VFL-82-JP
Bleedin' Orange...
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2015
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...if you cry for coaching changes during the season.
I can hear the whining now. "Oh, you're saying we're not fans if we're critical of the coach, of the players, of the program, we're not allowed to be objective / honest / straight then, huh?"
No, that's not it at all. Your critical reasoning skills can remain intact. You just gotta know when to zip it. You gotta know that there are appropriate times, and inappropriate times, for your little fan-meltdowns. Put simply: you are expected to support your program when it is in the middle of the campaign. That's all.
There is PLENTY of time to talk about firing people and what players "suck" and who can't call plays worth a damn and who can't throw in the eight months of each year that football is not being played.
But when we're in the middle of the campaign, where there are only 6 days -- 144 hours -- between efforts, when every second and every spark of energy is at its greatest possible value, that is NOT the time to take a pause to rant about fahring the coach because you're smarter than him.
Look, here's how it works, or how it should work: come the first day of the season, we're all in. This is our coach, this is his staff of assistant coaches, and these are our 100 or so players. Let's play. And then we support them, through thick and thin, all the way through. Save the rancor for later, these are OUR guys (I mean the coaches, too). These guys are bleeding orange for us and our university and our state. So we're theirs in return, as long as the season lasts.
So put your belly aches on hold, or jot them down in notes to yourself to remember later, come January, come the long off-season. Come winter and spring, we can wallow in recrimination, we can insult and dissect, we can eviscerate and excoriate to our evil little hearts' content. The long, endless off-season is tailor-made for that kind of doubt and destruction.
During the season, be true fans of the Volunteers...be fanatic about them...support them through the thick AND the thin, through the ups AND the downs. Or go support some other team, if you can't do that. I hear Alabama's fan base welcomes this kind of knife-in-the-back "fandom."
There you go, there's an easy target for you 40% of VolNation who really aren't Tennessee fans, but are instead fans of yourselves and your own egos. Have at me, flame away.
But deep down inside, those of you who rant the most, you know I'm right. This note makes you uncomfortable for a reason.
Learn how to be a better fan of the Vols, or go somewhere else.
That's how I see it.
I can hear the whining now. "Oh, you're saying we're not fans if we're critical of the coach, of the players, of the program, we're not allowed to be objective / honest / straight then, huh?"
No, that's not it at all. Your critical reasoning skills can remain intact. You just gotta know when to zip it. You gotta know that there are appropriate times, and inappropriate times, for your little fan-meltdowns. Put simply: you are expected to support your program when it is in the middle of the campaign. That's all.
There is PLENTY of time to talk about firing people and what players "suck" and who can't call plays worth a damn and who can't throw in the eight months of each year that football is not being played.
But when we're in the middle of the campaign, where there are only 6 days -- 144 hours -- between efforts, when every second and every spark of energy is at its greatest possible value, that is NOT the time to take a pause to rant about fahring the coach because you're smarter than him.
Look, here's how it works, or how it should work: come the first day of the season, we're all in. This is our coach, this is his staff of assistant coaches, and these are our 100 or so players. Let's play. And then we support them, through thick and thin, all the way through. Save the rancor for later, these are OUR guys (I mean the coaches, too). These guys are bleeding orange for us and our university and our state. So we're theirs in return, as long as the season lasts.
So put your belly aches on hold, or jot them down in notes to yourself to remember later, come January, come the long off-season. Come winter and spring, we can wallow in recrimination, we can insult and dissect, we can eviscerate and excoriate to our evil little hearts' content. The long, endless off-season is tailor-made for that kind of doubt and destruction.
During the season, be true fans of the Volunteers...be fanatic about them...support them through the thick AND the thin, through the ups AND the downs. Or go support some other team, if you can't do that. I hear Alabama's fan base welcomes this kind of knife-in-the-back "fandom."
There you go, there's an easy target for you 40% of VolNation who really aren't Tennessee fans, but are instead fans of yourselves and your own egos. Have at me, flame away.
But deep down inside, those of you who rant the most, you know I'm right. This note makes you uncomfortable for a reason.
Learn how to be a better fan of the Vols, or go somewhere else.
That's how I see it.