Put Troy first

Attending sports games makes a real difference

Seeing Auburn or Alabama merch on campus is a common occurrence, but maybe it shouldn’t be that common.

We go to school at Troy, and that means supporting Troy Athletics, no matter who you grew up rooting for.

One of the most baffling things to me is when students will skip Troy football games to watch Auburn or Alabama play. There’s no reason to pass up the opportunity to watch Troy face JMU to watch Auburn play Samford.

Although nothing is wrong with remaining a casual fan of your team, the issue starts when that becomes more important than supporting the Trojans. If the students don’t take athletics here seriously, there aren’t a ton of other people that will.

You lose the right to complain about a bad atmosphere at games if you’ve been skipping games to watch other teams. It creates a loop of apathy surrounding the sports here.

The past few weeks have highlighted this issue. Troy women’s basketball made an exciting WNIT run, playing host three games at Trojan Arena.

For the first two games, what should have been a rowdy crowd excited for postseason basketball was a ghost town. I was one of three students in the student section for the Great Eight matchup against ULM.

While people did show up for the Fab Four game, it shouldn’t have taken that long of a run and free Chick-fil-A to entice students to show up.

Alabama and Auburn having overlapping games wasn’t the problem here – however, the lack of respect for the women’s basketball team was shocking to me. March Madness is great and all, but I care a whole lot less if Troy isn’t in it.

I cared 100 times more about Troy’s WNIT run than I did about March Madness this year, and it’s frustrating to see other people dismiss some great accomplishments because Alabama is making a run.

It’s not like Troy Athletics have been bad. The football program has won two straight conference titles, women’s basketball made the aforementioned postseason run, baseball is coming off an NCAA regional appearance and men’s tennis is nationally ranked, just to name a few.

Troy should come first. This is the place where you go to school and share classes with the student-athletes that make Troy Athletics run.