My freshman year, a few of my friends and I went to a Doane football game. It was the first one of the year, my first college football game while in college. We put on our nauseatingly orange shirts, ran to Walmart for face paint and headed over to the field.
In the 2024-25 season opener, Doane lost. Doane lost 11-49. They would lose the season opener the next year as well. This year the other team forfeited, but as of publication, they’ve yet to win a game this season.
For most readers, this isn’t a surprise. It is kinda funny, actually, isn’t it? An open secret across campus: Our football team is bad. Our football team hasn’t won a season opener since 2022. Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) football coaches ranked it tenth out of 11 teams for this season. Bad enough that’s not even a hot-take.
So what’s my point? I work seven hours a week at the Study Desk, where student-athletes complete their required study hours. I see a lot of football players on my shifts. It occurred to me while watching them watch a film that if I dedicated several hours of my week- my time, my energy to something every person on campus would assume I was going to lose… well, that wouldn’t exactly motivate me to win.
I was talking with a friend in the Tiger Pep Band, and I realized that I know no single Doane chant besides “Merril Will Ring.” Since that freshman year football game, I haven’t been to a single one.
If everyone says the football team will lose over and over and then they lose, I think that’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy. How often do you actually go to games, or check the score, or even give the players a simple “good luck”?
I’m not saying the power of positivity and friendship is going to solve this team’s problems. But it can’t make them worse either, can it?
I miss the energy of my high school football games. Dressing up according to theme, coordinating chants and blaming the referee when our team lost. It was fun, it was energetic and even though we sucked, it wasn’t negative.
When it gets to the point where we tell people on tours that our team sucks, the jokes and the crass attitudes lose their humor. Do we really want to be the self-deprecating, constantly disappointed school? Do we want to win our homecoming game or not? Then let’s show a little school spirit now and again.
