The Roar of the Crowd. (What Crowd?)

By Rick Horowitz

If life is so simple, how come we're up to our eyeballs in self-help books, self-improvement classes, mentors, mud baths, shrinks, gurus and the occasional dose of aromatherapy?

It's because life isn't so simple. (That was simple, though, wasn't it?) In fact, it's pretty much a major mess out there. We'll take aid and comfort -- a guiding hand, a stirring example -- anywhere we can find it. Anywhere.

I give you the New Jersey Nets.

Go ahead, take them -- nobody else wants them. That's what happens when you're a professional basketball franchise that loses more than two-thirds of its games all season long, when you play your home games in the bustling metropolis of East Rutherford, when you're well-known for being known for almost nothing at all. (Recent exception: the Nets' coach calling a local reporter named Garcia a "Mexican idiot.")

So they don't exactly fill the place with screaming fans every night. So it doesn't exactly matter.

Seems the Nets have been making a little bit of volume go a very long way: According to a story in one of the local papers just the other day, the Nets have been using prerecorded crowd noise on top of the real thing. They pump the extra decibels through loudspeakers at the Continental Airlines Arena, and suddenly another less-than-sellout crowd is rattling the rafters.

The phantom fans can -- in theory, anyway -- spark the home team, psych the visitors, even drown out distracting boos at critical moments. And while teams have been goosing fans for years with "CLAP! CLAP!" and "DEE-FENSE!!" and such flashing on their scoreboards, the Nets are apparently the first team to admit they go that extra sonic mile.

I think it's great.

Scandal? Of course it's a scandal -- so what? It's a speck compared to the kind of thing coming out of Washington all the time. (In Washington, they'd have charged the fans ten thousand bucks apiece to be on the tape, then sold them copies for another five.)

Mostly it's just a little extra gamesmanship; would you rather hear a few "enhanced chants," or more ear-splitting chords from the home-team synthesizer? Anyway, ballplayers are always talking about giving 110 percent; why not let the fans give 200 percent? First the cheers, then the replay.

But what I want to know is: Why don't the rest of us make some tapes? After all, athletes aren't the only ones who can use a little inspiration. The rest of us might like to kick it up a notch, too -- and we'd probably take better advantage of it than the gunning-for-mediocre Nets have done.

Just imagine it: You push a button at crunch time, and your office is filled with fans shouting you on to victory. You push a button walking down the street, and you don't hear a single boo anywhere. Boos? They're going crazy for you! (You might want to wear headphones.)

You don't think you could elevate your game -- whatever it is -- if you could fill your ears with the sound of cheers? Of course you could.

Is your life suffering from low attendance? Could you use a bit of encouragement from courtside? Take heart: All you need is a handful of friends and a decent tape recorder -- now you've got throngs.

And it's lots cheaper than cloning.

3/25/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.