I didn’t grow up in Dayton. I went to school at UD for 4 years. I worked at WVUD and another Dayton radio station for 5 years after that. My wife and I moved away from the Miami Valley in 1978. I never attended a Gem City Jam game between the Wright State Raiders and the UD Flyers. Unlike many longtime UD fans, I don’t really have any reason to ‘hate’ WSU — given all of the above, why on earth should I?

It is from those UD fans who, unlike me, do happen to possess a deep, abiding, eternal dislike for all things Raider that I am asking for a little bit of slack and here is the reason why:

I attended the WSU/ UD-Mercy game and cheered for the Raiders.

Actually, to be more specific, I cheered for Vova Severovas of WSU, who is a friend of the Younger Swampette’s, from his HS days at Birmingham Groves.

Right after the Flyers beat Temple in a nationally televised game, before a sellout crowd of over 13,000, the YS and I jumped into the Family Truckster and headed down to Callihan Hall, home of the Titans. I had been there numerous times before, back when UD and UD were in the same conference and the Flyers made an annual trek north to the Motor City.

UD-M is an urban campus, located at Livernois and McNichols, 2 miles south of Eminem’s favorite street, Eight Mile Road. Recently, I was telling a friend (who is a die-hard Spartan fan) that the YS was seriously considering Michigan and that she found the MSU campus “big and ugly.” He was absolutely beside himself. “East Lansing ugly? How could she go there? U of M is an urban campus!” Ann Arbor is a small city that is dominated by U of M; UD-M is a campus that is surrounded by the massive city of Detroit…now, to me, that is an urban campus.

Anyway the boxscore says there were 3,188 people there. I don’t theenk so, Cisco. Maybe more like 1,188 and according to Marc Katz of the DDN, 200 of them were there to root on WSU’s Deshaun Wood from Detroit Crockett HS and another 150 were there, like me, to watch Vova. Only problem was, there wasn’t all that much of Vova to see — he lost his starting job to redshirt freshman Drew Burleson, who had a great game. Vova played only 13 minutes and was relegated to setting screens for the guards and playing defense against the much bigger Titan frontliners. That didn’t stop the Groves’ students and parents in attendance from cheering every time ‘V’ entered the game, got a rebound, touched the ball, etc.

In the first half, WSU had a serious case of “Flyer Disease” as they couldn’t hit their shots, were unable to defend and were lucky to only be down by 8 at intermission. Then, just like our boys in Red and Blue, the Raiders came out and looked like a totally different team, executing all the things they couldn’t do in the first 20 minutes. Vova was on the floor when the comeback was taking place and although he didn’t score, his hustle, defense, and rebounding helped secure the victory. The Raiders ended up winning a very entertaining game, 67-61, much to the delight of the 150 adopted WSU faithful. The way I look at it, I wasn’t so much rooting for WSU as I was for ‘Vova U.’

Having just witnessed the Temple/UD tilt on TV, the tangible difference in atmosphere between UD Arena and Callihan was so apparent that even Stevie Wonder could see it:

— The UD-M version of the Red Scare was about 15 or 20 guys sitting on the sideline opposite the teams’ benches. They chanted “Wood, Wood, Wood” each time that WSU’s Deshaun touched the ball and didn’t stop until he gave it up. Same with a kid named Koch, pronounced “Cock.” To quote Beavis and Butthead “Hee, hee…he said Wood.”

— The Pep Band basically sat in the stands, never took the floor and didn’t have anyone with anything approaching the zeal of Dr. Willie in charge.

— The Titan cheerleaders share a propensity for tossing young women in the air in random fashion with their Flyer cousins…thank God my daughters never took up cheering. I’d be dead from heart failure by now.

— The crowd was not really into it until UD-M fell behind. Let’s face it, when roughly a third of the folks in the building are there to cheer on kids who play for your opponent, it’s kinda hard to muster anything approaching a “sixth man” type of atmosphere.

So why am I telling UD fans about all of this? Here’s why:

Do any of you realize how great we have it as Flyer Fans?

Do you?

The Message Boards still resonate with bitching about blue hairs this and townies that, the students don’t represent and the old folks leave with 5 minutes left, regardless of what the scoreboard says.

As Bill O’Reilly so eloquently told Al Franken, could all of you complaining Flyer Fans please just “Shut up!…Shut Up!…Shut Up!”

If you were lucky enough to witness the electricity emanating from Edwin C. Moses Boulevard either live or on ESPN2 and then had stepped into Callihan Hall like I did, you would never again question who cheers harder, what shirt is the one and only proper color for Flyer Fans to wear, whether the band should get new unis or any other such nonsense.

In a nutshell: it is high time that all of the kvetching Flyer Fans take the time to count your damn blessings.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

That’s it from The Swamp.