======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====
A while back I sent out a tweet asking anyone who followed me which university had the most obnoxious fan base in the country. As expected, answers varied across the board but I didn’t get the engagement numbers I was looking for and decided to shelve the idea because the data just wasn’t there.
And then it hit me. This is a blog. I’m not writing for The New York Times here. I can throw anything at the wall and see if it sticks. Forget about polling and what my Twitter following thinks. Here’s my personal opinion on the worst fanbases in the country, based totally on my experiences as a Big Ten graduate and my current location (Chicago,IL). If you don’t agree with this list that’s your right, but unless you’re going to write a rebuttal blog about it I don’t care what you think. Thanks.
SEC Loyalists
I blame Paul Finebaum for this ridiculous myth that the SEC is some all-powerful football deity. And the SEC is pretty terrible in basketball outside of Kentucky and occasionally Tennessee. Yes, Alabama is good at football. But that doesn’t make the entire conference good by transitive property.
Sure, Nick Saban won one with LSU a looooong time ago but people seem to forget that Ohio State has won it (Big Ten) as well as Clemson (ACC) during the playoff era. The SEC Loyalist loves saying shit like “Well we only lost to Alabama by 10” as if that is some sort of crowning achievement. Georgia fans on Twitter act like they should have been included in the playoff over Notre Dame and Oklahoma simply for playing Alabama the closest of any other team this season. Basically what I’m saying is that if you’re not Alabama, don’t tout your fifth place finish in the SEC as a reason for why your team is good.
Miami (OH)
This one isn’t going to make much sense to anyone outside of the Midwest, but this is a biased review. I live in Chicago, and Miami of Ohio graduates are everywhere. From my observations, most of them live and play in Wrigleyville, arguably the worst neighbordhood in Chicago. They wear their Miami garb to bars on Saturday afternoons in the fall as if their team is relevant, and they won’t hesitate to mention that Miami (OH) is one of the best schools in the country. The fact that you have to say Miami (and then parenthesize Ohio) automatically delegitimize this school for me. I hate this school solely because of the graduates who roam Chicago day in and day out acting like their football team matters.
Michigan
Perpetually overrated, smug to the nth degree, and year in and year out acting as if the football team is one season away from competing with Alabama for a national championship. I’ll give them this – they’ve had a nice little run in basketball (sidenote: no one loves watching a Michigan State basketball game more than a Michigan fan), but Beilein and Co. will always play second fiddle to the cash cow that is Jim Harbaugh.
The University of Michigan is the worst of the worst. As a proud graduate of Michigan State University, you should have seen this coming from a mile away. I grew up hating these fuckers and I’ll go to my grave the same way. They claim academic superiority every chance they get. They treat anyone who didn’t go to Michigan like a second class citizen. Nobody likes them (outside of the inbred fanbase and the alumni who who insist on wearing Michigan garb out in public every single chance they get). I honest to God think if you polled all Big Ten schools alumni the most hated would be Michigan and it wouldn’t be close. These people suck. I could go on for days but writing even two paragraphs on them has already got me feeling queasy. They’re the worst, and if you don’t agree then so do you.
DePaul
Why the hell would you ever go to DePaul? This is another one where you just won’t understand it unless you live in Chicago. I have no respect for DePaul. It’s a MAC school that thinks their shit doesn’t stink because it’s in the middle of Lincoln Park. A trained monkey could get accepted into DePaul and the people who go here are mostly just rich kids that were too stupid to get into the University of Illinois. What the hell kind of a college experience are you supposed to get going to a school where no one lives in a house? Does everyone just get a fake ID the second they walk onto campus and then start frequenting bars that 25 years old do?
Northwestern
Socially awkward and Northwestern University go together like peanut butter and jelly. Graduates of Northwestern are so dorky, so ridiculously straight edge and weird that I actually feel bad making fun of them. But I can’t hold my tongue. Northwestern grads don’t care about their sports teams. They’re not cocky like Michigan fans and they don’t rub their academics in your face. They just suck to be around at parties and smell weird. If Northwestern was a kid in your first grade class, it’d be that boy named Terrance who you really don’t want to invite to your birthday party but your mom makes you do it to be nice. I legitimately think Northwestern alumni are grown in labs and then exist solely to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up when they get too close.
Texas A&M
I’ve had limited interaction with A&M fans in the past, but this was far and away the most voted on school when I posed the aforementioned Twitter question a month back. I don’t really understand the hatred, but I’m including them because I love to hate on stuff, and I’ll jump on the A&M hate train for no other reason than it seems like fun. Sorry Aggies..
Image via Youtube
Respond
jduda@grandex.co
So are we just going to get one Duda article per day until this website folds?
Gotta respect Duda and the commitment to delivering content
seriously where has the content been. if we don’t get a TGDAG tomorrow we know it’s all over
Will tweeted a link to his leaving earlier today.
When the last thing your website will be remembered for is a half-assed article about obnoxious fan bases. PGP
Not with a bang but with a whimper, as they say.
Will’s LinkedIn lists him leaving Grandex January 2019…RIP
Oh holy shit this is what I get for not having twitter. Thanks Daisy.
Hop over to his website. Bookofduda.com or some shit like that.
I give A&M fans credit for not being just merely obnoxious, but for being totally life-consumingly obnoxious.
They say “tradition”, I say cult
Wife is an Aggie. Can confirm that A&M is one big cult.
Whatever happened to Dick’s Picks?
“Basically what I’m saying is that if you’re not Alabama, don’t tout your fifth place finish in the SEC as a reason for why your team is good.”
I hate the SEC circle jerk. A response from a SEC homer to that statement would be that a fifth place team in the SEC would be in first place in any other conference. Right, because playing The Citadel in November really shows how tough your team is. Try venturing somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line to play and see what happens. I can’t believe that we had a conversation about including a two-loss Georgia that didn’t even win its conference simply because they lost by a close game to Bama. Literally the definition of a participation trophy.
UGA grad here and even I agree. Fuck SEC loyalty
^^
The fact Ohio State is not on this list makes it invalid.
Not invalid, just incomplete
As an OSU alumnus, I was shocked to see us not included. I love my alma mater and Ohio State football, but objectively we’re an obnoxious fan base. Only marginally better than godawful M!chig@n
Funny you say that because I really don’t mind Ohio State fans
You’re one of the few in the entire country. I fully admit our fan base is fairly arrogant, even if we don’t have the elitist snobbery of UM and Miami
Programs that are consistently top-tier (like Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson) earn the right to have arrogant fans and the rest of us just have to live with it. As an SEC alum, hating Alabama is my natural bent, but I decided that life would be easier if I became a fan.
To be honest, the only B1G that can back it up on the fball field is Ohio St
How you can be a biased Midwesterner Big 10 alumni and NOT say that Penn State is without a doubt the most obnoxious fan base in the universe is beyond my comprehension.
where is the University of Notre Dame?
Also, I can concur about M*ch*g@n alums. I went on a date with one over the summer and she talked about 95% about M*ch*g@n; I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Notre Dame and extra special credit to rabid ND fans who didn’t go to ND.
This reminds me of U$C and their shitty bandwagon fans that didn’t even go there. My favorite anti-U$C slogan is “I wear my UCLA shirt because I went to UCLA. You wear your U$C shirt because you went to Walmart.”
Irish Catholic townies who rock 90s ND starter jackets come out of the woodwork up here every fall
North Dakota State fans are some of the nicer people you will meet.
Everyone in that state is nice. Had a blast visiting a friend who went to NDSU.
Well that’s it Ladies and Gents. It appears it’s all over. Even Duda’s blog lists him as a former employee. It was a good run.
“Tennessee is occasionally good” is what you went with for your SEC hoops opinion?
Florida has been to 7 Elite Eights, 3 Final Fours, and won 2 National titles since 2006.
I get that you probably don’t really care but maybe next time try and at least half ass a decent write up with some facts beyond just who’s currently ranked high (UT).
He isn’t being paid enough to full ass it.
I’m a Miami OH alum in the south so I’m usually alone in my obnoxiousness. Love and Honor y’all.
I wish I could find some fellow redhawks in my city!