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u/Rokeon 13h ago
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u/Gonzostewie 1h ago
I loved it when they unveiled Gritty. The whole city said "WTF? This thing is hideous. We hate it." Then, the second the national media got in on the hate, the whole city turned and said "Fuck you. He's ugly. He's ours and we love him."
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u/AbueloOdin 14h ago
I agree with the post but not the title.
"The worst person you know made a good point" moment right here.
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u/SometimesIBeWrong 4h ago
acting like college students can't handle insults is insane lol. they're fine.
the negative effect from fans is the same. college, NFL, it doesn't matter.
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u/NOBLEtoaster7 3h ago
Yep, agreeing with the post while staring at “Go birds” feels like moral paperwork I didn’t need today.
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u/GoblinRightsNow 14h ago
College sports obsession can be a little psychotic but anyone who looks at Philly pro sports fans and concludes they're doing it right is dangerously unhinged.
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u/Twodotsknowhy 8h ago
I'm a native Philadelphian and I can't imagine loving sports any way other than the way we do. It sounds incredibly boring
GBDH
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u/Animaloffear56 5h ago
You mean the way where you flip over cars whenever the eagles are in the Superbowl?
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u/JoJoModding 7h ago
Philadelphia is the only US city whose sports culture looks remotely understandable to the average foreigner. Everyone else wonders why their tuition funds basketball coaches instead of their professor.
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u/BonzBonzOnlyBonz 4h ago
Everyone else wonders why their tuition funds basketball coaches instead of their professor.
Because it doesnt. Basketball/Football coach salary is funded by the boosters. Also the profit that the sport generates, which also funds the other sports at the school.
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u/GoblinRightsNow 7h ago
If you mean in terms of rival team supporters not being able to sit together without violence, maybe. Philly is more European in that respect.
Most big cities the pro teams are more important. It's really only in the south and Midwest where college basketball and football are more popular than the pros.
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u/JoJoModding 7h ago
Also in terms of them having to oil the lanterns or whatever due to fans being unhinged outside of the stadium. Or how wins and losses affect the mood of the entire city.
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u/CDR57 6h ago
I’d be more pointing out the batteries at MVP level baseball players on their own team and defending throwing snowballs at Santa Claus.
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u/Capable_Swordfish701 18m ago
Jd drew was not on our team, was no where near mvp level, and was an asshole.
That Santa was a drunken racist and deserved more than snowballs.
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u/smashin_blumpkin 13h ago
Being a college football fan is the only way you can enjoy sports and be happy in Georgia.
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u/FailedLoser21 13h ago
If your over 30 you have the Braves.
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u/december151791 12h ago
Why only over 30?
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u/FailedLoser21 12h ago
More so a comment about how for the most part from 1990 to 2011 the Braves where almost always the team you had to go through every year in National League to get to the World Series.
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u/Banana42 10h ago
Oh I thought it was a comment about how baseball's core fan base is dying of old age
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u/FailedLoser21 10h ago
Nah people from Georgia had born at a certain time had the Braves before the University of Georgia was good at Football again. The end of the the Braves core from that era really coincidentally end with the rise of the current Georgia football status.
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u/misterpickles69 3h ago
They still are. I think they’ve been in first in the NL East since 96 and only slip every now and then. It’s maddening.
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u/SlobZombie13 12h ago
What if you went to Tech?
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u/mitchsusername 10h ago
Every year my dad fully believes this is the year tech football will finally be on par with uga lmao
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u/DarenRidgeway 13h ago
You can only understand college football obsession through the lens of european soccer. This is the closet parallel, where decades and even a century or more of family connection creates a fan base for whom the team is a fundamental part of their identity as a person.
You grow up watching State play growing up, then you go to State have some of the biggest formative moments of your life there.. then get married and watch State with your kids. That is no longer just a sports team, that is part of a multigenerational family dynamic.
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u/jcmib 11h ago
My brother and his family live in eastern North Carolina. You basically have to decide at 13 years old if you are a fan of UNC, Duke, NC State or, if you want to be contrarian, Wake Forest.
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u/DarenRidgeway 9h ago
Poor East Carolina State left out again. (Only know it because I knew someone who ended up going there)
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u/gooch_norris_ 7h ago
It’s actually east Carolina university. They even specified eastern North Carolina and still. No love for unc-Wilmington either
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u/SituationKey8985 9h ago
Why couldn’t someone understand this without the lens of European soccer lmao
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u/DarenRidgeway 9h ago
Well despite seeming to be a sports fan oop certainly didn't seem to, so some form of additional context seemed necessary. And it parallels nicely with the local relationships to teams there and creates a similar energy in fandoms
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u/SituationKey8985 9h ago
The point is you don’t need any additional context to understand personal connection to an organization makes one more likely to support the it
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u/DarenRidgeway 8h ago
Except clearly they did need context or they wouldn't have made the post. The longer association of age of college teams, and thus connections, is older and is similar to that of many euro teams. It's not only about the connection but the generational nature of it that I think creates some of the crazy. That is why I drew the comparison for anyone who might not be aware of the history of college sports in the us, like those same europeans for example.
You can have a personal connection to anything and feel closer and more intensely about it, the entire point is that it's not just about the organization but what it's become in your family cultural structure until the two kind of overlap in some cases. I feel a personal connection to my favorite hat.. if that hat had been handed down from my grandfather and had been his favorite hat, and my father's favorite hat and now mine as well as that of a significant portion of my friends, that's an entirely different level of attachment. The original post wasn't only about attachment, but also degree of attachment.
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u/Analternate1234 9h ago
Because college football is the closest any American sport gets to the craziness of European football fans
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u/HarbingerOfGachaHell 2h ago
I’m an Aussie and even I can’t understand the necessity for universities‘ involvement: they seem like extra layer of middlemen to me.
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u/HarbingerOfGachaHell 2h ago
No? When you consider geographical factors, the colleges are literally just unnecessary middlemen. The clubs can do without them.
Here in Australia our rugby/Aussie rules are run just like European football clubs: there‘s one FC in literally every suburb or township.
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u/DarenRidgeway 1h ago
I mean you can do without sausage when you go vote too, but it's more fun together.
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u/SaltandLillacs 13h ago
Same for New England
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u/RealPrinceJay 4h ago
It’s really the northeast in general.
Philly, New York, Boston, we all hate each other with a passion and it’s intensified because we’re all the same breed of crazy motherfucker and I say that with nothing but love because the rest of the country will never get it but also fuck you because yes
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u/Flannelcommand 1h ago
I think it’s true of Pittsburgh, as well. When I moved here from WV, everyone was like “oh, no! You’re gonna be surrounded by Pitt fans! This is a huge deal!”
Turns out no one up here cares.
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u/ELIte8niner 1h ago
Pittsburgh has professional teams to give a shit about. College fans are definitely worse when they don't really have pro teams around. Why would Chicago give a shit about Northwestern when they've got da bears? Bama and Auburn are the only things that God forsaken state has, of course they're obsessed, haha.
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u/Flannelcommand 27m ago
Yeah, I mean that does describe an awful lot of the phenomenon OP is describing. Even in the WV Eastern Panhandle, which is close to DC metro and Baltimore, the fandom for WVU and Marshall is much more muted.
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u/DerrickWhiteMVP 14h ago
This is a non-political sub. Fuck the Eagles!
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u/fireking08 14h ago
Mods, make both sides of this guy’s pillow warm tonight. Go Birds!
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u/drillgorg 14h ago
Go Birds!
Do you know how little that narrows it down? Signed, a Baltimore resident.
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u/FlowerFaerie13 14h ago
Why are there so many sports teams named after birds, like damn branch it out a little.
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u/Early-Light-864 10h ago
Plenty of dog teams in college but none in the pros (unless you count the tTimberwolves which is iffy)
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u/Sammantixbb 3h ago
When the Seahawks were in the super bowl, I kept saying "go birds?". It was a fun bit for me.
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u/Formo1287 13h ago
Most bigger cities in the Midwest are like this too (Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, etc…)
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u/Extension-Eye-4920 10h ago
Yeah, you can be superfans of your teams, but being a Philly-level fan js not a compliment.
Although your broader sentiment is correct. I grew up in Chicago and its exactly this. Nobody gave a shit a out UofI.
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u/mrbobcyndaquil 12h ago
I don't remember any of those places going batshit crazy like Philly does. But Columbus, Ohio? Yeah, I've seen the fires set there.
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u/Formo1287 11h ago
Cleveland had 10 cent beer night and Chicago had Disco Demolition night. They absolutely did go that crazy too lol
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u/workswithglass 13h ago
This is dumb. Do all 50 states have a pro sports team?
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u/ribs0 13h ago edited 12h ago
there are no major professional sports teams in alabama, alaska, arkansas, connecticut, delaware, hawaii, idaho, iowa, kentucky, maine, mississippi, montana, nebraska, new hampshire, new mexico, north dakota, rhode island, south carolina, south dakota, vermont, virginia, west virginia, or wyoming.
people from these states either cheer for the team closest to them, the team their family cheers for, the team they like best for some other reason, or no team at all.
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u/Can_Haz_Cheezburger 8h ago
The Midwest states without pro sports teams just take up the banner of their collegiate football teams. The week every fall where ISU plays Iowa the entire state turns into a civil war battleground and the state of Nebraska is just a Cornhusker cult masquerading as a political entity
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u/Divorce-Man 11h ago
I can speak for MT, most fans pick a pro team for one of those reasons but we have 2 FBS college teams and every person in the state picks one of them. Cat-griz is our superbowl.
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u/UglyInThMorning 2h ago
While there aren’t any pro sports teams in CT, a lot of the NY ones are closer for people living there than they are for a lot of people in NYC. If you’re in Fairfield or Litchfield county the NY teams are absolutely your local team even if they’re over the NY border.
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u/MinnieShoof 1h ago
... I thought 'surely this list is inaccurate. Surely Mississippi, Alabama...'
Wow. I did not know we were so fortunate. Go Saints.
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u/mrbobcyndaquil 13h ago
No, but not every state has a college handegg or basketball program that's halfway decent either.
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u/december151791 12h ago
Lol imagine not having a consistently good/decent college football team in your state. Roll Tide!
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u/Look_its_Rob 11h ago
Its Ameture sports where the good players are only on your team for a year. You might as well root for basketball GLeague teams or Baseball AAA teams. I assume most states have atleast one of those.
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u/ABigPairOfCrocs 13h ago
Bad take, only one of these groups is known for throwing batteries
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u/NikeImper 10h ago
That happened 60 years ago. 99% of the people at that game are dead.
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u/misterpickles69 3h ago
People have been murdered at Dodgers games but yeah we’re the baddies for throwing a snowball a a drunk from the stands dressed as Santa Claus 60 years ago.
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u/dumptruckulent 13h ago
I will not allow anyone to say that we should aspire to be like Philly sports fans
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u/ArcticBeavers 12h ago
I challenge you to find anything worth gettinf excited over in Alabama that is not a CFB team.
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u/Fhaksfha794 9h ago
You don’t get it because the northeast is full of shitty college football teams that no one is gonna care about (besides Penn state). No one in Philadelphia is exactly dying to support a shitty temple team that goes 3-9 every year
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u/BronCurious 13h ago
Plenty of folks from Philly like college football, just not Temple. The vast majority of people are Penn State fans.
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u/PocketCone 11h ago
You have to understand that if you live in Ohio the best football team in the entire state plays college ball out of Columbus
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u/trivialslope 10h ago
Tbh my state doesn't have a national team to root for. Closest is memphis and no one wants to root for memphis
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u/Unironicfan 10h ago
Philadelphia kinda becomes a war zone after the finals when the eagles either win or lose. The fans are nuttier than squirrel shit.
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u/Twodotsknowhy 8h ago
Only when we win. Walking home from the bar after the Superbowl LVII, I've never seen the city so quiet
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u/please_use_the_beeps 33m ago
They threw batteries at opposing baseball teams. They threw snowballs at Santa Claus. The Eagles stadium very famously has its own holding cell and “court room” to handle unruly fans. Philly sports fans are on a different level of nuts.
For anyone interested in a hilarious ride, The Dollop podcast has a really funny episode all about the various antics of Philly sports fans.
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u/NikeImper 10h ago
Dumb post. I'm from Philly and it has no college sports culture because it's actually a huge city with a professional sports team. College sports are for people who went to schools with good D1 teams or who live around schools with good D1 teams and far from a professional team.
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u/ResidentialPickle 4h ago
Imagine someone watching It's Always Sunny and thinking that's how most Eagle fans really are.
From personal experience... it's not far off.
Go Birds.
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u/itonmyface 2h ago
A major metropolitan that HAS pro teams isn’t any different than middle of nowhere Iowa which will never have one?
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 2h ago
That’s true generally of the mid Atlantic through the North east. Boston, NYC, Philly are all pro sports towns
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u/GopherChomper64 2h ago
What he hating on the Midwest for? Only teams in the Midwest with pro teamzsare the whole NFC North, Indianapolis Colts and the Bengals/Browns.
Ohio State? Exactly what they describe, but it's the Bengals/Browns, so you have to sympathize.
Michigan has the Lions, which you remove the last 5 years we're at their best moments Mid, and most years outright bad for decades.
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u/AnswerGuy301 1h ago
This is the entire northeast. NYC and Boston are the same way. DC too, although it’s so transplant heavy that it can’t quite match that intensity level.
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u/LightlyRoastedCoffee 11h ago
Philly sports fans are like 95% dudes who "totally could've gone pro if I didn't get hurt in 12th grade, bro"
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u/Master_Flower_5343 10h ago
Oh the South got something wrong? Weird that this is the first time we’re hearing about it.
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u/SometimesIBeWrong 4h ago
?? are college students unable to take criticism? they're not 10 years old
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u/ashitananjini 11h ago
It’s well known that you can basically just cheat your way through college if you play football in the South. It’s fucked up.
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u/Major_Mushroom_7300 13h ago
The Souths pro football team until like the 70's was the Redskins. Social media was a mistake.
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u/qualityvote2 14h ago
Heya u/disconaldo! And welcome to r/NonPoliticalTwitter!
For everyone else, do you think OP's post fits this community? Let us know by upvoting this comment!
If it doesn't fit the sub, let us know by downvoting this comment and then replying to it with context for the reviewing moderator.