To the editor:

For those of you who don’t already know, over the past two seasons there has been an unfortunate addition to Kansas University football games. Following kickoffs, the crowd at Memorial Stadium screams in profanity for the ‘Hawks to tear the head off the other team’s kick returner. If you’ve watched one of our home games on TV you can hear it over the broadcast. Is that the kind of image KU fans want to show a national audience?

What fans, who think this chant is so cool, need to think about is that you are screaming for someone to get horribly maimed. Think about that and then think about Anquan Boldin, of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, who sustained such a brutal helmet-to-helmet hit that it caused him to spew blood from his mouth and his body to seize up and convulse. I bring this up because these young men play a violent game on that field. A game that breaks bones, can paralyze, and even, in some rare instances, kill the people who play it.

So think about that the next time there is a kick off and you obscenely scream for an opponent’s head to get ripped off, and then in a flash the kick returner gets horribly injured and a national television audience watches as he lies motionless on the field. It’s what you wanted, right? No it’s not, nobody wants that. You shouldn’t wish it and you sure shouldn’t say it.

Jeremy Winfrey,
Lawrence