Some perspective (good or bad) on fandom

I don't have to listen to you!

when you try to qualify a person's fandom

Lol come on man you can't make a grammatical error in a sentence about how you've grown up and then talk about rooting for Michigan in beer pong because then I can't even finish the rest of your post.

I'm old (married with children)and I still am in a shitty mood till Thursday after a loss. Maybe it's better but when I would lose playing Friday then a UM loss saturday...End of Days man.

Yes I know my Al Bundy pic but damn if I can relate to Married with Children.

Good post.  And I largely agree about not telling people I'm a better/worse/equal fan than them.

With one exception - do you support the student athletes when the going gets rough?  You clearly do.  But Brian's frustration seems to be at those that say, "well, no, but because losing sux."

brian's point is to demarcate the bandwagon fans who forgot to support the team when things were rough.  whether you're watching every minute and going nuts, or just following the team quietly on your own, its still support.  given what many alums are saying now, its seems that michigan football didn't even have their support during the past three years, and THAT is sad.

its no fun when we are losing to OSU year after year. After a lose though I don't take it too seriously, I just won't watch any highlights of the game, which means no ESPN or BTN for the week following a loss.

FB God, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if they were good men or bad. Why they fought, or why we died. All that matters is that they stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, FB God... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!
 

The best kind of fan is someone who:

1) Tries to keep things in perspective

2) Takes it as well as they dish it out

3) Doesn't call someone else's fandom into question because of some moral law they've concocted about how a true fan should behave

We lost, you're not going to die. I'm pissed at the refs too, but I don't want to kill them. You didn't stay through the end of that game, and I'll probably give you a little ribbing about it, but I'll still invite you next time I have an extra ticket. You root for OSU, but I can look past that because I've known you for years and you're a good dude.

a DarkBlue fan. Butt-peeing and all.

Someone needs to design a Goosebumps-esque survey in which readers choose from a variety of options. Really, the crucial question is this:

(Hypothetically) Would you support Rich Rodriguez if...

-He won 12+ games pear year.

-I would not support him even if he won 12+ games per year. I care about the tradition at Michigan.

They also need to be categorized.

"I would take Terrelle Pryor even knowing that he would become Chris Webber 2.0 (minus any indications of intelligence) because he wins games. - "Columbus" Fan

"I would love if Nick Saban coached Michigan and found new recruiting loopholes" - (average) SEC Fan 

Now that would give us some perspective on fanhood. Your post, while genuine, is garbage. It includes the pronoun "you" in the title and says almost nothing about your audience. 

" Relax and enjoy the fun of it."

Wow, you've said something profound. /s

I can go to dinner with my wife after a loss. I'm just not making scintillating conversation.

NEEDS MOAR PARAGRAPHS

"We'll see how he looks in UFR, but Mouton looked dynamite, at least against the run."

sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Two things:
1) Clearly there are differing levels of fandom.  Someone who only watches Michigan games when they have nothing better to do is clearly not as much of a fan as someone who goes out of their way to make sure they watch every game.  That said, someone who is rich and can afford to attend every game in person is not necessarily a bigger fan than someone who can't afford to go to every game.  However, the point still stands that there clearly are different levels of fans.
2) What Brian and most other people were saying (I assume) is not so much "OH LOOK AT ME I'M A BIGGER FAN THAN YOU" as much as "you are a shitty fan because you stopped caring about the team just because you didn't like the coach."  I don't think many people would say that someone was less of a fan because they didn't like Rich Rodriguez.  What people are saying makes someone less of a fan is if they stopped supporting the team and the University BECAUSE they didn't like RR.  Not liking Rich Rodriguez is a personal opinion.  Stopping supporting your team (or saying negative things like Braylon and others did) is not only NOT being a fan, it's backstabbing the university. 

Some people are bigger fans than others, but as you said, it doesn't necessarily make them BETTER fans. 

The most interesting off-season develop appears to be which board topic will become the most annoying by virtue of being beat into the ground:

1. The board's inability to read anything without some portion of posters getting up in arms about veiled attacks on Rodriguez/Hoke/your mother/apple pie. (As well as the subsequent meta-complaints about how all that sniping is stupid and should stop.)

or

2. The constant back and forth about good v. bad fans, and how the poster is invariably a good fan and others are bad fans for one reason or another. (And of course, the subsequent meta-complaints about how this is a stupid issue and we shouldn't care or try to categorize the fanbase.)

Everybody's ranting and raving about how Rich had his head in the vice before he even got here, and how the program was already divided before he started winning or losing.  That's not untrue, and the factions began the day he was hired and only grew in stature and power in the nine months before that first game against Utah.

Now here we are, too few years later and anxiously awaiting the first game of our next head coach.  And what are we doing?  Ranting and raving about what this person said or what this person did not, and exhausting ourselves about what the coach is or is not doing, and how it is being received by the fan base, the media, and the alumni.

Have we not already seen what all this baseless speculation is capable of?

Have we not learned the dangers of the inane sports-radio quality we give in this pointless analysis of non-game behavior???  Nine months of he should/she should/he didn't/he isn't/blah blah blah-- we've seen firsthand how it only creates biased expectations, divides solidarity, and makes it that much harder for the student athletes to succeed in the face of adversity.

What we need to do is SHUT UP.

 They've got to win.  Hoke, Mattison, Borges... Robinson, Martin, Roundtree, Roh... they get that.

Our opinions as fans will not shore up the line.  They will help Hemingway make a catch he would otherwise drop.  And they're certainly not going to make young men grasp blitz packages faster.

For the next five months until opening day, the best thing we can do as fans, and as a fan base, is to let the new coaching staff do their job.  It's easy to point out what is wrong from our own perspective, but during the Rich era, how often did we learn how limited those perspectives truly were?

In Brian's case, it's a little different, and I concede that.  This is his job.  There are a lot of people out there that WANT to know what he thinks.  That are coming to this site to find out what he thinks.  He'd be stupid not to give it to them.  Besides, as the proprietor of this domain, as far as I'm concerned he has the authority to say pretty much whatever he'd like.  If he wants to write a below-the-scroll rant on what Rita Rodriguez thinks of Al Borges hairstyle, that's his right-- and if you don't like it that's yours as well, but don't think you have any place to tell him to remove it.  His blog, his content, the end.

You're a big fan, you expect better.  We all do.  This is clearly defined and understood.  Give the staff time to develop their team.  Let the paint dry.  Or better yet, get out of the way so the painter can work.

this post is fuckin stooopid.

Some fans are bigger than other fans because they are genetically predisposed to a low metabolism and really, really like pizza.

Just sayin'.....

We have taken advantage of the lower level of enthusiasm and poor economy to get better seats!  gotta take the opportunity when you see it.