Over the decades watching basketball as a fan, writer and referee, I have heard a lot of really bad takes.

We all have.

We have seen fans run out onto the court after officials. We saw a fan threatened to fight every Butte High fan because he did not like a call that went against his son’s team — when his team was winning by more than 40 points.

Fans scream and yell at officials all the time, and it seems to get worse each season. They yell at coaches, opposing players and players on their son or daughter’s team. They even yell at the young students running the scoreboard at subvarsity games.

They say ignorant, hurtful things on social media.

Even worse, we have heard sexist, agist and racist comments spewed from the crowd during games.

None of those bad takes I have heard over the years, however, are more disturbing than the comment made by Jake Eaton, the campaign manager for Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte’s 2024 successful re-election bid, following the latest rounds of state basketball tournaments.

Blake Hempstead, who broadcasted Class B State tournament games for the NFHS Network in Missoula, posted a video on Twitter Saturday afternoon of fans from Lodge Grass rushing into Dahlberg Arena to get seats more than four hours before their boys played Missoula Loyola in the state championship game.

They stormed the gates like it was Black Friday and they really needed a new television.

I thought it was kind of touching to see that those fans care so much about their high school players. Watching the video brought a smile to my heart.

No fans are crazier about their teams than our Native fans in Montana. Their passion brings so much to every tournament in which their teams play, too.

I love attending a tournament when Browning, Harden, Lodge Grass, Ronan, Heart Butte, Lame Deer, Box Elder or any other team from a reservation is there. Sure, they might give the referees hell, but the teams bring an exciting brand of basketball, and their fans bring unmatched enthusiasm. 

Host cities also feel a great economic boom when the Native fan bases bring almost the entire town to a tournament. Those Native fans travel in big groups, and they spend their money.

Believe it or not, supporting the student-athletes of a community like that is a good thing, even if some fans might get a little out of hand when it comes to yelling at officials.

Blake’s post drew overwhelmingly positive support from basketball fans who checked in with Anaconda’s town crier during what might be the best sports weekend of the year. 

When Eaton saw what Blake posted while looking through Twitter at 3:30 a.m. Sunday, though, he had a very different take.

“Just imagine if they were this passionate about the quality of the education the kids are receiving,” Eaton posted.

When he was accused of being racist for his post about Native American fans, Eaton was puzzled. 

“How’s that racist?” he said. “The epidemic of placing a higher value on sports than education doesn’t have anything to do with race.”

To be fair, I’m sure he curses as Duke University all the time about the importance that university places on Blue Devil basketball.

Just kidding. There’s no way he does that.

Eaton, who was clearly the kid always picked last when selecting teams at recess, doubled down on his posted with a usnews.com link that stated that test results at Lodge Grass Schools showed that just 3 percent of the students scored at or above the proficiency level for math or reading.

I have no idea what playing basketball and being passionate about those who play basketball have to do with that. Does cheering on basketball teams mean you do not want a quality education for your children?

Hmmm.

Partaking in sports is actually a very good thing for students. Statistics show over and over that students who participate in extracurricular activities do better in school. Being on a team helps improve work habits and focus.

While many went after Eaton on Twitter, accusing him of being racist, among other things, I will not make those same accusations — even though he seems to associate himself with some groups that seem to have trouble bending their knees when they march.

I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

As far as I know, Eaton is a guy with a lot of inherited wealth and a keen entrepreneurial eye. He is a veteran who is smart and passionate about his beliefs, and he puts his money and his time behind his words.

Unfortunately, he comes across as angry and rude when dealing with people who do not agree with him on social media. I saw that first hand when he attacked me late last year for pointing out that Gov. Gianforte, a self-proclaimed Christian, booted more than 30,000 poor kids off of Health Montana Kids insurance.

Now, we are all for government efficiency, and nobody wants people who do not qualify to be on the Medicaid rolls. But the vast majority of these kids were booted because of administrative reasons, not financial reasons.

Medicaid recipients received letters from an out-of-state company telling them they would be kicked off if they did not hop through so many hoops. Then they would hop and hop and send in every document requested.

That would follow with a letter stating that they did not send in the proper documents, so their coverage has ended. That happened even when they sent in the proper documents.

This all came after Gianforte’s administration gutted the Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services. So, many of the people wrongly kicked off Medicaid did not have anybody to help them get back on.

The DPHH staff that was left was overwhelmed, and people reported waiting on hold on the telephone for 8 hours only to be hung up on.

As a result, we have a lot of poor people without health insurance. We have poor children without health insurance.

Eaton said this weed out that devastated so many families worked exactly as intended. He said that was a good thing. Then he insulted me personally and professionally.

The sad thing, though, is not that Eaton is coming off as a racist jerk. That is his cross to bear. 

What is really sad is that Eaton is a man with power and influence. He is in position to help the people of Lodge Grass. He could use some of Gov. Gianforte’s many slush funds to try give a hand up to the many Native schools that have been playing against a stacked deck from the very start.

Instead of giving them the finger and punching down at them for loving their basketball teams, he could use his power to improve the public education in the town that is almost 100 percent minority.

He could show that his beef with public education is not only about the rich kids.

Eaton has spent years helping elect politicians who want to gut public education. He has helped funnel money away from public education in an effort to give it to private schools.

He has helped politicians stack the deck against all the public schools, particularly the ones on reservations.

That Eaton even has the nerve to comment on the quality of the public education that he has worked tirelessly to eliminate is hard to even begin to fathom.

His dumping on kids whose education is subpar, according to test results, is like Hurricane Katrina blaming her victims for getting in the way.

Lodge Grass fans supporting their basketball team is not perpetuating the problem in this case. Eaton is.

Those Lodge Grass fans who showed so much enthusiasm for their team should be celebrated, not publicly shamed.

And Gov. Gianforte should stop associating with people who use our passionate Native basketball fans as political punching bags.

  — Bill Foley, who was usually picked somewhere in the middle when picking teams for recess, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.