With a clamorous crowd, blasting arena horn and sporadic referees’ whistles, it sounded like a typical Topper basketball game.

But from the Atmos Energy company-owned suite No. 2, one may never notice.

From the upperlevel luxury box, the crowd noise is a raspy whisper, the horn is like an ignored alarm clock and the whistles are like the chirps of birds in the distance.

With a clamorous crowd, blasting arena horn and sporadic referees’ whistles, it sounded like a typical Topper basketball game.

But from the Atmos Energy company-owned suite No. 2, one may never notice.

From the upperlevel luxury box, the crowd noise is a raspy whisper, the horn is like an ignored alarm clock and the whistles are like the chirps of birds in the distance.

Pink is splashed across the brick walls and shower floors; there are even pink metal lockers, carpeting, sinks, showers and urinals. For decades, visiting football teams playing at Kinnick Stadium have dressed and showered in a pink locker room. Critics of the University of Iowa’s visitors’ locker room say the use of pink demeans women and perpetuates offensive stereotypes about women and homosexuality.

Possibilities were pitched to a pair of recruits sitting in the football locker room.

Among the possibilities were to be a part of history and a large family.

Football coaches and staff members bring recruits to Western throughout the year and show them the campus, stadium and facilities to woo athletes into furthering their careers in red and white.

“Definitely,” “Of course” and “Yes” are some of the shortest sentences in the English language.

But to a man on bended knee waiting to hear one of them, the moment can last an eternity.

While a marriage proposal is normally thought of as an intimate moment, some people have decided to take the plunge into a life together in front of tens of thousands of people.

YEAH!

Despite being a football program for 88 seasons, the Hilltopper football team announced a first yesterday. Coach David Elson announced the inaugural class of Western’s Division I-A tenure. The 31 incoming players include 22 freshman, seven junior-college players and two transfers from other Division I-A schools.

Riding, romping and roping are ways of the Wild West. But this weekend those desperado tendencies will be the ways of Western. The Lone Star Rodeo stampedes into the Agricultural Exposition Center with four shows. “Everybody deep down always wanted to be a cowboy or cowgirl, and for two hours they can put themselves in that spot,” said Preston Fowlkes, producer of the Lone Star Rodeo.

In a coach’s game plan, it’s all about the X’s and O’s. But in planning for a coach, it’s sometimes about the X and Y. Standing in the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis at the National Soccer Coaches Association of America convention, Jason Neidell, Western’s women’s head soccer coach, said he noticed something about the crowd.

Clad in a long-sleeved, black Nike shirt, gray dress pants and black loafers, defensive line coach Eric Mathies watched as Western football players struggled with the cold afternoon air in the endzone between sprinting drills.

Mathies’ mind is on the speed and time it takes his pupils to cross the white yard lines.