During last night's debacle in Columbia, I was reminded of one of the most nonsensical fan tendencies in all of sports-the incredibly illogical "pull for everyone in your conference" idea.Late in last night's game, South Carolina fans could be heard chanting "S-E-C. S-E-C".
Why? Do you love your conference more than your school? If so, why? Do you go to sporting events for all SEC schools? Is that you chanting "S-E-C" at Vanderbilt's swim meets?
This issue is magnified during the NCAA basketball tournement each March. Fans across the country, on radio and TV, can be heard saying "well, if UNC loses, I'm pulling for Wake". Or, "since my school, Syracuse, didn't make it, I'm rooting for all Big East teams".
One I hear someone say such things, I immediately discount them as viable human beings. No actual fan of a school would do this. The flawed reasoning is that it's good for the conference when it's teams as a whole do well, thus somehow making their favorite team better in the process.
They think that a top recruit looking for a school would think "Wow. The ACC is tight. They had 7 teams make the tournament. I would now like to go to NC State to compete against those teams". WRONG. That recruit wants to go to your rival school, who did make the tournament, in turn making your school even worse.
Same goes in football, South Carolina fans. Any recruit worth having did not hear your "SEC" chant last night and go "SEC? Let me look up that conference's bowl record", then decide that South Carolina would be a better place to be than Georgia or Florida. No, that kid is going to a rival of yours and will destroy your beloved Gamecocks.
Sure, when more teams make either the tournament or a BCS bowl, the conference gets more money, which leaks down to all it's programs, but the difference between 4 teams and 7 teams making it is negligible. And major football programs will be fine.
Any true fan of a collegiate program does not want his team's conference opponents to do well. Not only is it idiotic to root for your hated rivals; in the long run, it will only hurt you and your team. Wake up.
4 comments:
Hear, hear, Snoop... I agree 100%. I used to subscribe to the root for the home conference thing, but I no longer engage in such stupid behavior. I cannot root for UNC, Duke, Wake, Maryland, any of them... I don't care if the ACC "looks tough" or "is down this year" or whatever. I do think the ACC put on a piss-poor showing this past weekend, given the Hokie loss to ECU, State's debacle in SC, Virginia getting their asses absolutely handed to them in the other SC, and the faves for the ACC, Clemson, getting dominated by Alabama. I can respect Coach K, Bobby Bowden or Gary Williams, but that doesn't mean I blindly pull for them since they are in the same conference as my alma mater.
I disagree with both of you clowns. The reason you should root for your conferfence teams is that you do benefit from them being good and going to bolw games and doing well in the ncaa tournaments. Only a portion of the money goes to the actual school that goes to the bowl or ncaa tourney, the rest gets split between the other conference schools for their athletic funds. So half ass sports programs like ncsu and asu get to make big money each year as they miss the ncaa tourney and fail to make a bowl game becuase of teams like duke/carolina in basketball and usc in football and ucla in basketball make huge money by going to final fours and national championship games. when usc gets to play in multiple bcs championship games they might make $2 mil for school, but an additional $6 mil will go to other pac 10 schools, so half ass clown colleges in major conferences can get millions of dollars each year to fund their programs and not even have good teams or well run programs. So unless you live in a fairy tale land where you don't think all major college sports is about 1 thing (MONEY) then go ahead and only root for your school and if they happen to suck that year hope that no other teams make bowl games or ncaa tourney's.
I completely disagree with your thoughts lob. I, for one, tend to hear myself chanting, "Division I independents!!!" while watching my team or others in my alma mater's (non)conference. And while I always have the utmost confidence that the Army team will prevail, if, for some strange reason, they cant; well then I'm cheering for Western Kentucky with all my might.
Thanks for your comment,"big cat".
However, you are wrong. In football, each conference is automatically locked into a certain amount of bowl games, so the money for the conference is predetermined. Unless you get 2 teams into the BCS bowls, which is unlikely anyway, the money you make in football does not change.
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