Fanhood discussion- what is considered sidewalk/bandwagon?

Real Fans = Alumni

Sidewalk = People who didn't go to school there but still cheer for the school even in bad times.

Bandwagon = People who cheer for the school when they are doing good and are no where to be found in the bad years.

A bandwagon fan is basically a casual sports fan. They pick a team that will be engaged in the advanced stages of the season and enjoy the ride. If I was getting into a sport I didn't know much about, like golf, I would follow a player that played advanced tournaments and won them in order to get a better understanding of the sport.

A sidewalk fan is a person with no real affiliation with a program who unilaterality decides despite this lack of affiliation they are part of the program. This is MUCH MUCH worse than a bandwagon (though they can overlap) because it creates a disconnect of public representation.

Now please note, I don't think if you didn't attend a university then you are a sidewalker. I believe if you have any strong affiliation- you pay to send kids there, you have donated large amounts to the program, by marriage or family you have strong ties to the program, etc.- then you are not a sidewalker.

To me a sidewalker is a fan who picks a team due to being in the same state or area, and will refer to that team as a "we" despite these lack of affiliations or even attending a significant number of games in person.

And even then, sidewalkers aren't bad. They only get back when they feel empowered by this arbitrary affiliation and they decide to talk shite to fans of other teams who are real fans with real ties to their program.

In those cases, sidewalk fans can completely go frick themselves.

Meh. Sidewalk fans pay the bills

Former Student here. DGAF about how many sidewalk/tshirt/bandwagon type fans any school has.

It's irksome when those types of fans try to run academic smack, though.

The distinction that matters to me is whether or not you care about the school. That is the biggest difference between most alums and most sidewalk fans.

If you have tons of LSU fans in your family and grew up loving LSU and circumstances led you elsewhere, you likely still care about LSU for things other than football (or, of course, baseball).

But most sidewalk fans don't care about that. They don't know who the President of the university is and they don't know what the struggles are that the university is confronting. They don't know about a lot of the non-sports traditions or care much about academic reputation.

That said, I'll certainly go to a bar with sidewalk AU fans and carry on and treat them like alum-fans. But on the "other stuff" which is 50% or more of what being an AU fan/person is about to me personally, we won't have that in common.

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Whatever lets you sleep at night sidewalker. Here's an idea! Why not cheer for the school you actually attended?

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I do cheer for them. I also cheer for LSU. This is going to sound weird, but I chose my college based off things like academics, tuition expense, and available programs. My sports fandom wasn't a factor in it.

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Even the alums are t shirt fans at A&M

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This makes no sense.

Also, you've trotted out that line before, iirc

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How is this any different from being a fan of a professional team?

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Why are college sports treated differently than minor leagues? Same reasoning.

The alums create a connection that is the basis of everything. NFL Europe or the XFL did way worse than college football. It is not a pro sport, it is a marketing arm of a university.

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There is way more depth to supporting a college, especially as an alum, than there is to supporting a pro sports team. I'm not saying we're better than pro sports fans (of which I count myself), but there is more to it.

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Agreed.

That's not to discount the importance/fandom of other types of followers of said school, but it's usually a different type of connection.

There are always exceptions, though.

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If so I don't remember.

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I think I confused you with a different poster. My apologies

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I thought A&M people acknowledged they break with most SEC schools on the t shirts to games thing (especially female Aggies).

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In that we don't really adhere to a gameday dress code as a school? Yeah, probably.

Sorry, thought you were going somewhere else with your earlier post