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Since the school apparel rules column appeared we've been flooded with e-mails asking specific questions or seeking a ruling on particular patterns. Now, thanks to the great e-mail questions from you guys, I'm prepared to issue six more rulings on the law of college apparel wearing and one clarification on shot glasses.
TommyBoy:
Nice try with the apparel analysis, but you approach this issue from the perspective of someone with a flawed sense of sports loyalty.
Disclosure up front: I'm a Vandy alum, and therefore look on all Vol fans with a healthy dose of suspicion and scorn. You went to GW, but you root harder for UT. In my opinion, that's just wrong. I don't care who you grew up rooting for, your alma mater should be your favorite team.
Example: I grew up loving Penn State, and I still believe Joe Paterno is the greatest coach God ever put on planet Earth. I still like it when PSU does well. But if the Nittany Lions and Commodores ever played, I'd root for the Dores, even though in all likelihood they'd have no shot at winning. The Dores are my team; the players are/were my classmates; they play based on the tuition and fees I paid; that's my school. Screw everyone else.
You can't divorce your choice of undergrad and that school's sports team. It's chicken****. You picked the school, and in the same stroke of the pen, you picked your favorite sports team. Anyone who attends one school and roots for another has a serious character flaw, in my opinion. Unless a relative plays for another team, you shouldn't call a team other than your alma mater your favorite team. It's a slap in the face to the hard working student athletes you shared the dorms and classrooms with.
Off my soapbox. Love your stuff. Keep at it.
This isn't a bad argument. I just don't agree with it at all. First, in my case, GW doesn't have a football team. So there wouldn't be any conflict for me even if your undergrad rule stood. I just fundamentally reject this contention.
Five reasons:
1. In SEC country teams are chosen far before college attendance is even considered. Sometimes, like in my case, they are virtual birthrights. Other times, kids gravitate to their teams for a variety of reasons including, often, state pride. Regardless, pre-puberty selection of a sports team is presumed permissive and dispositive of fandom allegiance unless cause is shown why it shouldn't be.
2. What if you grow up a diehard Vandy fan and get rejected from Vandy and end up at Emory or Tulane or another school? Are you then not allowed to root for your childhood team because the school is too difficult to get into? Same with Georgia or Florida, which are also becoming extremely selective state schools. How much worse would being a fan of a school be if you knew you had to divorce your life-long rooting interest upon not getting accepted to the school? Talk about crushing.
3. The presumption here is that everyone always has the opportunity to attend their favorite school. As in the above examples, that might not be the case. What if you get a scholarship somewhere else? Or maybe you don't have the means to attend the school you root for because it costs too much. Or maybe it doesn't offer a major you want to pursue. There are any number of reasons why collegiate fandom and college attendance might not correspond.
4. How about great schools that don't have football teams or play at a lower level of competition? If you went to Stanford or Duke because you wanted to attend the best school are you supposed to give up all allegiance otherwise? I categorically reject that idea. What about the Ivy League, or small liberal-arts D-III schools? Do you get a pass from this rule just because the teams are in different divisions? That doesn't seem fair. Or are you supposed to root for those leagues now over your own rooting interest as a kid? What about when those schools are D-I for basketball but not for football, like GW? Too confusing.
