Trippin’ up Tripp

Student athletes deal with a lot of pressure – they don’t need hate mail, too.

Some fans in the Bulldog Nation should be ashamed of themselves. After missing a couple of passes in recent games, thereby exposing his human fallibility, football player Tripp Chandler has had a difficult time dealing with fans’ responses.

He told The Red & Black he has received numerous hate mail sent to his personal e-mail account in addition to boos.

Chandler’s confession brings to light the hidden pressures of being an athlete, and football players undoubtedly get the worst of it. Who wants to bear the burden of the wrath of a stadium full of fickle fans after making a few mistakes?

The very act of walking out into the lights, knowing your actions are being scrutinized not only by the hundred thousand fans in attendance, but also a national TV audience, requires unthinkable bravery and confidence. Booing fans and angry e-mails can undermine these feelings and cause the player to perform even more poorly.

Our athletes have a challenging job balancing their GPAs and social lives while practicing hours each school day, weekend, and summer while the rest of us do our homework and relax.

The last thing they need is for their peer group to remind them constantly of their mistakes, or Facebook groups calling for their exclusion from the game.

When a player messes up during a game, we always should encourage them and give them our full support.

They should be able to rely on us all the time, not just their teammates and coaches.

- Matt Brandenburgh for the editorial board.

The Daily Double

Univ. student to compete on Jeopardy! Will he be the next Ken Jennings?

Question: This University junior earned a role as a contestant on the game show Jeopardy!

Answer: Who is Nick Rolader?

Hoping to earn big money for many years of academic trivia practice, Rolader will travel to Los Angeles to compete on Jeopardy! on Oct. 23. The episode will air in January.

In order to qualify as a contestant, Rolader completed a 50-question online test and went to a show audition in Atlanta. He was one of 400 contestants chosen out of about 12,000 prospective applicants.

We wish Rolader the best of luck in this televised battle of the brains and hope all those years of Academic Bowl tournaments and restaurant trivia will serve him well.

Besides phrasing all answers in question form and wagering at least $1 in the final round, we’d like to suggest to Rolader that if he gets categories such as “Potent Potables” or “Therapists,” as parodied in “Saturday Night Live” sketches of “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” to do his best Sean Connery impression. It might get a chuckle out of Trebek and who knows? Rolader might cement himself as a gameshow personality, just like 74-time Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings.

- JoAnn Anderson for the editorial board.