If you’ve known me for more than about 30 seconds, you know that I’m a passionate fan of the sports teams from my alma mater, the University of Georgia. Right now, the Georgia Bulldogs football team is the hottest thing going. We’ve won two consecutive national championships, and we’re gunning for a third.
It’s been a heck of a ride these past three seasons. Since 2021, we’ve gone 40-1 at the time of this writing — that one loss was in the 2021 Southeastern Conference (SEC) Championship game against Alabama, and we went on to beat the Crimson Tide in the national championship game — and we’ve tied the SEC record with a 28-game winning streak.
This weekend, we play our in-state rival, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, a team that hasn’t been a formidable rival in recent years. When we beat the Nerds, I mean Yellow Jackets, on Saturday, we’ll hold the winning streak record on our own, and we’ll have had our third perfect regular season in a row.
It’s a bit of a cliché, but the old adage that “it’s hard to be humble” rings true. I really do try not to be one of those arrogant fans, although it’s not always easy. What bothers me the most is that a lot of our fans have become entitled.
Bear in mind that I'm not talking about fans who get overly excited when their team wins. If that's an issue, then I'm guilty as charged. I'm talking about the fans who have gotten so accustomed to winning that they get angry or fill up with despair when they lose or have a setback.
This Dr. Pepper commercial encapsulates the entitled fan in a humorous way:
Earlier this season, I sat next to a couple at one of our non-conference games. They were critical of everything we did, despite the fact that we were handily beating this “cupcake” team. (They even criticized the halftime show.) The fact that the people sitting on the other side of me left early and I was able to move down was what kept me from giving these two a piece of my mind.
Flashback: It's Time for Clean Old-Fashioned Hate!
Entitled fans can be insufferable, even when they’re rooting for the same team as you. These are the people who want to bench the quarterback or fire an assistant coach when we’re not dominating the game from the jump. This type of fan forgets that there’s such a thing as an ugly win.
One of the best recent examples of an entitled fan that I’ve seen recently was “Tyler from Spartanburg.” On Oct. 30, a man named Tyler called Clemson University head coach Dabo Swinney’s radio show with a rambling, testy rant about how poorly the 2023 season was going for the Tigers at the time. Swinney put Tyler in his place with equal testiness, and the team may have used the call as a catalyst for turning the season around.
“We’ve won so much that even when we — it used to be that the fun was in the winning,” Swinney told Tyler. “Now, even when you win, people like you complain and criticize the coaches and question everything.”
Fans can act entitled even when their teams are on the rise; the worst hate mail I’ve ever received as a writer came from a reference to one of our games from last year in which I referred to the 2022 Tennessee Volunteers as an "upstart team." It was a true statement; Tennesse hadn't seen the kind of success it was experiencing in some time, but that wasn't enough for one fan, who insulted me and reminded me that Tennessee won a national championship — in 1998.
Entitled fans forget that humility can come at any time. I lived through those late ‘80s and ‘90s Georgia Bulldogs football seasons where we were up and down and never consistent. I know that 2024 is going to be a difficult year for Georgia to sustain this level of success. I'm confident that we’ll do well, but just how well will we do and how much will we struggle?
A tougher schedule, more SEC opponents, and the unknown of the 12-team playoff gives us more question marks than I’m comfortable with. And don't forget that we'll graduate some players, while others will leave school early for the NFL Draft.
I'm trying my best to enjoy this ride while we're on it. I'm a ride-or-die Georgia Bulldog, and I'll support and be proud of the team win or lose — although it's a given that I prefer winning to losing.
Swinney spoke about the expectation vs. the appreciation. I want to expect my Georgia Bulldogs to dominate and win championships every year, but I have the appreciation that we’ve gone on an amazing run these past few seasons. Nothing is guaranteed in college football.
As entitled as Tyler from Spartanburg sounded, he did make a worthwhile point when he quoted Proverbs 16:18: "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." The next verse is an equally powerful warning: "It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud."
When your team is riding high, it can be easy to forget that it's not always going to be this good. A bad game, a bad stretch, or a bad season can come at any time. As a fan, it's important to stay humble because if you don't humble yourself, humility can come to you in the most difficult way.
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