I am curious how a school can have "conference pride" while changing conferences every so often?

(08-12-2014 07:17 AM)TerryD Wrote:  I am curious how a school can have "conference pride" while changing conferences every so often?

As a fan of a school (USF) that has been in the Metro Conference, C-USA, the Big East, and now the ACC over the past 19 years, I can tell you it happens. Especially when the move is from a perceived lesser conference to a perceived better conference. The chest puffs out as you feel your school is movin' on up.

And even when you move down, like from the Big East to the AAC, after a year or so of groaning many fans start to see the alleged bright side and make lemons out of lemonade (that's not me, btw, LOL).

IMO, I think if your team is not in the hunt for a NC, you tend to naturally gravitate towards conference pride.

For instance, if your team is participating in a bowl game and your team has no shot at winning a NC, you reluctantly start to pull for your conference mates since conference records are calculated during bowl season. If your team's conference does well in the bowl season, in essence it makes everyone look good. FSU's and Clemson's wins over SEC schools and in the BCS bowl games did a lot for the ACC's reputation last year.

When you see a team like Northwestern earn 3X in BCS revenue over a team like Boise State simply because of the conference they joined in 1896 you begin to see the value of conference over team.

(08-11-2014 06:22 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-11-2014 05:43 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  Personally it is a foreign concept to me as I am a Clemson fan and anything another conference member does is detrimental to our goals.

My feeling exactly. E.g., last year when UCF won the Fiesta Bowl and other fans of AAC schools were slobbering about how wonderful this was for the conference, all I could think of was how much it sucked that our down-the-road baby brother had beaten us out of the conference title and had garnered national publicity for their big bowl win.

I rooted hard for Baylor in that game and root against other AAC schools every chance I get. I want them all to fail so that USF might succeed.

And that explains a lot about you and why you post the way you do about the AAC.

(08-12-2014 08:24 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  

(08-11-2014 06:22 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-11-2014 05:43 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  Personally it is a foreign concept to me as I am a Clemson fan and anything another conference member does is detrimental to our goals.

My feeling exactly. E.g., last year when UCF won the Fiesta Bowl and other fans of AAC schools were slobbering about how wonderful this was for the conference, all I could think of was how much it sucked that our down-the-road baby brother had beaten us out of the conference title and had garnered national publicity for their big bowl win.

I rooted hard for Baylor in that game and root against other AAC schools every chance I get. I want them all to fail so that USF might succeed.

And that explains a lot about you ...

er, what does it explain other than exactly what i said?

(08-12-2014 08:18 AM)perimeterpost Wrote:  When you see a team like Northwestern earn 3X in BCS revenue over a team like Boise State simply because of the conference they joined in 1896 you begin to see the value of conference over team.

Northwestern didn't "join" the B1G, they were a founder. Far be it from a founder to benefit from what they founded, eh?

BTW, don't confuse "team" with "school". At some schools, the team is tanatamount to the school and more fans take pride in the former than the latter. Not at Northwestern. They have a whole lot more to be really proud about than silly sports teams.

For people like me, who grew up in the age of Northeastern independents, this is a very good question and one that has long puzzled me.

I very distinctly remember going to the bowl game in Charlotte back in the early 2000s when PITT played Virginia. Charlotte is a very charming little town, BTW. I was very impressed with it.

Prior to that game, PITT sophomore WR Larry Fitzgerald informed the coaching staff that it would be his final game in a Panther uniform and that he was turning pro immediately following that game (he was a third-year sophomore). To punish their star player for his decision, the coaching staff basically froze him out of the game plan.

All season long, when PITT would get to ball inside the 10 yard-line, they would just throw a jump ball in the corner for Fitzgerald and he was basically unstoppable. Fitzgerald set an NCAA record for touchdown receptions in a season that year and a large part of that total were jump balls in the endzone. The Arizona Cardinals still regularly use that play every time they are in the red zone today.

However, in that game, because the PITT coaching staff was so pissed at Fitzgerald, when they got inside the 10 yard-line (as happened several times in that game) they refused to throw him the football. In fact, they would take him out of the football game altogether – thus removing him even as a decoy.

It was surreal.

The most knowledgeable PITT fans in attendance recognized what was happening at the time and were furious with then coach Walt Harris.

As the clock was ticking down and Virginia was kneeling on the football for a narrow win – I think it was 24-17 or 20-17 or something like that – the PITT fans all around me were utterly irate with their coaching staff.

I remember walking out of Ericsson Stadium just bitching about the game and about PITT's reluctance to use what was by far it's best weapon. I had never seen anything like that before or since.

However, as we were making our way out of the stadium we heard all the Virginia fans saying something that we did not understand. We knew that it was just three syllables and we thought it was a school chant or something. Only as we came closer towards convergence did we realize that they were chanting "A – C – C !"

I had never encountered anything like that before and it never would have even dawned on me to taunt them with a Big East related cheer had PITT actually used Fitzgerald and won the game.

After the game, as we were downing a pint or two and one of the many local pubs near the stadium (which is great), all anyone in my group of 12-15 PITT fans could talk about was the team's refusal to use Fitzgerald and the Virginia fans chanting their conference at us. It was just completely bizarre to fans of a team that had been independent for most of our lives.

However, over time I began to appreciate the Wahoo fans' perspective. Thanks to Roy Kramer and the advent of the BCS, we are now in an era where who you were affiliated with directly impacts your ceiling as a program.

So, now Indiana – which is never done anything in my entire lifetime – can still play for a football national championship whereas Cincinnati cannot. Wazzu, which is almost always horrible, is a "power team" whereas BYU – which won the 1984 national championship and almost certainly has a larger following than the other Cougars – is out in the cold.

There are many other similar examples and that is why conference pride has become so prevalent in today's college football. A large part of it is politicking by coaches, administrators, and fans to make sure that their P5 league isn't the one that is left out. It is also reason 10,974 why the playoffs should be at least eight teams and maybe even 16 teams. I can't speak for anyone else but I would like to see far less rah-rah BS and far more actual football.

(08-12-2014 08:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-12-2014 08:24 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  

(08-11-2014 06:22 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-11-2014 05:43 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  Personally it is a foreign concept to me as I am a Clemson fan and anything another conference member does is detrimental to our goals.

My feeling exactly. E.g., last year when UCF won the Fiesta Bowl and other fans of AAC schools were slobbering about how wonderful this was for the conference, all I could think of was how much it sucked that our down-the-road baby brother had beaten us out of the conference title and had garnered national publicity for their big bowl win.

I rooted hard for Baylor in that game and root against other AAC schools every chance I get. I want them all to fail so that USF might succeed.

And that explains a lot about you ...

er, what does it explain other than exactly what i said?

It explains that you are a normal college sports fan.

(08-12-2014 06:39 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  I never had much conference pride for football.

But I was a Big East basketball fan. Part of that is because my parents are from Connecticut and went to school in Syracuse when Boeheim was getting started, and my best friend growing up was from a Notre Dame family. So there were lots of Big East schools that I sort of rooted for individually. When they all ended up in the same conference I decided to become a fan of the whole conference.

If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't have been a conference fan.

However, even if I'm not a FAN of our conference, I always hope the rest of UC's conference does well. It makes us look better when we beat them.

I can't believe as a fan of a hoops school that I wasn't thinking about this, but it seems that there's always been a big conference affinity among Big East hoops fans.

(08-12-2014 07:14 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  No, because UCF success makes it less likely that USF will succeed. They are in our backyards.

Maybe it might make some sense for me to hope Houston or UConn does well because they aren't, but .... no, that doesn't work, since we are all positioning ourselves for P5 invites.

Sorry, but I see only downside to rivals like UCF succeeding. In every way - media attention, recruiting, standing among P5 - it hurts us. Plus, I just don't like them. I hope they go 0-13 this year.

Again, if all schools win all their non-conference games and then half the conference dominates the other half (and thus becomes ranked) AND on top of that USF goes undefeated and makes the playoffs, wouldn't that be a better scenario than what you're hoping for? The conference USF would be dominating would look great so the naysayers can't say they beat nobody and USF would be the leading candidate to be picked up by the P5 since it was flawless in the said conference.

When the networks started pushing the SEC.

(08-11-2014 07:01 PM)HarmonOliphantOberlanderDevine Wrote:  As an Army fan, I laugh at conference pride. Independence all the way. Win alone or lose alone.

Amen! With all the conference realignment, the SEC hype and the P5 vs. G5 crap, I find myself missing the days when programs like Miami, FSU, Penn State, Louisville, Pitt, VT, and WVU were independent. They would actually schedule tough games, too, unlike today's college football world where many P5 programs are content playing cupcakes OOC and hiding behind their conference schedule. One of my favorite college football games ever was when #1 Miami, the defending national champions, traveled to Provo and got shocked by Ty Detmer's Cougars. The chances of that game happening in this day and age are nil.

Sometimes I wish we would pull a BYU and go independent, but I'm not sure how financially tenable it would be.

(08-12-2014 07:17 AM)TerryD Wrote:  I am curious how a school can have "conference pride" while changing conferences every so often?

As a fan of a school that has searched its entire existence for a conference identity, I can tell you that I have no conference pride. I only root for other teams in the conference because it will help my alma mater's perception. So its still a self-serving interest in the end.

JR is correct in that it started in the south because of regional pride. The first big college football accomplishments in the south came during a period of abject poverty in the south and much of the region still lacked electricity and running water. The educational system was generally regarded as pathetic and something/anything was needed to make people feel good.

As for the rest of the country, conference pride existed to some degree with the Big 10 and Pac-8 and centered around a game in Pasadena.

The revenue explosion and media accounts of how many dollars leagues were making completed the process. Now if a team from league X seems to be better than a team from league Y the response is Yeah but league Y makes more money so its better.

It's hard to have conference "pride" if you're the lowest or one of the lowest rated conferences. Even so, there is some "MAC" pride due to most of the members being in the conference for a long time, and because as a conference the MAC gets belittled so much. So we kind of circle the wagons and try to enjoy what victories we can get. But I don't think any of the fans think conference pride supersedes team pride.

For the SEC, I suppose the pride would just be based on the success they've had in football, and being a part of that, even if only by association.

(08-12-2014 10:32 AM)stxrunner Wrote:  

(08-12-2014 07:17 AM)TerryD Wrote:  I am curious how a school can have "conference pride" while changing conferences every so often?

As a fan of a school that has searched its entire existence for a conference identity, I can tell you that I have no conference pride. I only root for other teams in the conference because it will help my alma mater's perception. So its still a self-serving interest in the end.

Yep. I root for Memphis at all costs, but I've seen how being a big fish in a small pond (Memphis basketball in CUSA) only brought us down. I pull for the AAC to win all OOC games and be competitive in conference.

(08-12-2014 10:05 AM)BoiseStateOfMind Wrote:  When the networks started pushing the SEC.

Its been around a while. I remember the SWC schools taunting the Razorbacks with it when they announced back in 1989 that they were heading to the SEC. And that next to last year in the SWC, they lost a lot of games, so there were a lot of SEC-SEC-SEC! chants in Texas stadiums (and Fayettville).

(08-12-2014 10:13 AM)BoiseStateOfMind Wrote:  

(08-11-2014 07:01 PM)HarmonOliphantOberlanderDevine Wrote:  As an Army fan, I laugh at conference pride. Independence all the way. Win alone or lose alone.

Amen! With all the conference realignment, the SEC hype and the P5 vs. G5 crap, I find myself missing the days when programs like Miami, FSU, Penn State, Louisville, Pitt, VT, and WVU were independent. They would actually schedule tough games, too, unlike today's college football world where many P5 programs are content playing cupcakes OOC and hiding behind their conference schedule. One of my favorite college football games ever was when #1 Miami, the defending national champions, traveled to Provo and got shocked by Ty Detmer's Cougars. The chances of that game happening in this day and age are nil.

Sometimes I wish we would pull a BYU and go independent, but I'm not sure how financially tenable it would be.

If I could rep you, I would. I believe, the sport would be better off with more independent teams. There is nothing more annoying than seeing the bottomfeeder of a conference boasting about the top teams' success in their conference. That team won the game, not the conference.

(08-12-2014 10:32 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  JR is correct in that it started in the south because of regional pride. The first big college football accomplishments in the south came during a period of abject poverty in the south and much of the region still lacked electricity and running water.

Perhaps my memory just doesn't go back far enough (circa 1970), but the first real example of overt, public conference pride I can think of was the Big East in basketball during the 1980s. Even Georgetown, which was famous for its "us against the world" team attitude, took great pride in waving the Big East banner, it was one thing us and Syracuse could agree on, LOL.

I never saw overt SEC stuff until the late 1990s.