LSU fans are endearing. Florida and Georgia fans are transplanted suburbanites—they lack that roughest edge. South Carolina and Mississippi State fans are harmless. The list goes on. And while we don’t mean to say that Texas A&M and Tennessee are the two most grating fanbases in the SEC (that would be awfully convenient for our narrative)…they both sure are grating.
Tonight, Tennessee plays Texas A&M in Game 3 of the College World Series Championship Finals, a winner-take-all matchup which will not only crown a national champion in baseball but will end the 2023–24 collegiate athletic year. Two schools remain standing. It’s hard to think of many who are weirder.
Texas A&M’s disagreeability is simple and easy to understand. Texas A&M is a cult, and not only a cult but a cult of dorks, and not only a cult of dorks but a cult of dorks who don’t realize they’re dorks. The most telling description of Texas A&M is that the Yell Leaders still think they’re cool.
Tennessee’s disagreeability is more complicated. It’s hard to see why Tennessee fans should be more irascible than those of other schools in Tennessee’s region of the country. Are they, really? It’s possible they’re not. It’s possible my encounters with Tennessee fans haven’t been representative of the full sample. But when a fanbase still regularly brings up the 2021 Music City Bowl as an example of what they believe is a widespread conspiracy against the Tennessee Volunteers, something is up. Something is wrong there. “Now the tuxedos seem kind of fucked up.”
Maybe this is because I live in Texas and encounter them more regularly, but I think Texas A&M fans are easier to get along with than their Tennessean counterparts. The school is big enough that the nuttiness is a little watered down. The Internet™ knows the school is weird, and having accessed The Internet™, there’s a subset of students who know that it’s weird. Texas A&M fans are guaranteed to annoy, but they’re unlikely to try to fight you for saying something like, “Good morning. How are you?” That is a risky thing to say to a Tennessee fan.
Texas A&M is also less accomplished athletically than Tennessee. They’ve never won a national championship anyone really cared about at the time, and their one title people somewhat cared about (women’s basketball, 2011) is immediately overshadowed in this comparison by Pat Summitt’s excellence. Texas A&M is not entirely harmless, but they’re not as big a threat as Tennessee.
Where public opinion really swings towards Texas A&M, though, is that this is Tennessee baseball we’re talking about. As it goes in the pros, most SEC athletes and coaches are mercenaries. This is why we spend so much time talking about the fans. Comparing the players and coaches is like asking whether Ernst & Young or Deloitte has the more genial workforce. There’s probably an answer, but who cares? With baseball, however, the 2022 Tennessee team did so much to establish themselves as assholes (and dorks and losers, at that!) that their successors still carry that banner. Tennessee’s men’s basketball team spent the 2022–23 season siccing their seven-foot Serbian on unsuspecting jawbones, and Tennessee baseball is still the most unlikable program at this combative university. Respect for Tony Vitello has grown over the last few years, and the good-hearted approach to this series would be to hope he survives this randomness-laden tournament and wins the title he deserves. But that 2022 team was so delightful to hate that we don’t want to quit that yet. We want to see them lose again. And if we can’t see them lose again, we at least want to see heartbreak happen to someone who looks like them.
Texas A&M is probably a weirder fanbase. But in this setting, they’re merely weird. Tennessee is the one to whom we wish great sadness.
(The funniest thing that could happen here is Tennessee losing with the help of a terrible call. The funniest variant of this loss is one in which the umpire is later revealed to have attended Purdue.)
Etc.
- The funniest thing that can happen in the Stanley Cup Finals’ Game 7 is for the Oilers to take and blow a 3–0 lead. Apologies to nostalgists and Western Canada (except for Calgary—solidarity to Calgary), but it would be so funny.
- The second funniest thing that can happen tonight in the Stanley Cup Finals’ game 7 is for a group of Panthers fans to pour orange paint all over the Oilers’ bench while wearing shirts that say Just Stop Oilers. I am not pro-Just Stop Oil. I need to make that clear, because I’m not sure there’s a less popular group of people on this planet (a planet that group of guerrilla vandals is purportedly trying to save). I do, however, take golf unseriously enough that I loved the 18th green invasion yesterday. What I really think it teaches us is how high the ceiling is for streakers. Imagine a streaker at the Masters, and not only a streaker but a very fast one. He could go for miles!
- Nobody else knew that Jose Iglesias releases music under the name Candelita, right? And nobody else knew he hadn’t retired yet? And nobody else knew he was only 34 years old? The Gay Mets are, true to their name, masters of secrecy. (Credit for the Candelita revelation: New York Times.)
