Seats 1 through 6 in section 106, row 1 of the McCarthey Athletic Center are dedicated to the founders of the Kennel Club, the veritable Gonzaga institution meant to spark support for the basketball team.
It is fortunate that those six men are long gone and graduated, because it would be a terrible shame for them to see what their club has devolved into.
The Kennel Club had developed a stigma over the past several years. Once known as the social group that inspired some of the best team spirit in the nation, it seems the group's most accurate description now is the resident "frat house" at basketball games.
It started innocently enough, as the chants at basketball games got a little raunchier here and there, but you could forgive that as simply a bunch of fans trying to maintain the homecourt edge. But they soon got worse. The "Brokeback Mountain" and "you, you, you (rhymes with witch)" chants being the obvious examples.
Since then, the entire mindset - and subsequently the identity - of the Kennel Club has changed. At basketball games, the Kennel is nothing more than a haven for drunken men to scream obscenities and for women to wear revealing clothes and grind to hip-hop. Slowly, this faction took over the Kennel, with those who were serious about supporting the team being pushed to the minority. This was most evident last year; suddenly the cheering become more intermittent, the support less enthusiastic, the motor skills a little more impaired.
You got the feeling that many in that group didn't have cheering as their top priority. Rather, the basketball game was merely a distraction, something to take drunken pictures at before blacking out and forgetting about it by the next day. It's a bad sign when the home crowd is struggling like Joe Namath to spit out a sentence.
The Kennel board saw all of this happening, and only watched as this perception spread from the stands to the campus.
At one point, the Bulldogs could have boasted that they had the nation's best fans, with enthusiasm so big that opposing teams would shiver. Then, when the team hit a rough patch last year, what little threads of total enthusiasm that were left gave way to this group of inebriated undergrads. In turn, this eliminated the Kennel's uniqueness, as their ascension to the forefront of the Kennel made Gonzaga's fans look no more special than any other college fans.
With all of this going on right underneath their noses, how can the Kennel board be proud of this?
As the ones in charge of fan support, it is their responsibility to maintain the image of Gonzaga's fans. Last year especially, when the erosion became more obvious, they could have done something about it. They could have set an example or made a statement, something to show that Gonzaga fans were special.
Instead, they sold key chains for house parties.
So much for fixing the image, boys.
The new leaders of this year's Kennel Club are now presented with a unique opportunity: They have the power to change things. Will they continue to head down the current path, where parties and profanity currently define the Kennel Club, or will they realize what made the Kennel Club so important in the first place, the identity it gives to Gonzaga basketball? In their position, this year's Kennel board has a chance to erase the stigma surrounding the group, and bring basketball back to the forefront.
The ball is in their court now, and with game time approaching on whether change can be made, you can only hope they didn't go out drinking the night before their big game.
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