re: Which is WORSE? Bandwagon fans or Sidewalk fans

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There's an enormous fallacy, though, in tarring them with that brush when you could just as easily tar alumni/students with the same brush. Are you one of the frat guys at Death Valley tossing piss balloons? If not, you certainly don't want to be treated like them. The same applies to sidewalk fans.

I can't entirely disagree with you with regards to the 'respect' issue, though I think you couch it wrong. It should be that they should feel the pressure to uphold the image more than alumni, not because they're sidewalk fans but because alumni have more vested interest in and thus, theoretically, more instinctive protectiveness of their school.

Even so, you're talking about practical applications of a topic that is essentially theoretical. I'm not going to grab a sidewalk fan by the shirt and demand that s/he prove respect. I'm just going to assume s/he has respect until proven otherwise. That doesn't mean I don't value the reputation of Vanderbilt (for my own selfish purposes, at that) but I also don't look down on people who didn't attend but still cheer for the Commodores (both of them, one in Nashville, one in Canberra, Australia, the last time ESPN did a poll.) They don't have my vested interest, but they're perfectly capable of loving the team and following it just as well as, if not better than, I do. Hell, my mom attended Vandy and she couldn't name the current coach. My little sister didn't and she knows everything about the team. It's just as silly to look down on someone for not attending your school as it is to look down on someone attending a school with a worse football team than yours. Either way, it seems unnecessarily condescending, imho.

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