Daily Emerald – The Dawg Pack Dirt — Washington’s version of the Pit Crew — is encouraging student fans at UW to taunt Ducks forward Arsalan Kazemi “in his native tongue.” Like the Pit Crew, Dawg Pack Dirt offers members of UW’s student section advice on how and why to heckle particular players. Most of the dirt is to be expected — it reminds students that E.J. Singler “is the younger brother of former Duke standout, and current Detroit Piston, Kyle Singler. His brother is hands down a better player … He needs to be reminded of this fact throughout the night.” They also make a crack at how Damyean Dotson’s name is spelled — “It is highly possible his parents were under the influence when they spelled his name; it truly is painful to look at.”
But it’s what they say about Kazemi that seems noteworthy:
“The fact is this guy is from Iran, and there is something highly intriguing and terrifying about that. Our best advice would be to not look him directly in the eye.
*Ahmadinejad is watching!
-He speaks Persian.
*Use Google, and explore the Persian language, make him feel at home with some taunts from his native tongue.”
Taunting from the students is part of the game, but this goes too far, says Pit Crew president Andrew Stephens.
“Heckling is just part of a student section,” Stephens said. “And funny pictures — the one of Fred for example — is just straight up funny. But when race gets into the picture, that’s just tiptoeing a fine line that always tips toward being too far.”
Am I racist if I don’t think this is racist? I mean it’s not like the thing says to yell TERRORIST at him or something. Like if I’m Iranian and I’m playing big time college hoops in America I’m kind of going to expect to get heckled for being Iranian. That’s just common sense. Not like anyone was using slurs or anything. But whatever I guess it’s not my place to decide what this bro finds offensive so Arsalan Kazemi if you want to drop 50 on these guys while giving everyone the DX Suck It crotch chop and setting an American flag on fire at midcourt then you gotta do what you gotta do.
I’m more interested with the existence of this PDF in general. Seriously how fucking awesome is this? Talk about dedication. Drafting up a PDF with the weekly opponent and all their background info, their Twitter handles, pictures of their girlfriends, etc? Like every detail about their personal lives in one handy heckling manual. Taking Superfan to a whole nother level. Do other schools have this?
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