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Posted on 9/29/22 at 2:13 pm to Tornado Alley
Here’s the truth of the matter regarding Ole Miss fan support. Kiffin has been here long enough to know this. These things can be issues at all schools, and of course not all OM fans are like this, but I’m singling things out that are more prevalent for us.
OM fans have been heavily influenced by the perception of the school, creating a self fulfilling prophecy that sustains itself. OM fans are about the social nature of sports, and the pressure to appear cool can outweigh the passion because of risk of being seen as an over passionate goober.
So you pretty much are not ever going to get fans to stay for whole games against scrubs, or sell out the stadium against scrubs. You aren’t usually going to have successful mass collaboration events either. For example I highly doubt the stripe out will work because OM fans don’t care about wearing the right color, they care about personally looking cool. Also never going to get mass buy in over whatever chants they come up with.
The grove is a blessing and a curse. It gets us a lot of good press, but the logistics and personal sacrifice it takes to keep something like that going is always going to work in competition to the support in the stadium, and it also gives high incentive to bail on games early.
This is how OM fans are. I’ve been one my whole life. I used to get extremely pissed at friends for bailing from games early when I was a student. I have spent a lot of energy and countless arguments with people over this. But I finally realized that it’s not going to change and I have made peace with this.
There are also positives that come with the territory. The atmosphere creates a highly lucrative environment for attractive females to want to be a part of the scene. The school is heavy majority female and has been for a long time (I believe some of this griping of things we don’t do well are directly proportional to female involvement, so you need to ask yourself are you really ok with trading one for the other). Also we will show up spectacularly for events like Omaha and bowl games, more so than our fanbase numbers should produce, and I think this also plays into people wanting to be cool and seen at a game which is a defacto social event out of town. Also the feeling for helping us look good on a national stage has become somewhat of an expectation.
Above all, as far as Kiffin is concerned, the way our fanbase is creates a net positive environment for him to work in. The fans are passive enough to put up with less than stellar results he would produce compared to other schools. We can pay him as much as nearly anyone if we really want to. The overall environment is an easy sell to prospective recruits. I think he’s smart enough to recognize all of this and is stirring the pot, as he usually does, expecting it will probably make at least a small impact in guilting some.
OM fans have been heavily influenced by the perception of the school, creating a self fulfilling prophecy that sustains itself. OM fans are about the social nature of sports, and the pressure to appear cool can outweigh the passion because of risk of being seen as an over passionate goober.
So you pretty much are not ever going to get fans to stay for whole games against scrubs, or sell out the stadium against scrubs. You aren’t usually going to have successful mass collaboration events either. For example I highly doubt the stripe out will work because OM fans don’t care about wearing the right color, they care about personally looking cool. Also never going to get mass buy in over whatever chants they come up with.
The grove is a blessing and a curse. It gets us a lot of good press, but the logistics and personal sacrifice it takes to keep something like that going is always going to work in competition to the support in the stadium, and it also gives high incentive to bail on games early.
This is how OM fans are. I’ve been one my whole life. I used to get extremely pissed at friends for bailing from games early when I was a student. I have spent a lot of energy and countless arguments with people over this. But I finally realized that it’s not going to change and I have made peace with this.
There are also positives that come with the territory. The atmosphere creates a highly lucrative environment for attractive females to want to be a part of the scene. The school is heavy majority female and has been for a long time (I believe some of this griping of things we don’t do well are directly proportional to female involvement, so you need to ask yourself are you really ok with trading one for the other). Also we will show up spectacularly for events like Omaha and bowl games, more so than our fanbase numbers should produce, and I think this also plays into people wanting to be cool and seen at a game which is a defacto social event out of town. Also the feeling for helping us look good on a national stage has become somewhat of an expectation.
Above all, as far as Kiffin is concerned, the way our fanbase is creates a net positive environment for him to work in. The fans are passive enough to put up with less than stellar results he would produce compared to other schools. We can pay him as much as nearly anyone if we really want to. The overall environment is an easy sell to prospective recruits. I think he’s smart enough to recognize all of this and is stirring the pot, as he usually does, expecting it will probably make at least a small impact in guilting some.
This post was edited on 9/29/22 at 2:22 pm
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