Scorecard May 19, 1997

Gator Bait

"Shall I compare thee to a Wuerffel play?/Thou cans't be as lovely or as temp'rate...." To judge from the results of a recent study at the University of Florida, that's how Shakespeare's famous love sonnet might have begun had the Bard been a Gator fan.

Charles Hillman, a Florida graduate student in sports psychology, measured the emotional and physiological responses of 50 men and women to a variety of photographic images that included erotic subjects and Gator sporting events. The results, when it came to the emotional responses, confirm what visitors to the Swamp have suspected all along. As a university press release proudly put it, "For die-hard Gator fans, seeing their favorite team in action is better than sex."

The 50 volunteers were categorized by fan level—low, moderate or high—and then hooked up to instruments measuring heart rate and brain activity. They were asked to view a series of slides while using a joystick to rate their reactions on two scales, one ranging from very unpleasant to very pleasant, the other from calm to excited. The slides included images of Florida and non-Florida sports events, photos of people in "amorous situations," scenes of violence, and "neutral" pictures of household objects and the like.

All three categories of fans reacted more or less the same to the non-Gator photos, but when Hillman flashed up images of Ike Hilliard snagging a pass in the end zone or Danny Wuerffel giving thanks after throwing a touchdown, the rabid Gator fans "showed significantly higher physiological reactions." Hill-man also used what scientists call a startle probe—a sudden noise—to test how completely absorbed in the Florida photos the Gator fans were. In deeply engaged subjects, a startle probe will cause less brain wave activity than it normally would.

The probe barely sidetracked devout Florida boosters. "You could say that there were fewer brain resources available," said Bruce Cuthbert, a professor of clinical and health psychology at Florida, "when the Gator pictures were on the screen."

That would come as no surprise to fans of, say, Florida State—where, by the way, Hillman is conducting a second study.

A Pivotal Moment

Kentucky's fabled basketball coach, Adolph Rupp, may have waited until 1969 to sign his first African-American player, but in the ensuing 27 years the racial composition of the Wildcats' teams had so changed—under coach Rick Pitino, Kentucky started five black players in winning the 1996 NCAA title—that it was surprising to see race arise as an issue last week. With Pitino having left the Wildcats for the Boston Celtics (page 54), Kentucky hired Tubby Smith, an African-American, away from Georgia to replace him. Although the hiring of a black coach wouldn't create a stir at other major colleges, this is Kentucky, and the notion of an African-American filling Rupp's hallowed position seemed to revive old debates.

The concerns were raised in the pages of the Lexington Herald-Leader last Friday. Wrote Don Edwards, a white columnist, "Before Rick Pitino, the very idea [of a black coach at Kentucky] would have generated...private debate (Are we really ready for that?) in a town with two Confederate statues on the courthouse lawn. After Pitino, it's different. The whole sense of possibility is different. Pitino changed Kentucky more than Kentucky changed Pitino."