FWIW, I totally understand fans accepting the contexts for games and adjusting how they feel. I don't see that as being a fair weather fan at all. If 21 of your starting and 2nd string players are not playing, that massively changes the game.
Eagles fans with Kenny Pickett today still want their team to win. But they also understand reality. It's how Georgia fans will feel this week. And if a team were to rest all their key starters, that would dramatically change how a fan saw the game.
Since you used the “fair weather” reference and I think I was the only one in this thread who used that phrase, I will reiterate what I said just in the event I was misunderstood.
1) I agree 100% with
@Instinctive that OU’s performance against Navy is not indicative of their team’s talent or how they will perform next year. They played without a bunch of players who entered the portal, opted out or who were injured, and they have a bunch of talent joining the team next year, including possibly the best transfer quarterback in the portal. They will compete next year with Mateer and Arbuckle.
2) I disagreed with
@Instinctive that all non-CFP playoff games were garbage product. I also disagreed with his premise that none of the players or fans cared about those games. Lots of players and fans care a whole lot about many of those games, and a number of the games were both entertaining and exciting. Even with all the opt outs and transfers.
3) I don’t think his approach to OU’s bowl game is necessarily that of a fair weather fan. What he said that I thought sounded more like a fair weather fan than a dedicated fan of the school or the sport was when he said “I watch the things that impact our ability to win a title, which was every OU game, a bunch of games of upcoming opponents, and other top teams...
until in some seasons we lost and went out of contention. Then I mostly just watched socially.” Losing interest in college football when your team is no longer in contention for a title seems like a fair weather fan to me. And that’s totally fine of course. Tons of people are fair weather fans. I’m that way with a bunch of sports actually.
FWIW, though I didn't want to get into some adjacent discussion of what fair weather is...I always thought of it as people who only root for a team when it's good.
Since we're using me as an example here, in an effort to find a common definition...Idk where I fall on that scale, really, except that it's hard to say I'm not a fan when I may not have watched OU vs LSU but I did still follow every transfer rumor, coaching contracts, recruiting reports, etc during the same timeframe.
I can see where I may have given a certain impression. But I don't necessarily equate fandom with watching every game or thinking it's a good entertainment product. Try as I might to separate it out, my fall is less fun when OU isn't winning the conference. It's WAY less fun when OU isn't and Texas is. And October completely sucks the years we've lost that game vs it's beautiful for a full year when we win. When we fall to 5-1 instead of 6-0, my mood is materially darker for a couple days at least.
Would I go to the OU Bama game this year when we were 5-5 on my own? No. But when my college friends decide that's gonna be our annual tailgate, you bet your *** I'm there! Screaming and sighing with every play. That's what I mean by "socially."
So if we're using me as an example, I think "fair weather" is probably an inaccurate descriptor. I also think hardcore would be inaccurate. Compared to my wife, you'd think I owned the team. Compared to some of the Oklahoma Tshirt fans who didn't go to college but were born there and grew up there and still live there and wrap their identity in it? I'm a nobody.
I imagine on average, I'm probably in the 60th-70th percentile where 99th is as hardcore as it gets and 0th is totally fair weather. Of course, we are on a football based discussion board on the internet...I bet I'm closer to the 25th percentile of fandom compared to just the board.
Idk if that actually helped anything.
Michigan!
