What’s good everybody? We are less than two weeks away from football kicking off. Everyone else is writing season previews, position breakdowns, and about new coaches, not me though. Nope, I’m here to break down how to properly rival with other fan bases. My personal do’s and don’ts if you will.
Do enjoy taking a jab at your rival, don’t devour and rely on the low hanging fruit. Understand that at the end of the day these are unpaid amateur athletes and someone’s child, don’t be a moron. People say PC Culture has run amuck but I look at it like this, it stripped the laziness from jokes. That’s a good thing, I think. Lazy rival jive is the absolute worst behavior from fans. You make us all look paranoid and crazy when you tweet or post about “meth head, you sleep with your cousins, no teeth” to uk fans. You are the red version of “ghetto, hood trash, line beards, and hookers” talk, don’t be that guy. Nobody likes that guy. That guy’s wife is miserable, and his kids are embarrassed. That guy takes a baseball glove to games and wears jerseys of athletes decades younger than him. That guy waits in line for a teenager’s signature. That guy uses Tards or Mildcats (fart noise). That guy will find his true soul mate, the exact same person, his mirror spirit, who roots for his rival, and they will rank the hierarchy of player arrests of the other’s team for an hour on Twitter. If you ever find yourself debating which team has the worst arrest records over a period of time you have waded too far out and honestly I hope the current gets you and takes you away.
Over the years on Twitter I’ve seen way too much of this trash and that’s why I made this post. If you are one of the fans who spend his entire time online defending his school from national writers and posting about your rival, stop. Find a new hobby that doesn’t embarrass the rest of the fan base. You need help, and that’s why I’m here. Rivalries are supposed to be fun at the end of the day; yes fun is an irrational hatred for your neighbor or a fellow motorist with another team’s window decal. If you tweet at recruits for any reason, its weird. Would you want strange men tweeting your daughter where to attend college? If you want to congratulate them, do you, I guess, but if you ever find yourself tweeting negatively at a kid who picked your rival maybe go pet a dog or mow the lawn? Jeez writing this I’m having flashbacks of every UofL fan I’ve unfortunately been forced to mute because while jet fuel may or may not melt steel beams the heat from their tweets assuredly could.
Don’t be a fence sitter. I have no respect for fence straddling nor should you. If your friends or family are fence dwellers, shame them. Shame them hard and good in front of friends and family. See, a fence sitter will say “oh I’m not much for trash talk” and then make subtle or sometimes not so subtle jabs, and then do what we like to refer as “diap out” when called out on it. They will fill their diapers and contort the narrative to make them appear to be the victim when in fact they were being a trash human and got called for it. The mental gymnastics must be exhausting. Basically you’re in or you’re out and if you’re out you don’t get to stick your toe in the deep end.
Something that adds to the enjoyment of a rivalry will come as a shocker to some of you, make friends with some other funny or entertaining member of your rival’s base. I follow some uk fans that are great people, great fans, and entertaining as hell. It’s important to recognize our personal flaws in life and that applies to rival talk as well. Some days I read a joke and laugh at it thinking “welp they got me there can’t argue against funny”. Lastly, stick to the sport in season. We all know who owns which respective series and you sound like a gigantic dork when you say “Wait til ______ season”. Shut up and take the L like an adult.
So that’s it, that’s pretty much all I got while sticking to my promise not to curse on here, this was hard to write because this subject gets me really fired up. 13 days until kickoff so if you need something to occupy your time, Netflix has been killing it with the original series. I’ve watched three the last two weeks; you could do worse things with your time. Stranger Things was first, I’ve heard a lot of comparisons but the most accurate was my buddy Dave said “imagine Spielberg making a Stephen King movie”, I think that’s an incredibly accurate description. The next was Last Chance U, great documentary series about how the other half of college athletes lives. If you’re like me you’ll watch the first 4 or 5 episodes and wonder where you recognize the team from and then it will hit you right in the face, also UofL got some free publicity from it. Finally I watched The Get Down. The show is amazing, its based on mid 70’s New York lifestyle which has fascinated me since I saw the video for The Message. I thought those dudes were from another planet with their outfits and music. So much was going on in that time period, DJ’ing was invented, B-Boy’s were breaking, street graffiti, the decline of disco, drug decadence, they haven’t even touched Punk music so I’ve got pretty big expectations. So music suggestions today are inspired by that show, check out Get Down Brothers vs Notorious 3 and then dive down a rabbit hole of Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc. If you enjoy them hit me up on Twitter and I’ll give you some more obscure DJ’s from the era, Go Cards and Go Krogering.
That Boys Good
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