re: Do you root for a “minor league” team outside the major confs?

Always enjoyed it when Rice had a successful season in baseball. They would provide very entertaining Tuesday games versus Texas and A&M, and I probably would've considered Rice as Texas's biggest baseball rival throughout the first decade of the 2000s.

Unfortunately their program has a long long way to go before it's back to where it used to be with Graham.

For football: Memphis and the service academies have been pretty entertaining to watch as of late