcome all of our students to basketball games, not just the ones who brought their sleeping bags. You have to admit that the current situation is like saying you want to be a fire truck when you grow up - it doesn't make sense.

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 5-Issue 8; February 8, 2006)

Add new sports

As the semester comes to a close, I’ve got a couple of suggestions for the upcoming year’s athletics. No, no, not the mascot again. I said what I had to say about that. And I regret none of it. None of it.

As many of you have probably realized by now, we have a lot of sports teams here at Fisher. That’s great and all but they’re very traditional sports. Football, basketball – yeah, I’m pretty sure I can catch all of those on TV. So, here are some new sports that the athletic program should consider for the 2006 season.

• Cricket: I’ll admit that I have no idea how cricket is actually played. There’s a ball (of that, I’m almost certain), wickets and bats. I think it’s kind of like baseball. Not completely sure but it’s probably close enough. I bet the baseball team could help us out on this one. Just think of the boost in enrollment when we start recruiting all the top cricket players from area high schools. Since there really aren’t many other cricket teams in the Empire 8, we’d be on the fast track toward an E8 cricket championship. Take that, Naz.

• Elephant Polo: The biggest challenge to starting an elephant polo team would be getting the elephants. I checked the Dick’s Sporting Goods ads for this last weekend and they don’t have any elephant sales going on. Once we clear that hurdle – the Seneca Park Zoo is supposed to be birthing some more elephants, maybe they’d loan them out on the weekends – I think the elephant polo team’ll take right off. It should be quite popular. Everyone likes elephants. With the exception of the evil ringleader from Dumbo. He wasn’t very nice.

• Russian Roulette: This might be the hardest one to get off the ground. Recruiting might be difficult, finding people to play against might be difficult, getting school approval might be difficult, getting legal approval might be difficult. It’ll be a challenge. But isn’t that what athletics are all about? Overcoming a challenge. I’m pretty sure I remember that from those posters they use to have on the walls back in elementary school gym class. There’s one key benefit to having a Russian roulette team: unlike other sports, if we suck at this one, it won’t be around very long.

What’s that you say? These aren’t real sports? Listen, if we can consider cheerleading a sport . . .

- Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 5-Issue 6; December 7, 2005)