Football coach quits, pandemonium reigns... wait, what?

Mob Action on campus, 01/12/10, originally uploaded by Wyoming_Jackrabbit.

Not to give too much away about my location, but this was the scene at my campus last night a couple of hours after the announcement that my college's football coach was high-tailing it out of the South to take a cushy job at his old college and he was taking his entire staff (and probably most of their recruits) with him. Wait, what?

The bad news is that several hundred undergraduates took to the streets to burn their football T-shirts, some dorm furniture and a really smelly mattress. All told, I think a couple thousand students were involved at some point or another. And one girl got whacked upside the head with a thrown traffic cone-- one of the really big, heavy ones, so I'm pretty sure she has a concussion.

The good news is that apparently the kids on my campus don't really have the meanness in them (or the liquor, not sure which) to foment a full-fledged riot; mostly they just meandered around campus in flash-rave style, knocking down traffic cones and yelling football slogans. The only actual damage I saw on campus this morning was a cockeyed bus kiosk, and that's pretty fixable.

But, seriously-- I take loyalty and dedication as seriously as the next person, but what the hell are people doing initiating a full-fledged police emergency response over a guy quitting his job early and weaseling out of his contract? He sure as heck doesn't care about our college enough to stick around, so I'm pretty sure that all this didn't bother him any.

Maybe it's because I came from a state that, until recently, had one of the worst NCAA football teams in the nation so I don't understand getting that riled up about sports. But these are my students, for crying out loud-- and seeing them do something like this firsthand is just a wee bit disturbing, to be honest. I recognized a few faces in this crowd as students I have worked with as freshmen.

Yeeowch. Would somebody please give me a shot of common sense and reason? Or is that asking too much of American football fans?