Loyalties are a feeling, not a choice, and I’m not a “true fan.”

MITCH BLATT

Today I found I might have lost the Ohio State Buckeyes hat that I wear while walking the campus of Indiana University, the university that I attend. As I said on Facebook, What kind of a traitorous Hoosier would steal a Buckeyes hat at Indiana University? Besides some a-hole like myself who couldn’t care less what our football team does each week. (That’s not completely true; If Indiana went undefeated–or even had a winning season–I would care, but since we never will, I won’t care.)

So am I not a true fan just because I don’t care about my own school’s football team just because they are an irrelevant football team? It’s just not fun to watch a lot of three-and-outs, and its not fun to watch players who aren’t very talented. But it’s not as if I’ve chosen to not be a fan; I just never felt the fandom for IU football. Team loyalties are not a choice–they are a feeling–and just like you cannot chose who you love, you cannot chose what teams you feel a connection to.

The reason I’m a Buckeyes fan is not cause I’m a bandwagon boy (at least not primarily); It’s because I grew up in Ohio, and every weekend my friends and I watched the Buckeyes games. We remember when Craig Krenzel threw a 37-yard touchdown pass on 4th n 1 to beat Purdue the year they won the national championship. My family stayed up long past midnight to watch their epic national title clash with Miami, nearly turning it off when we thought they lost before the pass interference call. These memories make a connection in a fan. Now I still watch Buckeyes games on ESPN 360 when they face a tough opponent. They’re fun to watch, and the Buckeyes always play a good game.

Freshman year at IU I had season tickets to the football games. Even at IU, Big 10 football does have an exciting atmosphere. I went to most of the games early in the season, but they kind of got boring and repetitive towards the end of the season. And I’m not the only one at IU who doesn’t really care much about the football team. There’s always hundreds of students drinking in the tailgate fields outside the game but few of them come in to watch.

As for IU basketball, that’s a different story, even though we haven’t really been very good at that recently either. Basketball is still fun to watch even if the team you are rooting for isn’t particularly good. I think its harder to differentiate between good and bad basketball players during a game, or maybe I just don’t know anything about basketball. Not only that, but IU actually fills the stadium for basketball games, and there is a lot of energy that is missing from their football games.

But when the headline in the Indiana Daily Student last weekend read “IU to Face Team on 22-Game Losing Streak,” there wasn’t really any reason anyone should care about IU football. Now whoever took my hat, give it back or I’ll have to buy a Purdue hat.

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