Stop wasting your time, start supporting soccer

Let me just start by saying I really hoped it wouldn't come down to this. Although the thought has been in the back of my mind for months, I truly hoped I wouldn't have to write this column. \nWith that said, here it goes...\nStudents of dear old IU... what the heck are you thinking?\nYes, I'm calling you all out. Calling you out for being sheep, for falling for the same trap you have stumbled into every fall. Every year you throw away five to seven Saturday afternoons and $90 dollars in tickets that could be much better spent, foolishly following our Hoosiers into college football hell. And every year you ignore what has been the school's most successful athletic program -- you guessed it, the men's soccer team.\nI'm sure you're thinking, "What's with the anger?" Well, after watching Saturday's legendary debacle fall at the hands of Michigan, I finally hit the breaking point. \nMaybe my logic is a little off. Maybe I've been raised wrong. Maybe I'm drunk. Perhaps all three. But I just cannot understand why the students on this campus will blindly support a football team that has done nothing but dish out plate after plate of heartbreak and defeat to its loyal fans. \nMeanwhile, across Fee Lane at Bill Armstrong Stadium, the men's soccer team keeps on doing what it has always done -- winning. And the team is winning in front of, what I consider, modest crowds. \nWhen you add in Sunday's figures, the average attendance for a men's soccer game is 2,020. Sure, every other school in the country would die to have an attendance figure of more than 2,000 for the entire soccer season, let alone each game. \nStill, I believe it is not enough. I believe you've let your school's best team down. \nSure, you'll go waste three hours to watch the football team blow another fourth quarter lead, but you won't watch the soccer team clinch its fifth consecutive conference title (on a downright beautiful fall afternoon, no less).\nYou say you support the football team when in reality you're cheering for Antwaan and his merry misfits. Meanwhile, you shun a team featuring three candidates for national player of the year awards.\nEach week you hope to whatever god above that maybe, just once, our secondary can actually hit a guy, or stay with the deep receiver, or do anything resembling defense. And all season you've stayed away from a team that has won the only team national championships the school has seen in the past decade.\nThis campus has one of the most successful dynasties in collegiate sports history right under its collective nose, and it doesn't even know it. And if it knows it, it surely doesn't appreciate it. It sickens me, and I have had enough. \nI have seen you, the loyal students, at football games for five sad years now. I have seen you looking for a winner you can get behind. Let's face it: Every time the football team wins you feel the need to rip the goalposts down, simply because you don't know when you'll have a chance to do it again.\nI have heard the constant complaining about how we can't get people to fill Memorial Stadium, about how we can't even come close to it. Let's get real folks -- that's a pipe dream. It will happen, but not until Purdue brings their masses of real fans down here next year, probably looking to polish their offense before yet another bowl game.\nWell I say screw that. It's time we start worry about filling up the 5,000 seats of Bill Armstrong Stadium instead. Unfortunately, it's damn near too late -- the last game of the regular season was Sunday. But thanks to the post-season (yes football fans, there is such a thing) you still have a chance to support the real "IU Futbol." \nMark your calendars, folks -- Nov. 19 is the first round of the NCAA tournament. The way this year's squad is playing, it wouldn't be a bad idea to mark the next two Sundays as well. By then our football team should be nothing more than a distant, disappointing memory. \nLet's wake up and smell the fertilizer they're using to help the sod grow at Memorial Stadium, folks. It's not that hard, just think about it: Do you want success or mediocrity? I made my choice. \nWhile you all were watching any hope of a bowl game go up in smoke, I was watching the soccer team stretch its conference unbeaten streak to 37 games while clinching the top seed for the Big Ten tournament. \nMaybe it's just me, but the choice seems simple. I beg you, IU. Wake up.