Last week, I was called out by Laker Spirit Club, or as I will refer to them “Laker Show-up Club,” because that’s all they want: attendance. Now I will respond fully.

I said that the “blackout” LSC put on was stupid, because black is not a school color. Better yet, one of Clarkson’s colors are black, making the whole thing counterproductive.

I was later told that there was a blackout because 200 black shirts were just sitting around. I responded saying that it made me feel better about the blackout, and worse about wasteful spending. But that’s another column for another day.

Attendance is irrelevant. Participation is key. I would rather have 10 people who cheer, as we did with Jeff Cagle, Steve “Kirby” Faber and John “Chippy” Lorenz just three years ago, than 1,000 people who sit around, talk amongst themselves and text the entire time.

Showing up means nothing if you don’t make any more noise than a golf clap.

Our most involved crowd this season was the crowd against Niagara on Saturday, Jan. 30. Less than 15 percent of that crowd was students.

T-shirts do not encourage people to make noise. It’s Laker SPIRIT Club, not Laker Show-up Club. Being a body in the bleachers does not mean spirit.

In fact, I seem to recall LSC members telling students to quiet down because they were “too rowdy.”

Meanwhile, all of the reactions to my column fell into two categories: “It’s irrelevant” or “You’re right.”

As for being called a hypocrite, which thoroughly incensed me, I could not even find any announcements of when LSC meetings are. They might be “open” in the pure definition, but I have serious doubts that they are in practice.

On top of that, I have pointed out the problems of quiet crowds on a weekly basis on both JazzFM-WMCE and LakerTV, and have tried so hard to get the crowd going that I’ve been threatened with being fired on two separate occasions.

But no, that means that I don’t care about Mercyhurst, which is exactly what Laker Show-up Club is saying. Never mind the two articles I’ve already written concerning crowd participation and corporate logos on school jerseys. As for participation, never mind that I announce every hockey game I can for Mercyhurst on radio and television, trying to get the word out about our teams.
I gave some constructive criticism. I said that we should push our fight song, that we should create cheer cards to be handed out.

I have said time and time again that we need to push for CROWD PARTICIPATION, but I’m just a hypocrite.

LSC has their priorities completely out of order and should think about how to get the students involved instead of doing damage control on their image.