The College Football Fan's Dilemma: When Is It Okay To Root For Your Rivals

Or: Potentially Acceptable Uses of the Phrase "Go Auburn"

While Mr. Zhuang spent last weekend cheering for his Mighty Ducks of Oregon to defeat Broseph U (also known as the current residence of Joe Reefer (who did no cheering at all for his school)), I sat in my room for some quiet contemplation. With no specific rooting interest that weekend since LSU was taking some time off to get in nightclub fights over the weekend, I certainly had the time to think. So it was during that time that I puzzled over one of those eternal questions: who do I root for when a team that my team has beaten faces off against a team that has beaten my team? In other words, do I want my team's defeats to look more impressive, or their triumphs?

Of course, this is only a question because of the nonsensical lack of a playoff in BigTime College Football, so instead of proving everything out on the field, one must have to contend with impressing fallible human voters and cold heartless computers each week. And without spending a sizable chunk of change on hookers and blow and RAM chips, one must seek other ways to impress the voters. And arguments about strength-of-schedule seem to be the prime method of choice.



As for the question at hand, I suppose it's a matter of philosophy--do I want my accomplishments to speak for themselves, or be able to explain away my failures easily? Due to the premium put on losses in college football (with more than one pretty much guaranteeing an absence from championship contention), it would seem that the focus should be on the quality of the opponent in the losses. If your team battled hard against a great opponent, it looks much better than crapping the bed one week against Directional State U.

However, with a resume of a series of impressive victories, one could certainly argue that their team had performed admirably, and that their one loss to a mediocre team was a fluke. What we have is an aberration, not something around which one can build an argument. Say we take the inverse of the situation: your team loses one game to a quality opponent, but then all your victories seem less impressive as your quality opponent then proceeds to defeat your other opponents--you have victories over three- and four-loss teams over two- and three-loss teams as a result. What was once an impressive looking resume is now just a mediocre set of half-assed accomplishments.



So who do I root for? I'd still say you should root for the team you lost to, simply due to the scarcity of losses. Which means that the Kentucky Wildcats better get their act together and take care of some fuckin' business.