College officials admonish football fans: Watch what you wear

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A vulgar T-shirt seen on a televised broadcast of a recent West Virginia University football game isn’t exactly the image that Athletic Director Oliver Luck wants for the school.

So Luck is calling on fans to police their fellow fans’ attire.

If they see someone wearing an offensive T-shirt, ‘politely ask him or her to change or to cover it up,’ he says in an open letter to Mountaineer fans. ‘Even wearing it inside-out would be an improvement.’

‘I recognize that the First Amendment protects free speech,’’ Luck wrote, adding that, as a lawyer, he’s familiar with a landmark 1971 Supreme Court free-speech decision. In that case, a charge of disturbing the peace was dismissed against a man who had protested at the Los Angeles courthouse in a jacket emblazoned with an obscene comment against the draft.

With a big home game coming up against Louisiana State University, Luck, whose son is a star quarterback at Stanford, wrote: ‘We would like to present a more favorable image to the millions of football fans from around the country who will be watching the game.’

In an interview with The Times, Luck said that the reaction to his letter has been positive. ‘I’ve not received one negative response.’

He isn’t alone in expressing concern about fan behavior.

University of Maryland Athletic Director Kevin B. Anderson on Monday night sent to the student body an email he’d received from the parent of an 11-year-old who was exposed to a lot of profanity and other offensive behavior at a recent football game against the University of Miami.

‘The type of aggressive and offensive behavior’’ described by the parent, he told students, ‘paints the university, our teams and every one of us in a bad light.... Every coach, student-athlete, fan, staff member and member of our student body has a responsibility to represent our great university with class, dignity and respect.

‘Is this who you really want to be and is this the impression you want the nation to have of us?’ he wrote.

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--Richard Simon in Washington, D.C.