COLUMN: Sports need support

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by Ben Glassman

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For those of you who are new to Rice athletics, you might be wondering what's so funny.

And this year, you'd be right to wonder -- because these teams are no joke.

The golf team won its first tournament this year and its first in four years.

Meanwhile, the women's volleyball club is setting Rice records right and left. They had won 12 straight before falling in the championship game of the Kansas State Invitational when I began writing this article. On Wednesday night, the Owls travelled to College Station to aim for their first Southwest Conference win in over 40 matches.

And hey, that's good news for everyone, especially Head Coach Henry Chen and Athletic Director Bobby May.

As recently as last year, I had heard from both inside and outside sources that if the volleyball team didn't win on a consistent basis soon, Chen would be gone, and more than one person had expressed the opinion that Chen's continued presence was already reflecting badly on May.

Those people are much quieter now, I'm sure, so maybe there is something yet to be said for continuity and loyalty.

These teams' successes were only half of my epiphany, however.

The other half was my realization of their successes.

It seems that not too many people are aware that we even have a golf team, much less that this year it's a good one.

And despite the success of the volleyball team, no more than 500 people would ever show up at a game.

I'll let you in on a secret, though; volleyball is a really fun sport to watch. Check it out ...

The question of why so few people come out to a volleyball match has occasionally perplexed me.

It seems to be symptomatic of a larger dynamic.

Rice has the best college basketball teams in the fourth-largest city, yet you can walk into Autry Court five minutes after a game has started and sit five rows up, center court.

The same would be true for football if the student section seats were a little closer to midfield.

For a while, I thought that it was Rice's fault.

Perhaps a few winning seasons in a sport and some more aggressive marketing would bring out the Houstonians.

But recently I've come to another conclusion: Houston fans just stink.

If you're one of the few natives of this city who actually cheer faithfully for your team, my apologies. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the other 3.99 million people here.

What kind of a city do we live in when only 11,000 people crawl out to the Astrodome to watch the Astros, even though they're smack dab in the middle of a tight playoff race?

Admittedly, this is a wildcard race, but that's really no excuse.

I went to the last two home Oilers games, and despite the fact that they were both against AFC Central rivals, the crowd was still sparse at best.

That's pathetic, but perhaps not as sad as walking up to the ticket window at the Summit and being able to buy a ticket to a Rockets game two days in advance.

These guys were defending world champions after all! Now I see that I've gotten onto the subjects of football and basketball, which I didn't want to do this week.

I wanted to take this space to recognize the achievements of some lesser known teams, but I couldn't contain myself.

There is a lesson one can learn from this, and since an editorial is by definition a place where one can speak his or her mind, here it is: There's a reason golf and volleyball are less widely-appreciated than football.

Golf is a great game to play, and the athletes who compete for Rice have phenomenal talent, skill and dedication. But golf is not as exciting as football. It's not as interesting. It's much harder to be passionate about your favorite golf team.

I bleed black and orange for the Bengals, and my heart and soul hang in the balance every time the Rice quaterback steps up to the offensive line, surveys the defense, audibles to change the play, barks a signal and widens his eyes as the blitz comes from the right side.

You get the idea.

Clearly, it's important to cover other sports. In fact, I like them all, and if Rice does well -- or even if Rice doesn't -- I want to know about it. But that doesn't mean that all sports deserve equal time.

Crew simply does not have as much appeal to most people as does baseball.

That statement is purely qualitative, and maybe not everyone is of my opinion, but I will wager that the vast majority of all sports fans would agree with me. And no amount of editorializing is going to change that any time soon.

This item appeared in the Sports section of the September 29, 1995 issue.

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