Culture

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/39597-college-football-getting-back-to-the-basics-of-hating I’m calling it Conference Superiority Complex, CSC for simplicity of typing. We’ve all been affected by it, and at some point, infected with it. Over the past few years of college football, we’ve translated what could have been arguments about some of the best seasons in college football’s history into glorified conference beauty pageants. Fans engulf message boards, blogs, radio call-in shows, TV, and any other sports medium arguing the merits of their conference as the newest and most obnoxious way to support their team. This most recent slant on chest-pounding braggadocio began after the Auburn snub of ’04. It was amplified by the Big Ten’s embarrassing debacle in the ’06 BCS game. It cemented in every home after last season’s coin flip selection of LSU as Ohio State’s BCS opponent that left teams in every BCS conference debating the merits of their top contender. Before we knew it, you, a die-hard Longhorns fan, woke up in the bed of an Oklahoma Sooner with a Missouri T-shirt on and Jayhawks face tattoos. All in the name of advocating your conference to the BCS selection committees. It’s sickening what CSC has made us do, but we have all been there over the past 48 months. How on earth did we go from a college football landscape that emphasized and survived on things like The Third Week in October, The Game, The Red River Shootout, The Border War, The Backyard Brawl, etc., to one that still emphasizes these games—but only if they don’t hurt their conference's chances of winning a championship? It's all about perspectives. We fans need to get our perspectives back; that’s what I’m here to help. We’ll start with you, Mr. Husky. Lost out there in the Pacific Northwest, many of you and your Pac-10 brethren have decided the only way to get noticed was to band together and fight those east of the Rockies together. Huskies, Cougars, and Ducks joined side-by-side in an attempt to gain legitimacy. Only their reasoning came out sounding something like, "USC has the most top-five finishes of any team over the past six seasons." What? Why the heck are Washington and Oregon fans trying to defend themselves against other conferences by quoting USC stats? How does this make sense? It doesn’t. But that’s what CSC is, a defense of the best team in your conference no matter who it is. If your team isn’t that team, you turn to the team that is, and by default it makes your team better. That’s the theory at least. How do you cure it, oh wearer of the purple and gold? You have to get back to your roots. When someone says the Pac-10 sucks, you say, "No it doesn’t, but I heard people from Wazzou finally discovered how to make fire." You can defend your conference and defend your fanhood credibility at the same time. bleacherreport 7/21/08