Warning: more name stuff

[BrudaCajun]

_ this poster is a nihilist, donnie, there's nothing to be afraid of. _

LOL!

[CajunFun]

_ ugh! its sad that many of you will never realize no matter what the school name is UL will never be the flagship university, teir 1 school, or athletic power house. period. if you all put this much passion into the athletic program everyone in college sports would know who UL is. instead the athletics simply suck and your still known as UL-L _

As I noted earlier in this thread:

Now, look at some of the fans of Louisiana SLC schools today: they frequently come on our boards trying to tell us that we are fooling ourselves, wasting our time in 1A, we'll never succeed, and we should drop back to 1AA and re-join the SLC.

Stop and think about that: Why should they care??

I've known a lot of LSU alums who were very fine, very reasonable people, who understood that we need to move all of Louisiana forward, not just LSU. With very few exceptions, they were not LSU sports fans. They just got an education there.

With Cajun Tiger's post, suddenly some things come into focus. For many of the LSU sports fans, despite all the 'big-time' wins, they actually have very much of a 'small-time' mentality: they are negative, paranoid, and generally lacking in self confidence.

Face it: does Harvard go on sports boards running other schools down? No. They don't care what you think of Harvard. And if you do a good job at something, they'll quickly acknowledge it. They aren't afraid of you.

Which is exactly the attitude I see with the LSU alums who aren't big sports fans. If they feel they got a good education at LSU, they will tell you. But if they were unhappy with some aspects of LSU, they'll tell you that, too. And they do not pretend that the other schools in the state are inferior to LSU. They readily admit that the other schools all have their strengths.

So who acts otherwise? Who always insists that their school is infinitely better, and that your school has absolutely nothing of value?

People who are afraid of you. Look at so many of the LSU fans who come on our sports boards: they act like some of the fans we left behind in the Southland Conference. Again, Why do they care?

I think the insight is that buying tickets and t-shirts from a winning program does not change the mindset of someone who feels inferior; it just gives him a reason to act in a way that seems (to him a least) that he's no longer inferior. So he swaggers, and insults, and belittles, thinking it makes him look confident, that it makes him appear to be superior.

And the irony is, it's actually the boasting, the mouthing off, and the condescension toward others, that makes the problem all the clearer: he's afraid, he feels inferior.

It's kind of sad, when you look at it that way.