I am amazed at the number of badger fans that come on and comment and post here. Maybe I have less time than others (but if you ask my wife....she complains about how much time I spend on "that stupid gopher board") but I have never gone and posted on their board. Just out of curiosity, how many of you gopher holders do go on other team sites and post?
I don't post on other team's message boards, but I do read them from time to time, sometimes to see what their perspective is on a recently past or upcoming game against Gophers. When your team loses games, you have a tendency to pick it apart and say, "If this little thing happened/didn't happen, we probably win this game," but you don't really do that when you win. I was reading an Illinois board before our game against them, partially to see their reactions to the huge win over Indiana and to see what they thought about they thought before our game last week as well as our game earlier in the year, and they pointed out that we shot 60% from 3 against them while they shot 12.5%, and that if we each would have shot our season average they would have won, and stuff like that that goes in your team's favor, but you don't notice it because you're winning.
I also browse Buckyville from time to time to see what they're talking about and sometimes there's Gopher-related stuff on there that I read. I've also seen direct links from that board to ours, usually about how Gopherhole is just an absolute comedy goldmine. They seem to be very condescending toward us, and act they have owned us for all of time, despite the fact that it's been pretty much the other way around except for the last 15-20 years.
I was also reading an Iowa game-thread for their game at the Barn this year, and most of them didn't seem too happy for most of the game, even when they were winning. Then of course even after we had won, with a great atmosphere to end the game, instead of the obligatory "Fire Tubby" thread after every single loss, there was a "Tubby should have been fired if we had lost" thread. Gotta love Minnesota fans. It seemed neither side was happy after that game.
Sure... but my school doesn't have an ongoing, 50+ year history of losing because it's fan base insists on tearing itself and it's team apart instead of surrounding them with positive support.
This seems like a bit of a chicken and egg conundrum. Do we have a 50-year history of losing because our team's supposed fans rip them constantly, or do our fans constantly rip the teams because of their losing history? I do appreciate and an am somewhat jealous of the fact that a greater proportion of Wisconsin fans seem to, you know, actually like the team. Of course a lot of the fans that only rip the team say that they're tired of losing, and whenever we dare to say something bad about another team, they come on to tell us how much we suck and that we shouldn't say such things about other teams. But you have to wonder if they would really even like it if we won. We have fans that never post when we're winning, and only come on after losses to start "Fire (insert coach here)" threads, and then just like to remind us that we suck should we ever start to think otherwise. They never talk about the wins, they wallow in every loss, and if we ever start winning, they remind us that historically we don't win.
Went on a bit of a rant, but yeah, I know exactly the sorts of fans you are referring to, and I think they enjoy wallowing in the pain of defeat more than enjoying a win, and will quickly apologize for wins that they don't think we deserved. I really wish we didn't have so many of those fans. You should have seem them on the Gophers' Facebook pages after this last football recruiting class was signed. They saw 12th in the Big Ten and latched onto the negativity instead of actually looking up what that means, and that our class would have moved up to about 8th if had signed a couple more low-end 3-star recruits.