EDITORIAL: Promote basketball, please

Penn needs to do more to pump up interest in this year's men's basketball team, favored to repeat as Ivy champs. Penn needs to do more to pump up interest in this year's men's basketball team, favored to repeat as Ivy champs.At 9 p.m. this evening, before a national television audience, the Penn men's basketball team will open its 1999-2000 season at Kentucky. And to think, only eight months ago hundreds of students packed the Palestra to watch a closed-circuit broadcast of the Penn-Princeton season finale. The point is simple: Penn is missing a golden opportunity to bring students together and to generate excitement about the upcoming season. To be sure, issues of school pride and "supporting our team" figure prominently in the logic of this editorial. But that is not the whole picture. On a campus where many feel that barriers of culture and community are far too tangible, basketball is a proven exception. Nothing brings people from all walks of campus life together quite like the prospect of another Ivy League basketball championship. The University knows this full well. Indeed, just last fall, Penn hired Bill Richter to coordinate the Athletic Department's marketing and promotional efforts in an effort to increase attendance at games. Unfortunately, Richter has done little to promote the Penn-Kentucky game. There are no posters on Locust Walk, no big-screen TV set up in the Palestra to allow students to watch the game together. And now, for Penn-Kentucky, it is too late. But it is not too late for the rest of the season. Now is the time to let the excitement begin to build. Now is the time to pique student interest in a team that is a consensus favorite to repeat as Ivy League champions. Now is the time to create the enthusiasm that will ultimately lead to increased ticket sales. On December 3, Penn will open its home schedule at the Palestra, against Army. Richter and Co. must do more to get the word out: It's time to get excited about your Pennsylvania Quakers.