Down With Conference Loyalty

Rooting for your conference is dumb. There, I said it. It makes no earthly sense why you would suddenly do a heel-turn when the postseason (in any sport, but we’re specifically thinking about CFB and MBB here) begins and cheer on….Michigan State.

This phenomenon seems to have started with SEC knuckle-draggers and football. For what seems like forever – and in Bama’s case, across different generations – there would be a couple of dominant programs and then a bunch of middling to terrible ones. Then the bowl season would begin and Tennessee and Ole Miss fans would crow about the dominance of the teams like Alabama and LSU (and more recently, Georgia) who just spent three months kicking their asses all over the southeastern United States. This is a nice trump card to have, because when your up and coming Volunteers are beaten in their own backyard by Purdue, you can pretend it didn’t count just because you don’t want it to and turn your attention to how a program you have no connection to is doing in the college football playoff.

This weird conference loyalty nonsense (here at BS we call it “Yay conference!”) has seeped fully into Big Ten fans brains during basketball season. Maybe it’s the years of the Big Ten being among the best – if not the far and away best – top to bottom basketball conference in the nation. Maybe it’s the fact that the Big Ten, while sending teams to the Final Four pretty regularly, hasn’t won a national title since MSU’s in 2000.

Whatever the reason, at least once or twice a season, the debate re-emerges on Twitter and people start their lectures about how you should root for the conference because, well….I’m not really sure why. I’ll just say it – it’s a loser mentality. Hoping you earn a few morsels of respect because someone adjacent to you did something good is just….small time. It’s something you expect from perennial doormats in the SEC. Or from a program in Gonzaga’s conference. It’s lame. But let’s look at some of the potential arguments.

It's good for Purdue?

I’ve seen this argument more than a few times. That Izzo going deep and Michigan State making a Final Four is somehow transitionally good for Purdue. That you can point out to recruits that the Big Ten is where the deeps runs are made.

And yes, who among us hasn’t envisioned Matt Painter in a recruit’s living room saying something like, “And did you see the Spartan’s run to the Final Four? Well, if you come to Purdue, you can visit the Breslin Center every season and see their Final Four banners. Whattya think?”

I’ve seen people say the conference gets maligned in years like this one (2022-23) because it “wasn’t that good.” Thus, you should yell yay conference in March.

First off, who cares? Why do you care that some know-nothing schmo on Twitter said the Big Ten sucks? The Big Ten sends, what? Eight to ten teams regularly to the NCAA Tournament? I think the Big Ten’s status as a premier conference is secure. Hell, take a look at the Big East. They appeared to be on the brink of folding back when several schools defected away – and now there is talk of them having eight teams ranked to start next season. If that mess can survive, I don’t think you have a lot to worry about when it comes to the literal richest college sports conference in the country.

There are few joys that warm our cold black hearts (“CBHs,” colloquially) like seeing IU trip over their NBA-bound players while their fans point to banners from before their parents were born. Seeing Northwestern have its literal best season ever be a second place finish, a flame-out in the BTT and then a second-round exit in just their second tournament ever. Why would you, a Purdue fan, care that Chris Collins can’t take the Cats further?

There’s a certain fun to knowing a conference as well as most of us do about the Big Ten after watching far too much of it all season. You all knew Illinois was a fraud, right? That’s a lot more fun to snicker about to yourself as you pick them to lose their game than to talk yourself into cheering for Brad Underwood.

Isn’t it beyond funny that Fran McCaffrey is both an embarrassment on the court and has never gone to the second weekend in 27 years as a head coach? And yet there are people in the Iowa sphere who think he should stay. Come on, guys, that’s high comedy and you should be here for it. Not hoping he wins.

Bottom line, you really can’t call yourself a dedicated fan – a “die hard,” if you will – of a team if you want your opponents to lose every night you see them from December to, like, March 5 and then after that pull out your B1G pom-poms. It doesn’t make sense.

Thanks for coming to my BS Talk.