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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25086 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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Question from someone who doesn't understand US College football culture - you write about Alabama fandom being passed down families, but if you come from a family of diehard Alabama fans and end up attending some other school for academic or personal reasons, does your sporting allegiance change? And is it supposed to?

The only UK university sporting events with this level of interest are the (Rugby) Varsity Match and the Boat Race, and in both cases the partisan fans are alumni of the universities or residents of the relevant cities. I supported Oxford as a kid because both of my parents were Oxonians, but there was no question that as soon as I matriculated I would be rooting for Cambridge. (Not that it mattered much - my family are not really into spectator sport and we only watched the Boat Race because my dad was a rower in his youth.)

if you come from a family of diehard Alabama fans and end up attending some other school for academic or personal reasons, does your sporting allegiance change?

My mom's side of the family are all hardcore University of Iowa fans. Not a single one of them went to the University of Iowa.

If you grow up rooting for Alabama and go to a different school which is actually good at football, you become a fan of the new school. If you go to, say, a basketball school(American colleges which are particularly good at basketball and those which are particularly good at football rarely overlap, and it’s odd for fans of a football school to care overmuch about its basketball team and vice versa), then no, you don’t, at least as far as football is concerned. If your new school is a football school that isn’t a rival of Alabama, you root for your new team first, but you’re still expected to cheer on Alabama if you see them.

Now it’s worth noting that 1) all of this is specific to undergrad, if you grow up rooting for alabama, go to Alabama for undergrad, and the take law school at university of Texas your loyalty stays with alabama and 2) nearly all schools that are football powerhouses are regional generalist schools, although a few of them have better programs than others(like the aforementioned university of Texas at petroleum geology, for obvious reasons) they’re generally going to offer most majors.

If you grew up an Alabama fan and wind up attending an SEC rival like Auburn, your fandom is expected to change to your new school. If you grew up an Alabama fan and wind up attending a school like UAB, who's football tram is irrelevant, you are expected to remain an Alabama fan.

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