This is an opinion column by Goff Rugby Report Editor Alex Goff. Alex has been writing about rugby for over 20 years and played his first official game (with a referee and everything) in 1977. This column deals with suspensions of college rugby programs, and what players, especially, can do to avoid them. This is must-reading for young rugby players, men and women.

Yet another college rugby team under suspension.

 

 

Yet another regrettable, and perhaps not particularly awful, event turns into harsh justice on a college campus. And, once again, it seems that a program on the rise, doing big things, gets cut down.

As reported on Goff Rugby Report, the University of Mary Washington rugby program is under suspension because audio was revealed of some club members, along with others, singing what is traditionally called a “rugby song” but is, in this case, just a stupid drinking song. UMW is getting a multi-million-dollar facility built on campus, and is fostering a partnership with the Leicester Tigers club in England. Sound familiar? University of Utah building an alumni endowment to pay a coach and move toward quasi-varsity status - suspended. Army gets a multi-million-dollar facility, paid coaches, and quasi-varsity status - suspended. Penn State, LSU, Delaware, all building and getting better players and more money and more support, suspended, either briefly (Penn State and LSU) or, basically, forever (Delaware). 

I will mention some details about the UMW offense, but won’t go into the details of the others. What I will do, I hope, is give you some salient thoughts on how to avoid disciplinary action in the future.

First of all, though, UMW’s story is typical of the type. The offense involved only a few members of the team, including six who were deemed so valuable to the program that they were left home on a playoff weekend. The event in question was one involving students from all over, men and women (UMW is about 64% women). The offense in question was the singing of a drinking song that talks about prostitutes and sex. It’s a stupid song, really, but it is also a song in the official archives of Southern Missouri State University as part of the historical record. I personally don’t care for the song, but if you look at my own playlists you will find traditional folk songs such as “The Brisk Young Butcher” and “The Ups and Downs” and “Cold, Haily, Windy Night” which aren’t all that different - usually cautionary tales about sexual activity. You’d also find “Whole Lotta Love”, "Sledgehammer", and “Brick House” and I bet you if those songs were playing at the party, the UMW administration wouldn’t care in the slightest.

But because it was deemed a “rugby song,” which it’s not, the rugby team was tarred and feathered. So if they sang “if I were the marrying kind … the kind of man that I would wed would be a tuba player” would the marching band get suspended? I doubt it.

OK, that rant over, let’s look at what we’ve got on our plate:

Rugby teams will not catch a break. The vast majority of college faculty, administrators, and presidents went to college in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During those decades some college rugby teams took the game seriously and took their image seriously, but the most used the game to excuse pretty boorish behavior. Some of it was hidden by the fact that boorish behavior was going on everywhere, but the rugby team usually got a reputation as a loud, hard-drinking, butt-grabbing group of maybe-athletes. 

Those times hurt the image of the game. As more and more coaches and players tried to repair the game’s image, the more they ran across those in power remembering the jerky behavior of yesteryear. 

Recently I ran across an old Rugby Magazine from 1986 where Jack Clark, Coach of Cal then as he is now, wrote about building a serious college rugby program. Beer, Clark said, has to be taken away from the field. The players might have their fun on their own, but get drinking away from your team. That was a pretty low bar he was asking people to jump over - don’t have beer on the sidelines. But that was how bad things were - to the point that many thought Clark unrealistic and puritan even with that mild stance. At the time Clark wrote that article, I was on a college rugby team getting a post-match beer on the sidelines, so I know. Rugby was pissing in its own bed.

So when something bad happens today and there’s a rugby team in the vicinity (the party is at “The Rugby House” or a group of players makes a gathering a “Team Function”) then the rugby team is going to get blamed. You may think this unfair, and it is, but it’s born out of a truth that you, the young player of today, have to continue to fix. You have to adjust your behavior accordingly.

Alcohol and rugby do not mix. There is no reason to have alcohol around your college rugby team. Every one of your squad may be over 21, but there’s still no reason to do it. Going to the game, even the night before, is it necessary to have a beer? No, of course not. Post-game, is an alcoholic drink part of your team’s recovery? Don’t be silly. 

But even more than this, all of this goes doubly for school property. Utah and, a few years ago, Maryland got in extra trouble because they did their mischief on college-provided vans. The vans, the field, the locker rooms are more sacred than sacred. You screw up on the van, your team is in big trouble.

Nothing is private. Today, everyone has a phone with a video camera. That video can be in the cloud and then distributed nationwide while you’ve barely finished throwing up in the downstairs bathroom. If you join a group in an offensive chant, a raunchy song that used to be acceptable but now isn’t, or are just staggering around like an idiot while wearing your rugby team’s sweatshirt, it can be on the Dean’s laptop by morning … or worse.

Nothing is more important to a University than its image. If you embarrass the school, then you are in massive trouble. Cheat on your roster by fielding ineligible players, have your coach act immaturely, be unsportsmanlike … they’ll turn a blind eye most of the time. But do something that publicly embarrasses the school and they will punish you.

You’re in bigger trouble if your timing is bad, and these days, your timing will always be bad. West Point’s rugby team got in trouble over, in part, an offensive email newsletter that made fun of some women. Stupid, offensive, and unbecoming a cadet at West Point, but all made much worse by the fact that sexual assault in the military was a hot-button news item at the time. UMW’s song was stupid, but relatively harmless. But coming after a video of an offensive chant by a group of students at another school, and right after UMW had launched a sexual harassment initiative, made it all the worse.

No one is immune. You think your college team has the ear of the Athletics Department and is respect on campus? That means you have to be more careful, not less. Coach - you wear official school gear and get called “coach” on campus and sit in meetings with the AD? Watch your back, you’ve entered a political arena not unlike the Roman Senate.

So how do you avoid having your rugby program suspended or banned?

1. No alcohol.

Not on the bus, not secretly in your hotel room the night before the game, not after the game. No drinking at all on any rugby trip, including tournaments, training tours, retreats. Nothing.

 

2. Careful socialization.

Going to parties is part of college life. Going as a rugby group is fraught with trouble. Don’t host a party with alcohol as a team, or even as a group of students who all happen to be rugby players. Don’t wear rugby gear when you socialize. 

 

3. Singing.

Songs from before WWII written by English public (read private) school students who wanted to shock their staid society with tales of shagging and sodomy had their purpose 90 years ago, but are now celebrations of sexual assault and misogyny. Times change. Maybe we’re too sensitive now, I don’t know, but we, as a people, are sensitive, so adjust to the referee.

 

4. Don’t embarrass your school.

 

5. If your school has old-fashioned or strict rules about behavior, follow them.

You may think they’re stupid; if so, transfer, but don’t ruin the game for everyone else.

 

6. Team behavior.

As a team, you should practice rugby, study rugby, play rugby, have a barbecue or something once in a while, and do something good for the community. Make sure your school president knows all about those good things.

 

7. Any action can be video recorded.

One action can put your team on the sidelines. This game we all love can be painted with the brush of shame and rumor because you thought sneaking a bottle of vodka onto the team van would be fun, because you through having an ugliest girlfriend contest passed the time, because you all just had to go to the party of the year, because someone dropped an N-bomb as a joke, because you all decided to pose for your team photo topless.

 

8. Check your Twitter feed.

... and your Facebook page. Who is updating it? Make sure the login info is known by more than one person, and make sure that the injured sophomore who is Tweeting your game notes while you play … what is he saying? Some of you will be shocked. 

 

9. Check your website.

Some college teams still have links to the lyrics of “Rugby Songs.” Don’t. Take it down. It might have been the culture decades go, but it is not now. 

 

Should you just take your medicine when you are suspended? No, I don’t think so. You need to challenge your administration to be fair and right, and you need to study up on the school by-laws and appeals rules. At some point, taking the punishment and moving on is the wise course (Utah got in bigger trouble because they tried to skirt a punishment). Sometimes pleading your case works (Penn State and one other team that asked to remain nameless but schooled their school in procedure and honesty). And sometimes you wish more was being done (in my opinion the Delaware rugby family should sue the university, and when rugby does come back to Delaware, every rugby-playing high school student should write them a letter saying they choose not to attend). Education is the key here. Learn your rights …

 

and learn your responsibilities.