I was thinking about writing another edition of weird sports that we should add to the Fisher athletics program. Last year, I made the proposal to create cricket, elephant polo, and Russian roulette teams ... and no one ever got back to me on it.

Oh well.

I thought they would be exciting at least.

This got me to thinking though, what would happen had no one responded to the initial requests of basic sports at Fisher? You know, the first time a really tall kid brought up the idea of creating a basketball team? Or, the first time a kid who could throw a ball really far brought up the idea of creating a football team?

Actually to answer that last question, just see Nazareth. Or RIT. Go Tigers football! It’s grrrr-eat!

Anyways, just try to imagine this campus without any sports teams. What would Fisher be like without the athletic aesthetic?

Well, alumni and family weekends would be kind of strange without the football team to watch. What would the slew of visitors do in lieu of this activity? Hmmm ... well ... Fisher doesn’t have much going on on-campus does it? I guess everyone could hang out in the campus center ... and ... well ... yeah, there’s not much there either. I guess alumni and family weekends would be just a little bit pathetic without the football team, huh? I pretty sure my family wouldn’t want to hang out in the campus center and watch COP work through the windows. Boring.

How about that rivalry with Nazareth College? Could we still hold onto that without athletics? Maybe we could start up a math league or something. Does anyone know if mathletes fight each other? I’d hate to be the security officer assigned to the multiplication matches.

“Daddy, what do you do for your job?” little Bobby would ask his father.

“Well son, your father works security at the Math Olympics,” the father would say. “It’s my job to make sure the fans don’t get into fights. You know son, there’s a lot excitement at those math matches — without me there, who knows, fans might get out of control and start throwing abacuses or something.

Little Bobby would look up at his father now. “Daddy? Am I adopted?”

Okay, so the idea of taking athletics out of the Fisher-Nazareth, ahem, equation would leave us with little to fight about. I mean, there really isn’t much to fight about when everyone already knows that Fisher is the superior institution.

So without athletics here at Fisher, we’ve so far checked off any excitement on alumni and family weekends and kicked the Fisher-Naz rivalry to the curb. What else could we examine?

How about the use of the space that the athletics facility now takes up? Imagine if the strip of land between the old Fishbowl up to I-490 was empty. Short of building a landing strip — Fisher International Airport anyone? — what could we use that area for?

Well, what could Fisher use? What are we missing? And you can’t say a pool or ice rink since that defies the purpose of this exercise. Hmmm ...

I know. This is the answer to the biggest problem on this campus right now — besides the ladybugs that have invades my room, that is – a parking garage. We could use that space to put up a massive, leviathan of parking garage.

Only one problem. Without athletics on campus, without teams and players to rally around, we wouldn’t need to house all those cars. Why? No one would stick around if we didn’t have the athletics that we do.

Yeah, Fisher might not be perfect when it comes to athletics. Some of our facilities might be a little outdated or over-packed. We have teams that lose. We don’t have a pool or a track or an ice rink. But we’re doing pretty well.

Now how about that elephant polo team?

Originally published in the Cardinal Courier (Volume 6-Issue 4; Nov. 1, 2006).