A modest proposal for Princeton

Given the amount of time, energy and hard work our fellow Princetonians put into their athletic competitions, it is rude for the rest of us to reward their pleas for our attendance with incessant excuses on why we can’t attend a football game or swim meet because of “that thing this weekend,” accompanied by cries like, “Jadwin is so far.”

It’s not as though this is a new problem. We’ve been bribed into attending these events with free tickets, t-shirts, food, clothing giveaways and more. Sadly, nothing yet has been strong enough to change a campus-wide apathy about our collegiate sporting events.

Luckily for Princeton, a few simple fixes can easily reshape this attitude and draw hundreds, if not thousands, of students to athletic events year-round.

Let’s start with track and field meets. Meets are stimulation-overload for the average viewer. Hundreds of athletes run, jump and throw — sometimes simultaneously. Since this simultaneous action is necessary to get everyone home on time to catch a new episode of Dexter, why not spice up the meet’s events?

The javelin throw, as it currently exists, is becoming cliché after 3,000 years. Javelins are sleek, aerodynamically designed instruments that would make an excellent measure of one’s dexterity and reflexes. A “javelin catch” event instead would be a notably decisive test of these and other abilities.

Relays could also be improved. Why pass a hollow metal tube to a teammate when you can pass an ignited stick of dynamite? Not only will you be eager to pass it off quickly, but you and your teammates will almost certainly develop a plan for an efficient, record-breaking win. In addition to appreciating the race’s efficiency, fans will certainly thrive on the suspenseful atmosphere once the relay has begun.

While the first step to improving attendance at squash matches might be distributing brightly colored maps leading to the Jadwin C-floor, a basic change to the game setup could also do wonders for spectator attendance.

The sport is already hell enough for claustrophobics, but why make it worse for spectators to see players constantly bump into one another as they essentially play tennis in a shoebox? A quick remedy to this space problem is the addition of spiked sleeves to the players’ uniforms. This provides a physical and psychological incentive to avoid running into and blocking opponents, making the experience much more endurable for a concerned spectator.

Finally, our biggest attendance problem: football. A beloved American sport shouldn’t need too much changed, so why not just heighten the challenge?

A proportionally accurate six-foot-long football will not only make it easy to mark a first down, but it will test the true strength of our student-athletes and their ability to move large objects as a team. Field goals will be infinitely more respected, and students will come out in droves to see their friends pushing an enormous pigskin toward the goal line. Additionally, elderly members of the audience will find following the game much easier from a distance.

Although I only have enough space to discuss improving a few sports in detail, many simple modifications can make a spectator’s experience exponentially better in every sport at Princeton. Why not coat our wrestlers in Vaseline? Using a medicine ball in place of a volleyball would certainly make for a memorable spike. Who says diving boards shouldn’t be designed to randomly give out from under a hesitant diver?

There are obviously a few objections to my proposal. For example, won’t this be expensive to purchase non-sustainable batons for relays, heavy armor for squash players and obscene quantities of Vaseline? I admit this might be an issue, but I’m certain that our endowment plus donations from supportive alumni would cover these minimal costs. In this case, the benefits of a heightened school spirit vastly outweigh the cost of all that Vaseline.

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While it might take a couple of conversations with the NCAA to get our modifications approved for intercollegiate play, there is no doubt that making these changes would bring a huge fraction of the student body out of their dorm rooms and the depths of Firestone to support their friends and classmates.

After all, our athletics department motto is “Education through Athletics.” What better way to educate oneself about the harsh reality of life than by incorporating it into our sports?

Emily Trost is a geosciences major from Huntingdon Valley, Penn. She can be reached at etrost@princeton.edu.