Broadcast boos

They dressed in red-and-green, because it was that kind of occasion. Anderson High School was going to semistate, back when they threw everyone into a big one-size-fits-all pile in the Indiana high school basketball tournament. So this was a big deal, and they rocked those Christmas-y AHS school colors proudly.

No, not the fans. The radio guys.

The radio guys showed up in red-and-green over there at Mackey Arena, and if the print guys -- me included -- thought this was a quantum display of dorkishness, the Anderson fan contingent loved it. If those of us on the print side were scrupulously careful to wear neutral colors (especially when Anderson was playing its city brethren at Madison Heights or Highland), it was simply accepted that the radio guys would be blatantly partisan. They were, after all, the Anderson broadcasters.

All of which serves to illuminate what happened at Norwell High School the other night.

What happened was, the Norwell radio guy (OK, the radio guy for the Wells County Voice, an online broadcasting service) took that accepted partisanship to a whole new level. At one point during the Knights' loss to Homestead, one of the Homestead kids dunked and hung on the rim, mostly to regain his balance.

He was duly T-ed up. And the radio guy all but stood up, waved pompons and cheered.

"There's going to be a technical foul, showboat," he said.

And then: "He gets teched up for being a jackass."

And then: "Stay classy Homestead, may you lose in the first round like you always do."

Which is a weird thing to say about a school that won a 4A state title not all that long ago. But that's neither here nor there.

The more relevant point is Radio Guy showed his true colors, and they were not Norwell blue-and-gold. It is, after all, one thing for local radio to be partisan. It is entirely another to be the sort of master-class moron who calls a high school kid a "jackass."

To its credit, the Norwell athletic department issued a prompt Twitter apology to Homestead and everyone involved, saying such behavior did not represent either its opinion or its values. This was probably unnecessary, since Radio Guy has no affiliation with the school. Plus it goes without saying no one in the Norwell athletic department -- or any high school athletic department -- would tolerate even from its fans what Radio Guy did the other night.

I covered high school sports for almost 40 years, and I've lost count of the times I've seen ADs escort certain fans off the premises because they were behaving like idiots. And so the next step for Norwell is almost too obvious to mention.

Which is, the school should yank Radio Guy's credential and never let him back in the building again. Ever.