ETSU Needs To Retire Numbers, Not Jerseys
ETSU is honoring their former players by not honoring them at all.
So much of East Tennessee State’s identity is trying to play both sides of the fence.
Take, for instance, the way they tried to handle the controversy surrounding the men’s basketball team kneeling for the national anthem in 2021. In trying to appease both the boosters who took offense as well as the team as they knelt, ETSU wound up pleasing no one.
Or this season, when ETSU retired the jersey of former point guard Tim Smith.
Note “jersey” and not “number,” as this column had previously reported.
This explains why freshman guard Allen Strothers is on the court wearing Smith’s №5.
The Buccaneers’ logic is if a team starts retiring too many numbers they’ll run out of numbers to give to their contemporary players.
And since college basketball requires that a jersey not have any numbers with a digit higher than five above on it, there are only 36 possible number combinations than can be given out to players.
But what basketball team has 36 players, or even half that amount?
And why worry about that when you’re willing to unretire numbers for the flavor of the day?
