← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Life of the Mind, Florida State University

The [Jameis] Winston rape allegation coverage has changed this fan base. That year and half of constant negative publicity forced FSU fans to circle the wagons and become a unified force against those who would seek to discredit Winston, the program, or the University. They saw any attack on Winston as not just an attack to the individual player, but to the legacy of Florida State. With #FSUTwitter leading the way, they took on an “us against the world” mentality and embraced the evil empire role.

The most recent acts of violence against women by two FSU players has emboldened what was an already ill-tempered, constantly on-guard fan base.

… They still want to believe Jameis Winston is innocent and will likely defend Dalvin Cook until he’s either found innocent or some type of video shows up laying all doubt to rest of his guilt.

As easy as it would be for me to do so, I find it hard to blame them for that. Not for the acts of victim shaming or social media attacks by #FSUTwitter, which led me to comment that FSU has the worst fans in all of college football, but for the defense of a football team they hold near and dear to their hearts…

Unfortunately for Tallahassee and its citizens, FSU fans or not, it is our turn to take the brunt of a world that is quick to judge and slow to understand.

How quick we are to judge, how slow we are to understand, the confused minds of people like this writer. On one hand, a unified force of FSU fans together faces a hostile world. On the other hand, an ill-tempered and borderline-paranoid fan base, “the worst fans in all of college football,” lashes out at us. All or some?

And whichever it is, what precisely do we fail to understand?

The writer does not tell us. He simply tell us that FSU fans love their football team. Does he understand that you can love something unworthy of your love? Lots of football (and basketball) fans change allegiance when they’re so disgusted with a team that they can’t enjoy watching it anymore.

What am I failing to understand here? That there’s something virtuous about continuing to defend with angry belligerence a team that for ten years has been a scandal and a laughingstock? That there’s some atavistic FSU football-love that no one will ever truly be able to understand/explain/justify, but the rest of us have to honor it, and sympathize with the humiliation people who experience this love have to undergo?

FSU football is and has long been a contemptible program. If you can continue to love – passionately love – something this contemptible, there’s something wrong with you.

Margaret Soltan, July 14, 2015 2:09PM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=49084

One Response to “Life of the Mind, Florida State University”

  1. Sean O Says:

    There is a lot wrong with us as a country.
    See current love fest Trump is riding.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories