Who to root for when you don’t care…
My favorite columnist and probably my favorite author ever has sold his soul for the weekend and blogged for the Worldwide Leader.com throughout this weekend’s final four.
Prior to yesterday’s game, Chuck Kloster pontificated that he prefers to watch a game when he doesn’t have an inherent rooting interest. That way, he argues, you can decide who you want to win the game as the action unfolds in real time.
Klosterman wonders how someone decides who to root for, if they don’t have a particular rooting interest in either team.
Geography? This argument didn’t seem particularly compelling to me nor does it make any sense to Klosterman. A lot of the time I feel like if you have a local team in a championship game or playoff situation and that team isn’t yours, you know enough obnoxious fans and are so over-saturated with media coverage that you want that team to get completely obliterated and maybe even see a star player lose a limb.
What about inter-conference loyalty? This argument rang true to me. In this year’s BCS championship, I found myself rooting for Ohio State because I’m an IU graduate and I supported my Big Ten brethren, as I did last night. Klosterman argues that this arguments makes little to no sense.
“Now, I can understand how this policy could make sense if one of tonight’s teams were a mid-major, but it strikes me as idiotic when applied to juggernaut conferences like the SEC or the Big Ten. I was recently talking about this with a Penn State graduate. He would argue that the responsibility of someone from Michigan or Indiana is to hate Ohio State all the time, particularly when it’s playing a championship game on national television.”
I find myself time and time again rooting for Big Ten bragging rights (unless it’s Purdue — bunch of Goat Farmers). And I guess what I’m wondering is how do the readers of this blog decide who they want to root for in a game in which they have no inherent interest? And for the record, thinking Joakim Noah looks like a tranny counts as an inherent interest.
Here’s a link to Klosterman’s Final Four blog
Vote here
I pulled for OSU because a Gator win is a win for illegal narcotics
I decide who to root for by first choosing which team to root against. To do this I refer to my Hierarchy of Hatred.
1. Tennessee
2. Notre Dame
3. Auburn
4. Florida
5. Miami
6. Florida State
7. USC – simply because of the ESPN fellatio
8. Ohio State
9. Michigan
10. LSU
When these teams aren’t playing I typically pull for the underdogs.
The correct Hierarchy of Hatred should look like this…
1. Alabama
2. Alabama
3. Alabama
4. Alabama
5. Any team in the Big 10
Amazing IJ, I pull for Alabama 95% of the time. I am going to stop talking to you for 24 hours
It’s Big Ten.. we spell it out.
1. Auburn
2. Tenn.
3. LSU
It was the way I was raised. I was literally programmed by my family to hate, not dislike or frown upon, but hate those teams. You can’t teach an old dogs new tricks.
While we’re at it..
1. Notre Dame
2. Florida
3. Ohio State
4. Purdue
5. Miami
Jai, you said the other day you were considering switching to Auburn.
The Barn is #3 ?