I hate to sound like John Rocker on a New York subway, but I amdisgruntled.

San Diego State, you suck as sports fans. No offense.

Mypurpose in writing this column is not to piss off the general studentpopulation, but rather to light a fire under the collective ass ofthis campus.

For the last month or so, the mascot debate has taken up themajority of the headlines here at SDSU. It sure was nice to see allthe students come together and save the Aztec mascot. Gee golly, whata generous show of enthusiasm.

Please.

It appears the 95 percent of you who want to keep the mascot aliveare hiding when it comes to supporting our teams. Think of it as agive-and-take love relationship. You get to keep the mascot, now goout and support it.

Let me take you back to a sad day in Aztecville.

The date was Sept. 15, and I was covering a game between our men’ssoccer team and St. Mary’s College. The game had ended with theAztecs suffering a close 1-0 loss, and I wandered over to theplayer’s area to gather my interviews.

Then, something happened that confused me.

Cheering, and lots of it, came from the fans gathered on theopposite sideline. Wait, hadn’t the Aztecs just lost, I thought? Wereour fans showing their appreciation for a hard-fought battle?

My disappointment surfaced as I realized the fans were cheeringfor the visiting team. Our soccer team had just suffered aheart-breaking loss, and was now having salt thrown into its wounds.You see, St. Mary’s is near San Francisco, and has a studentpopulation of 4,000.

So how in God’s name would they have more fans present at one ofour home games?

When the Sept. 9 game against Illinois rolled around, I was stokedthat our football team would get to butt heads with a team from theBig-10. I had a good feeling the Aztecs could come away with anupset.

The student body that was consuming mass quantities of beer in theparking lot couldn’t have cared less. It’s too bad the number ofpeople who remained in the parking lot may have outnumbered those whoactually decided to go into the stadium.

Even though Illinois thoroughly whipped our football team, I willnever forget how humiliated I felt. The degenerate Illinois fans, whotraveled all the way out to San Diego to watch the game, tauntedSDSU.

Sad.

Could you imagine if the excitement shown during the pregameboozing actually trickled into Qualcomm? What if you, SDSU -one of the best party schools in the country – supported oursports teams like you do our party scene?

Ever heard of the 12th man in football? Or how about the 6th manin basketball? They don’t coin these phrases to represent a player;it’s to represent the fans. You’d be surprised what a drastic effectfans have on a team’s morale. Ask any athlete.

SDSU, your chance to prove yourself as fans of this university iscoming up.

Our men’s basketball team is 2-0, and has made huge improvementssince last season. Our baseball team’s recruiting class has beenranked No. 5 in the nation.

“Whoopee,” you say to yourself.

I say, damn you under enthusiastic, under appreciative pessimists.Let’s pack Cox Arena, Tony Gwynn Stadium and all the other facilitiesall season long.

Let’s show the same pride for our sports teams we showed for ourmascot. Scream, taunt, holler, stomp, clap – just don’t sit onyour ass.

Nick is a journalism junior and staff writer for The Daily Aztec.He can be reached at thenextdon23@hotmail.com.