re: There is this one poster of ours ...

quote:

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He thinks we should all hold hands on the rant and be nice to our superiors. It's the Old Carolina way of thinking IMO.

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... and I hate being an a-hole because I have so much fun and so much time on my hands. Hell, even if I am traveling I login to have fun.

I am usually loling at the stuff that goes on ... this place is classic awesome and fun. But when someone tries that old divisive crap it just gets a burr up my wrinkled old bum.

I can tell you exactly when I first noticed Carolina had a problem with it in the early sixties.

Marvin Bass was the HC - I ended-up getting to know him somewhat in later years. But he took over an absolute political mess within the athletic department. Back biting and in-fighting and everybody wanting to have their say about everything. No one was having fun and by '64 it was a total mess. No one could be trusted, Herman Helms had inside sources and he was constantly churning-up the crap. It hurt us in so many ways it was impossible to pinpoint ... even though Coach Bass was working his arse off to make us into something. Brought in some great players and sure as shite some back stabbing alumni or academic or staff person would leak something to The State or the Columbia Record and bam ... everything would fall apart. Internal turmoil constantly.

I started to write a book about it in the early 90s and go so frustrated in doing so that I just quit. Tom Price and I were always good friends - they did an article about me years and years ago when I was involved in something and I insisted they got Tom Price with me in the picture they used in the paper. Matter of fact I ran into Bob Gillespe this past weekend when he stopped by the Cockaboose and we talked about the old days ... he's going to get that picture of Tom and me so I can get it framed and added to my man cave.

Crap never changed through the Pepsodent Paul years but he halfway tried to get control of it.

Then came that bastard Holderman and Coach Carlen and Joe Mo ... and Holderman totally screwed Coach Carlen. I used to speak to Coach Carlen from time to time and he was never bitter - I miss that man. Miss Tom Price too. Was at both their funerals.

Coach Dietzel and I used to talk from time to time - he was a total class act. Total class act. But he used to tell me Carolina would never realize our full potential until the political crap and internal defeatist stuff stopped ... and he was right.

Then came the man that overpowered everyone and we can thank him for where we are today. He absolutely got rid of all the bad blood insiders that were giving away inside information and always out to cause problems for whatever regime was in place. He fired a ton of them and there was no easy doing that because of politics ... but he got rid of all the bad element. They were afraid of him - he could give a crap. He was strong enough to get the job done.

The last think remaining was our fan base. Our fans have always been back biters. The Internet was a major problem when it first caught fire. The usenets were full of us academia types and so many of them were anti athletics it was as if they were trying to tear us down. Some of us back in the 80s would trace them down and expose them for what they were - destructive. Then came the old Matt's Script Archives BBS and The Bailey Bros first board USCCocks.com. Plus we had a massive AOL Gamecock board in the old AOL 3.1 DOS system and a number of us just decided to fight fire with fire against the negative types and the bullshitters.

Before long we had the strongest groups on the Internet - we would circle the wagons by the early 90s and especially when the Tennessee fans would bring the crap - we would just all circle the wagons and rain hell on those bastards crashing their boards like the old VolQuest and the Checkerboard sites.

By the late 90s the board wars started and the shite that went on in those wars was criminal. I'll not even go into it but many of us pledged to never, not ever, support the FGF. It was total pandemonium and again it cost us because parents of recruits had started reading by then and it always looked bad so we, once again, started circling the wagons and demanding a united front in public.

It has worked since then. We'd talk crap to one another all we wanted on the private boards but on the public boards we decided to always, always, circle the wagons if another fan base lit-in on one of us ... and it has worked.

As I got closer to retirement and started to sell-off some businesses I decided hey, between checking my investments online, emailing my kids and grandkids, surfing around and doing whatever, I'd play around on the websites again. Problem is that none of them are really worth a crap ... except this one. This one is a fun mix. It's snarky as hell but well worth the daily visits. I laugh hard some times.

But then here comes the guy, and there is always one, that decides he wants to step in and jump on fellow fans and use the "you make us all look bad" phrase somewhere in his post ... there is always one and always has been since the beginning of the Internet.

They are always the worst because they actually see it as their god given mission to try to make other fans look bad in an effort to make themselves look good ... never fails.

We've got a good group around here. I've jumped in and fought the battles with some I have always agreed with ... but you'll never see me attack a member of the family on the main board. The one time I even came close was in a Cockyboi post where I typed, "He shouldn't have posted this but since he did ... frick all of y'all, he makes a good point in an off sort of way."

If we keep the wagons circled no one will want to frick with Gamecock fans. We're good people, as a whole, by nature. We're not Cocky, just confident and for the most part very respectful to everyone.

We're good fans individually ... as a united group we are untouchable. It's as simple as that and it has been since the mid 80s. Good gosh, some of the old usenet stuff on the GamecockFootball,alt ... it would turn your hair a different color. The taterheads were absolutely the worst because they outnumbered us by a 1000 and they had that asshat Tommy Crumpton I think his name was, the guy that started Tigernet, who knew all the ins and outs of how to cause us problems. It was a constant battle and we were always having to clean up the lies he would put out and then protect and lock down.

We've come a long long ways since then. I just don't want to see us going back to those days.