re: Is it fair for Auburn fans to view themselves as the opposite of "gumps"?

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Remember how hard Bama fans were knighting for Joe Paterno and Penn State during that whole terrible incident?

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Many are frontrunning fans. That means what they want is for the best teams to stay the best teams and always do good.

But that is not just something tied to Bama. Many teams of top 10 traditional programs want the other top 10 programs to do well. I can't even tell you how many times I have dealt with OU fans dickriding some other big program. I understand it, if you have a superficial love of a sport than you want to see teams you are already comfortable with play each other.

To the credit of Bama fans actually, I think they aren't that bad about this. Honestly many Bama fans seem pretty secure about Bama's place and care less that Notre Dame, OU and Michigan do well. Bama fans seem to care about what happens to Bama and SEC before anything else.

Many have said on this very board that they could see A&M stepping onto a bigger stage, which is the very kind of program mobility that many frontrunning fanbases hate. That is why a Oregon, a Boise St or back in the day a Miami was the focus of so much hate- frontrunning fans that drive the sport don't like new faces. For all that Bama fans are, they are affected less by this than many helmet fan bases.

Tennessee is a good test for that now. Go look around at the forums of these top programs when they do some sort of thread that compares teams and very often people will come out of the woodwork to remind people that Tennessee (or Nebraska) was a national power and should still be taken seriously.

So many of these fans are threatened by the idea that a major power can die that they will deny reality. Penn St. was this at its worst, heck still many say they are a top 10 program right now today.

As a sidenote that is why what I want to see in my lifetime is the death of a major college football program. I mean, death as in no way to get back to a national title winning level because someone else is taking your historical talent/your edge and you are now top 30 program at best. I thought I would see that in Penn State, but the Big 10 is such weak shite and they have such a monopoly for a region of talent that they could always bounce back I feel.

If I can pick one program to die I would chose OU in a heartbeat, but if it has to been a fanbase I kinda like such as Tennessee or Nebraska then oh well. It would still be worth it to know that there can be some sort of program mobility at the top of college football. Give me a modern Minnesota and I would like this sport a lot more.