Today in hand-sitting

 You gotta hand it to Dr. Derrick Gragg, vice-president for athletics and recreation at Northwestern University. Guy can pile it as high as an elephant's eye.

Northwestern released a statement with Gragg's name on it decrying what happened Wednesday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena, where the Wildcats were playing host to Indiana. One of IU's starters is Miller Kopp, who played three productive seasons at NU before transferring to IU. The Northwestern student section saluted him all night for that affront by yelling "F*** Miller Kopp!"

This was three days after yelling "DUI! DUI!" every time Purdue's Mason Gillis touched the basketball, because Mason Gillis did indeed once get charged with a DUI. 

"During Wednesday's game a line was crossed with repeated, explicit verbal hostility directed at a particular member of the opposing team," Gragg's statement read, after first praising the fans "particularly the students" for giving Northwestern such an enthusiastic homecourt advantage this season.

"The language used violated our collective commitment to sportsmanship and was offensive to many members of our community," the statement went on. "We cannot tolerate this type of behavior in our venues."

Except ...

Except they did tolerate it. Twice in three days, in fact.

Which makes Gragg's statement the sanctimonious load we frequently get from university officials, and a splendid example of covering for some equally splendid hand-sitting. Northwestern coach Chris Collins led that charge by lamenting he wished there was something he could have done to get the "F*** Miller Kopp!" chants to stop.

There was, actually.

He could have walked over to the scorer's table at any time, picked up the PA mic and told the crowd to knock it the hell off. Bob Knight did that once when the IU students were chanting "Bulls***! Bulls***!" The students complied, sort of, by changing their chant to "Bullcrap! Bullcrap!"

Which admittedly is pretty funny.

Look. The Blob generally has no issue with fans making life tough for an opponent. This ain't opera. And it's what makes a homecourt advantage a homecourt advantage.

But when you single out one player for abuse (even if you do it cleverly, and even if the kid is a turd like former Duke guard Grayson Allen), that's where the Blob gets off the bus. The trust-fund jackwagons at Duke were notorious for that, throwing pizza boxes at an opposing player who'd been arrested for stealing pizzas and, more famously, throwing condoms at Maryland's Herman Veal after Veal was accused of "unwanted sexual advances" -- for which he was eventually exonerated.

Northwestern's students seem to have taken up that mantle, at least to an extent. Once they were actually clever; the Blob's still remembers their chant while getting pounded like drums by Bob Knight's legions, a regular occurrence in those days. 

"That's all right, that's OK, you'll all work for us someday!" the NU students chanted.

"F*** Miller Kopp!" suffers greatly by comparison. Perhaps Northwestern has relaxed its entrance requirements.

In any event, school officials, including the head coach, could have done something about what happened Wednesday. But they chose not to.

Collins could have told them to shut up. But he didn't.

The PA announcer himself could have told them to shut up. But he didn't

And NU officials could have directed security to duck-walk off the premises any fan caught chanting "F*** Miller Kopp!"

But they didn't.

Instead, they all sat on their hands.

I dunno. Sure sounds like tolerating to me.