KP’s Korner: Fan Reform 2009

As dictated by

As we look forward to the 2009 season – an anticipated championship run and a slate of fantastic home games (Thanks Charleston Southern for making the trip!) – let’s pause to reflect and prepare to be responsible alumni and fans. Why should we engage in this exercise of self examination? Because if we don’t now, you’ll regret it later.

You know how people describe something and then say “if you don’t know who we’re talking about, then we’re talking about you”? This is how to avoid being the Old A-Hole Alumni on your next trip back to campus.

Less is More – While this is applicable to a lot of areas, specifically, it’s about your gear. The clothes, paraphernalia and memorabilia you choose to embarrass yourself with when you set foot on campus. You forget that you are now years removed from student status. That doesn’t mean that for every year gone you get to add a piece of loud goofy crap to your outfit. Remember when you were a student? The closest thing most students wore to a “Gator Game Day Outfit” was something that contained either Orange or Blue (or both if you were really sassy) and in rare cases, actually contained the word Florida or had a Gator emblem on it. Harken back to those days. You get some leeway; no one is thinking you are even a grad student at this point when they see you. So lose the Gator crocs, the Gator shorts, coaches Gator shirt, Gator hat, Gator sunglasses, Gator koozie, Gator belt, Gator watch, Gator pin and the “beat team x” sticker you picked up from the Cicerone on the corner. You can start slowly downsizing now; treat the next few Saturdays as a test. Wear all your gear and go out. The game day excuse won’t be available and booze won’t be flowing on the way to Home Depot, so take a look and see what reactions you get. Those are the same ones you get on game day; you just mistook the looks of shame and ridicule for appreciation of your zealous display of Gatorness. So tone it down, let the colors speak for themselves and when September rolls around pick one or two things other than your shirt and leave it at that. You’ll still be an embarrassment to current students, just less of one.

You Can’t Drink Like You Used To – Something happens to the liver between the ages of 18 and 25. That something is alcohol in mass quantities. That means what you could do and wake up without missing a step as a freshman, will lay your butt up for two days now that you are more years away from college than you spent in college. Beer in Gainesville is much less expensive than in your town. Football comes and you bring your hollow leg back to your old favorite night spot and try to recapture the magic of all those time you got hammered and went after it. First, you can’t handle your drinks like you used to. Second, it’s not chalked up to being young and in college anymore when you reek of Jim Beam and emerge from the bathroom with vomit stains on your shorts because you decided to play the role of T-Rex in Jurassic Park and roared into the toilet for the last 30 minutes. Third, puke and rally is the slogan of degenerates and should be followed by you handing your name and home phone number to the bartender to call your wife so she can call a bail bondsman to get your drunken butt out of jail in the morning. You just tipped your hand poker star and the bouncer and nearest member of law enforcement are timing the next 15 minutes in a bet to see if you’ll make it the full time before you are tossed into the patrol car.

No You Couldn’t – Much like your delusions of grandeur with drinking, you weren’t pulling them when you were in school. You aren’t going to now, and you wouldn’t if you were 18 again. The same reason you didn’t then is why you wouldn’t now. Everyone had their conquests, their stories and aspirations. Just because you rolled into town with six of your old buddies to relive your glory days and are now parked in an RV on someone’s lawn you don’t know and you are going to slay it tonight, take a deep breath first. News flash, no one is going to be impressed by your stories of how they are doing exactly what you were doing FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Keep it to yourself and to your friends, drink yourself into a stupor and stop kidding yourself that any current student has an interest in you or that you will survive a bar room brawl these days. Same logic applies there. Sit down, drink up, bunk up in the RV and stop kidding yourself and annoying the rest of the world tough guy.

You Are Not a Coach – We know you were here for Galen Hall, Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook and now Urban Meyer. We know you sat through the days when the team didn’t win and you stuck with them. We know that you have watched or been to every game, every year for the whole of your Gator existence. But the same thing that puts you in the stands is the same thing that should keep you from trying to educate us on why Tim Tebow should have thrown it instead of running it on that last play. You are not a coach. But yelling from your seat in section 65 row T is very helpful so keep that up. In fact, why don’t you just call Jeremy Foley and ask him to get you a set of headphones with a microphone that you can use to directly talk with Urban and tell him what you think? That would at least keep the rest of us from having to hear you swear at everyone from the ref to the coke guy when things aren’t going how you, the Vince Lombardi of Section 65, feel they should. Every passionate fan has an opinion and an outburst when things go awry. But this season, let’s agree to limit your nuggets of knowledge to those you came to the game with and let the rest of us swelter in the 90 degree 100% humidity festival of goodness that is a noon game without having the added joy of your unnecessary commentary.

Now get to work. Only a handful of Saturdays left before the new, less a-holeish you goes back to Gainesville.