The other day, I had the privilege to talk to a Rutgers fan.

No, he didn’t call to rub it in.

When I hear from a fan of an opposing team that just visited Northwest Arkansas to play the Razorbacks, I’m a little fearful. It’s rare for people to go out of their way to oft er praise, but I’ve heard plenty of times over the years from people who had a complaint.

Not so this time. This visitor gave a glowing report of his experience in our neck of the woods and had high praise for Razorback fans.

Way to go, Arkansas.

The conversation got me thinking about the game, which I’ve mostly blocked from my memory out of a sense of self-preservation.

I’m no masochist.

After we took our seats at the stadium, my family watched the usual festivities leading to the football team’s emergence from a hog’s smoke-emitting snout. We whooped and woo-pigged and clapped as we always do for the home team. Then, as Rutgers emerged from the other end of the fi eld with no fanfare - I’m not sure what part of a Scarlet Knightone would run through, anyway - it began.

A vocal segment of Arkansas fans booed the Rutgers team.

I just don’t get it.

Doesn’t Arkansas need an opposing team to play?

But these folks, as they have game after game, boo the opposing team just for showing up. I suppose they’d be thrilled to tailgate, pay their contributions to the athletics department and buy their tickets so they could wildly celebrate winning by forfeit because the opponent decided to stay home.

Perhaps Arkansas should just scrimmage every Saturday. Well, wait, that may not work. Some fans have even started booing them.

I’m sure many fans will say booing the opposing team is just good ol’ fun in the world of sports fandom.

Perhaps. But it seems to me a team playing the visitors’ role is only encouraged by the hometown fans’ reaction.

I think silence works better.

We tend to boo the wrong people in a lot of arenas.

Take the replacement refs in the recent NFL dispute.

They got booed a lot.

The NFL fans didn’t take into account the fact the games were able to happen because those replacement refs showed up to do the best they could. Absolutely they were immensely inferior to the normal offciating crews. There’s a reason the real refs are the real refs: They’re better, at least in terms of the training they’ve received and, ostensibly, the skills they bring to the gridiron.

But if I paid $4 gillion for seats at a Cowboys game, you bet I’d be glad the game could go on despite the labor dispute.

People boo John L. Smith, who may not be the best coach in the world but he’s the one we got in the wake of Bobby Petrino’s wreck of a finish as the Razorbacks’ head coach.

Anyone who thinks there’s an outstanding coach just sitting around waiting tojump into this at this point in the season is jumping the gun on medicinal marijuana. I hear Houston Nutt’s available.

Heck, even God got booed at the Democratic National Convention. Of course, it was more complicated than that, but the end result was a bunch of delegates booing the inclusion of God in the party’s platform. God was probably chuckling at the idea that the Democrats could vote on whether he got to stick around or not.

People boo our president and the man running to replace him. Why boo our president, no matter how much one disagrees with his policies? Why boo another man who has taken up the charge to debate ideas of public policy and oft er Americans a choice in 2012?

Again, silence can go a long way. And voting goes even longer.

I’ve booed bad calls by refs for a second or two, but my suspicion is I’ve never really infl uenced a change of mind. So I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s a good time to boo at all.

Maybe I’ll save my boos for Halloween.

GREG HARTON IS OPINION PAGE EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 10/01/2012