It is just a game. Two hoops, one basketball, ten players, and a few coaches and referees. If I were practical — which I am not — I should have little interest in the sport. Yet I and so many others gravitate toward a game and a team for reasons not understood by the average basketball layperson. Dayton basketball is indeed different. Forget the school colors and the fight song, that stuff is for factoids. The University of Dayton Flyer basketball team is rooted much deeper, anchored by a handful of commitments and loyalties that sometimes defy explanation.

Dayton basketball is tradition-rich, but it is only a piece of the puzzle. Flyer fans have a stronger relationship to the players than any other school in the country. In a strong sense, the fans and the athletes take the court together, succeeding hand-in-hand, suffering each tough defeat shoulder-to-shoulder. No other team in the country performs as well as when the UD Faithful are on their A-game. UD Arena crowds are a necessity to Flyer basketball, creating an excitement and fever pitch when there is little to get excited about. When times are good, the fans are even heartier.

As members of the Flyer family, it is our duty to support the home team. We accept it as a job, but enjoy it as a hobby. We go to the games because we must, not because we should. Who on earth would turn their back on family? We know the players like they are our own sons. They stay late to sign every autograph and hold our kids for a brief photo opportunity. Their basketball skills are not important to the little ones; to them every person in a UD uniform is a hero beyond legend. For the older fans, we appreciate the players’ integrity, their commitment in academics before athletics, their sportsmanship in the face of disappointment.

Flyer fans purchase tickets to watch things done the right way. Scared of missing a single great performance of heart and courage, we showed up even when there was good reason not to. The most trying times in Dayton basketball are when everything seems to go so right.

For a fleeting moment nothing else matters but the Red and Blue and a capacity crowd. Flyer games let us all be a kid again, wishing we were as perfect just once in our lives as they were on a given night. We call them heroes because they give us more than we ask them to give, they call us Faithful because we show up to witness it. Our job made easy, Dayton basketball is more than just a game. While wins and losses are important, being there to experience both is what defines the essence of feeling as though nothing can go too wrong in the company of friends.