While a good portion of students' minds will be on drinking copious amounts of booze and celebrating Homecoming, two sports teams will be thinking pink.
Ball State University's soccer and field hockey teams will don pink uniforms this weekend to promote awareness for breast cancer. Fans are encouraged to wear pink to the field hockey game against Miami University on Friday and the soccer game against Toledo University on Sunday. Think Pink T-shirts and pink ribbon mugs will be for sale at the games with the proceeds benefitting Ball Memorial Hospital Breast Cancer.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and, with exception to football, only those two teams have home games this weekend during the initiative. But why limit the campaign to one weekend and two teams?
Every sport could participate in the initiative for the whole month. The football team has its Homecoming game this weekend. About 15,000 people will be there, or at least in the parking lots tailgating. That's more than the few hundred that will be at the field hockey and soccer games if history tells us anything. Why not encourage football fans to wear pink and sell Think Pink shirts and cups at that game? Almost every fall sport has a home game or match during October. This could be a far-reaching awareness and fundraising campaign.
It could generate the same recognition as the University of Tennessee women's basketball team wearing pink uniforms or Major League Baseball using pink bats for Mothers' Day weekend.
It also could help the teams out a bit. The field hockey team broke an 11-game losing streak wearing pink uniforms last season. At this point the football team should be willing to try anything. We aren't saying it should follow suit and go all pink, but maybe pink ribbon decals on their helmets and sleeves. On second thought, maybe they should go all pink from helmets to shoes. It can't make them any less intimidating to opponents than their 0-4 record with a few unflattering losses, to say the least, to the University of North Texas and University of New Hampshire.
It wouldn't be the first Mid-American Conference football team to participate. Temple University passed out pink T-shirts to students entering the stadium at one game last year.
It's obviously too late to change now. But it's something to think about for the future. Making this a larger effort could only help.
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