Conference Pride

Conference pride makes for strange bedfellows. Particularly in College Football, where the perception of one's conference can have a direct effect on the altitude to which one's team can rise, the occasion often presents itself where you can find yourself rooting for a conference foe. As a fan of a team from the Big East--typically regarded near or at the bottom of the BCS auto-qualifying conferences--I root for other conference teams in nearly all OOC contests for the sake of the conference and, by extension, USF itself. At the opposite end of the spectrum, fans of SEC teams have taken to chanting "SEC!" as their team asserts its dominance in OOC matchups.

In the pros, I rather enjoy being a fan of an NFC East team and in the shootout between the Eagles and Cowboys this past Monday night, i took pride in being associated with our division, even providing a glimmer of solace in the fact that the Eagles lost. The difference? Rarely will you catch me rooting for division foes in the NFL. For all I'm concerned, those other jokers can lose all the rest of their games.