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John the Husker fan (LJS)

chicolby

All-American
May 3, 2012
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http://journalstar.com/sports/huske...2779975f8.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

A nice piece, in my opinion. Many on here accuse me of being “super fan” so take it for what it’s worth, but I think there’s a good point to this article. Yes. We interact on a fan board. Yes, every team has fans that complain about a bad coaching decision or bad play on the field. But that’s everyone else. I think Husker fans in general should act more like volleyball fans.

Many don’t believe fans have an impact on what happens on the field, so how they think, talk and act doesn’t matter, but in my mind, it a) sets our team apart from others and b) does have an impact on recruiting and even the outcome of games.

Now resume to your regular bitching channels.
 
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http://journalstar.com/sports/huske...2779975f8.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

A nice piece, in my opinion. Many on here accuse me of being “super fan” so take it for what it’s worth, but I think there’s a good point to this article. Yes. We interact on a fan board. Yes, every team has fans that complain about a bad coaching decision or bad play on the field. But that’s everyone else. I think Husker fans in general should act more like volleyball fans.

Many don’t believe fans have an impact on what happens on the field, so how they think, talk and act doesn’t matter, but in my mind, it a) sets our team apart from others and b) does have an impact on recruiting and even the outcome of games.

Now resume to your regular bitching channels.

I just finished reading the RSS thread about this article... they have a completely different opinion than yours on this matter, but that is how RSS is. (Most wouldn't read the article because it was written by Sipple)
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Tweeting at players and telling them how much they suck is just dumb as a fan.

Of course we get frustrated when players seemingly make dumb mistakes, but the player already knows he screwed up and doesn't need a bunch of fans telling him all about it. Those types of things are probably partially to blame for the "us vs the world" mentality that FHCBP used with the players and trying to turn the players against the fans.

How do teams like Purdue, Baylor, Oregon State, Vanderbilt, Indiana, Illinois, etc have any fans at all that come to watch their games? Those teams have played a lot of crap football over the last 30 years for the most part and haven't won diddly squat. Do their fans boo every game and tweet at players at tell them how much they suck? (serious question)

Is it uncool to simply cheer on a team when they are losing and to cheer for the effort given by the players?

If the Husker football team sucked for the next 30 years, what sport would Nebraskans latch onto? Would we just not pay as much attention to sports since we don't have pro teams? Would we lose most interest in the University of Nebraska? Would people quit wearing red Husker gear everywhere?
 
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http://journalstar.com/sports/huske...2779975f8.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

A nice piece, in my opinion. Many on here accuse me of being “super fan” so take it for what it’s worth, but I think there’s a good point to this article. Yes. We interact on a fan board. Yes, every team has fans that complain about a bad coaching decision or bad play on the field. But that’s everyone else. I think Husker fans in general should act more like volleyball fans.

Many don’t believe fans have an impact on what happens on the field, so how they think, talk and act doesn’t matter, but in my mind, it a) sets our team apart from others and b) does have an impact on recruiting and even the outcome of games.

Now resume to your regular bitching channels.

I’d point to 3 distinctions between the football and volleyball fanbases:

1. The volleyball fan base is smaller, older, and far less active on social media overall.

2. Volleyball is high-profile in Nebraska, but still may as well be invisible when football is the hot topic. If the volleyball team drops a match, or gets off to a rough start to the season, you might see an article about it in the LJS. If the football team starts 1-2, it’s on ESPN, it’s the only thing they’re talking about on local sports radio, and it gets front-to-back coverage in the “Husker Extra.” Football fans get ribbed and trolled by opponents. Opposing volleyball fans are essentially nonexistent.

3. The volleyball team is an (almost) unstoppable death machine. It’s easy to be calm and supportive when you’re confident that they’ll figure it out in the end. For two decades of football, every minor success has been accompanied by a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s a line in there about football fans leaving when the team’s down by 20 in the 3rd quarter, and how the volleyball crowd doesn’t do that. Well, of course they don’t! What analogous situation does the volleyball team get into? Plus, volleyball’s a bit of a different animal, because you can get smoked in two games and be just fine as long as you win the next 3.

I don’t condone the way a lot of football fans conduct themselves when the team is struggling, but I think I can understand why they act the way they do.
 
I’d point to 3 distinctions between the football and volleyball fanbases:

1. The volleyball fan base is smaller, older, and far less active on social media overall.

2. Volleyball is high-profile in Nebraska, but still may as well be invisible when football is the hot topic. If the volleyball team drops a match, or gets off to a rough start to the season, you might see an article about it in the LJS. If the football team starts 1-2, it’s on ESPN, it’s the only thing they’re talking about on local sports radio, and it gets front-to-back coverage in the “Husker Extra.” Football fans get ribbed and trolled by opponents. Opposing volleyball fans are essentially nonexistent.

3. The volleyball team is an (almost) unstoppable death machine. It’s easy to be calm and supportive when you’re confident that they’ll figure it out in the end. For two decades of football, every minor success has been accompanied by a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s a line in there about football fans leaving when the team’s down by 20 in the 3rd quarter, and how the volleyball crowd doesn’t do that. Well, of course they don’t! What analogous situation does the volleyball team get into? Plus, volleyball’s a bit of a different animal, because you can get smoked in two games and be just fine as long as you win the next 3.

I don’t condone the way a lot of football fans conduct themselves when the team is struggling, but I think I can understand why they act the way they do.
My thinking is along the same line in terms of differences between volleyball and football. The biggest difference I see is volleyball, despite it's tremendous popularity among our fanbase, is a niche sport. A niche sport just doesn't have quite the pressure to be successful and fans I think tend to see the success of our volleyball program as more of a luxury and not something they can really take for granted. Hence, they don't get quite as down on the team when they do bad. I think our fanbase is proud of our volleyball program's success and are glad we have such a successful program, but if the program experienced a prolonged downturn, most of the fanbase would just shrug their shoulders and think "it was good while it lasted" and move on. You can't ask fans to feel the same way about football-the athletic program's cash cow and the sport that most people define Nebraska by.

I've always been a positive fan and never been one to criticize football players on message boards or social media and I would never walk out on a game early. So of course I agree with the idea that we wish there weren't fans like that. But it's just not reality to expect our football fans to start acting like our volleyball fans. There are just too many differences between the sports themselves and the expectations of the two for it to happen.
 
But we claim to be the greatest fans - yet we do nothing to earn that title.

Be different. Be a leader. Go against the norm.

But instead because we want to bitch, we excuse that volleyball is different. Tiring.
 
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But we claim to be the greatest fans - yet we do nothing to earn that title.

Be different. Be a leader. Go against the norm.

But instead because we want to bitch, we excuse that volleyball is different. Tiring.
Maybe some of us don't want the fake title of being the "best fans" and want a real title of "best team" which takes getting the right leadership and players in place. Volleyball's done it the last 20 yrs.....football, not so much.
 
But we claim to be the greatest fans - yet we do nothing to earn that title.

Be different. Be a leader. Go against the norm.

But instead because we want to bitch, we excuse that volleyball is different. Tiring.
Maybe people wouldn't mock you as a Johnny SuperFan if 99% of your posts weren't sanctimonious whinings about how much better fan you are than everyone else. It seems to be your entire reason for coming to this board.
 
But we claim to be the greatest fans - yet we do nothing to earn that title.

Be different. Be a leader. Go against the norm.

But instead because we want to bitch, we excuse that volleyball is different. Tiring.

I’m not bitching. I don’t go negative.

I’m just saying that people lack restraint, and for a variety of reasons football is far more likely to trigger bad behavior. I think it’s ridiculous the way some people act in the stadium or on social media. Some people just suck, though.
 
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Maybe people wouldn't mock you as a Johnny SuperFan if 99% of your posts weren't sanctimonious whinings about how much better fan you are than everyone else. It seems to be your entire reason for coming to this board.
Funny thing is, I live a positive life - I choose it. If that means someone mocks me, oh shucks.
 
Funny thing is, I live a positive life - I choose it. If that means someone mocks me, oh shucks.
So you find the negativity of all the inferior-to-you fans here absolutely exasperating, but yet you live to pick arguments with them? That doesn't make much sense.
 
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I just finished reading the RSS thread about this article... they have a completely different opinion than yours on this matter, but that is how RSS is. (Most wouldn't read the article because it was written by Sipple)
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Tweeting at players and telling them how much they suck is just dumb as a fan.

Of course we get frustrated when players seemingly make dumb mistakes, but the player already knows he screwed up and doesn't need a bunch of fans telling him all about it. Those types of things are probably partially to blame for the "us vs the world" mentality that FHCBP used with the players and trying to turn the players against the fans.

How do teams like Purdue, Baylor, Oregon State, Vanderbilt, Indiana, Illinois, etc have any fans at all that come to watch their games? Those teams have played a lot of crap football over the last 30 years for the most part and haven't won diddly squat. Do their fans boo every game and tweet at players at tell them how much they suck? (serious question)

Is it uncool to simply cheer on a team when they are losing and to cheer for the effort given by the players?

If the Husker football team sucked for the next 30 years, what sport would Nebraskans latch onto? Would we just not pay as much attention to sports since we don't have pro teams? Would we lose most interest in the University of Nebraska? Would people quit wearing red Husker gear everywhere?
I will add one point. VB is still at it's height. IF VB goes through what our FB program has, my guess is similar results.
 
"That happens in football. That never happens in volleyball."

Gee, I wonder why we have been critical of football lately, and not volleyball. Come to think of it, I don't remember many of us being critical in the newspapers during football '93 - '97 either. I wonder why?
 
But we claim to be the greatest fans - yet we do nothing to earn that title.
Nebraska fans claim this title because we're super nice to the opposing team. It's not claimed because of how we treat our own team though we do still fill the stadium even after seeing a crappy product on the field during a poor season.
 
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“Note that John the fan left the state in 1998 — a year after Tom Osborne's run of three national championships in four seasons — and returned in 2016. He paid scant attention to Husker sports while he was gone.”

GTFOOH.
 
I have no problem with bitching fans, negative fans, twitter trolls because the players choose this situation to reap the "glory" that D1 football provides, whether it is the prospect at millions, internet notoriety, or just the rush of playing in front of 90k. A player can get the "football" experience at doane, and a better educational experience at that. But they miss out on the "glory". The glory has a price, if you accept the jersey chasers, the draft prospects, and the accolades and life notoriety of being a husker, then you have to accept the negatives. All of these men are adults and by joining NU they have promised to create an entertaining enterprise that provides entertainment to millions. Good play provides entertainment, but bad play results in fans finding entertainment through negativity. As fans, our job is to keep division I football entertaining, because that is the separation between NU and Doane, allowing poor play , poor organization, and a lack of commitment, and still providing millions to coaches, and accolades to the players just results in the eventual destruction of the enterprise.
 
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