r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

4.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

267

u/Badloss 9h ago

I've been a lifelong Patriots fan (yes, even in the Before Times when they were a joke) but there is a weird parasocial/religious nature to college fandom that doesn't translate to pro sports.

I love my pro teams but Penn State people genuinely attached religious / family level status to Paterno. I think it's disappointing that Bill Belichick is kind of trashing his legacy while running around with a 24 year old but I don't feel the bone-deep betrayal that they felt

125

u/DeckFisher 9h ago

I think it’s just because college fandom feels so much more personal. Most college fans are fans of that school either because they live in/grew up in the area or actually went to the school. Plus there’s no billionaire owners to really drive home the point that the team doesn’t actually belong to the fans. They feel like their college team represents them on a much more personal level.

5

u/dodoaddict 5h ago

there’s no billionaire owners to really drive

there’s no billionaire owners to really drive yet

5

u/SkittlesLentil 3h ago

There's plenty of billionaires that have put enough money into the school/team to effectively become owners

2

u/savagemonitor 1h ago

Phil Knight basically owns the University of Oregon to the point that it's nicknamed "University of Nike". Ironically, one of the reasons he's so invested in the football team is because his brother-in-law pissed him off after Oregon State beat UO in the early 00's (Phil's brother-in-law is an OSU alumnus).

5

u/Irregular_Person 5h ago

they also don't trade players every 2 seconds. That's one of the things that kills pro sports to me. You're cheering for a brand, not a team.

7

u/capiscone 3h ago

Eh they kinda do now. With the transfer portal and NIL stuff. Now players who signed pro deals trying to come back or go to another school for a 5th year.

0

u/KINGGS 3h ago

What do trades have to do with any of this? It's not like if they banned trading / free agency then the roster would stay stock still forever. Players retire, and new players are drafted in every year.

You were always cheering for the brand, whether you want to see it that way or not. Especially when you're not considered a good fan if you change favorite teams.

2

u/LurkerZerker 3h ago

I think the point is that the turnover rate for most players os so high these days that you're roting for a whole new cast every two seasons, with the exception of maybe a single franchise player per team. It's hard to get attached to personal stories of players improving their game over years or forming into high-performing duos on the field or whatever when they don't spend much time on the same team before being traded or dropping into free agency.

1

u/KINGGS 2h ago

The turnover rate of the most important players on the field is far lower. I don't think anyone who seriously watches the sport of football would come to these conclusions, anyway.

The average football team stays pretty similar, especially at the top positions in 3 year cycles. Oddly enough, that also happens to be the average length of an NFL career.

Big players spend 5 years at minimum on their first team. Well run franchises retain their biggest players usually for longer than that, even.

But, in any case, football is a team sport and rooting for a team is inherently rooting for a brand and always has been.

1

u/humanist-misanthrope 4h ago edited 4m ago

Penn State and all other college teams aren’t going to up and move to a new city/state in the middle of the night. They either exist where they are or they stop existing (meaning the college shuts down or shuts down its program). I don’t have any fear that USF is going to move to Nebraska or Arkansas. Although if they moved to San Francisco it would be amusing.

Edit: typo

•

u/Plug_5 11m ago

*n't

FTFY

1

u/derioderio 4h ago

Not really a sports guy myself, but as a Mormon I know a lot of die-hard BYU fans. More interestingly though, I know one guy who is completely estranged from the faith and wants nothing to do with it, but is still a super die-hard BYU fan: he watches every game of theirs for multiple sports (not just football), has lots of decals on his car, half of his wardrobe is BYU paraphernalia, regularly travels to attend games even though we doesn't live anywhere near Utah, etc.

•

u/savagemonitor 55m ago

Plus there’s no billionaire owners to really drive home the point that the team doesn’t actually belong to the fans.

Phil Knight has been trying to buy a college football championship trophy through the University of Oregon since the early 00's. In fact, Nike's relationship to UO is so problematic that in the 00's the NCAA had to write a rule that companies couldn't provide prototype equipment to a single team in a game. This was after Nike loaned prototype cooling gear to the UO team at, IIRC, a game in Arizona. I wouldn't be surprised if Phil is personally footing the bill for UO's football team with NIL and direct payments being allowed.

You will also see that pretty much every building of importance is named after someone in Phil's family should you go to the University of Oregon campus in Eugene. The funny thing is that UO is incredibly liberal compared to OSU yet no UO fans have an issue with this.

17

u/ArenSteele 7h ago

McGill University Religious Studies department used to have a course on sports fandom as a cult. They probably still do

2

u/NordWitcher 7h ago

People want to belong. It could be anything really. The place they go to find their community. Some just happen to find it in a college sports team.

9

u/Potato_Pristine 6h ago

I dated a woman whose family (including her) were diehard Penn State fans. When the Sandusky and Paterno stuff came out, they were full-on, flat-earth-level deniers about the whole thing. It was nuts.

16

u/The_Salacious_Zaand 8h ago

What's really weird is the number of people who are die hard fans of college sports but have no connection to the school, aside from maybe living in the same state. I just don't get it, but I went to a school that jokes about not even having a football team.

2

u/KillYourUsernames 3h ago

Part of this is regional and part of it is just that the teams are often more fun to watch. College football is enormous in the south. If you're from Alabama it's not hard to see why you'd care more about college football than pro.

2

u/AUsernameThatIsTaken 3h ago

Notre dame has entered the chat

15

u/xPhilt3rx 7h ago

There’s no harm in an older man dating a 24 year old. There is reprehensible harm in turning a blind eye to what Sandusky was doing. Joe Paterno allowed children to be damaged for life.

4

u/Badloss 7h ago edited 7h ago

Again I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm commenting on how Penn state fans have a parasocial relationship with their sports programs that pro team fans don't seem to share.

If it makes it easier to understand, Aaron Hernandez was arrested for murder when he was on the Patriots and the fandom immediately dropped him. People were disappointed but they didn't feel like their own family member did something unforgiveable, there were no rallies in support of him like there were for Joe Paterno. People felt connected to Joe Paterno in a way that I don't see outside of college football.

4

u/galagapilot 7h ago

#JoeKnew

1

u/unassumingdink 7h ago

I don't know, that shit is like the mother of all age gaps. Or possibly the great-grandmother of all age gaps.

3

u/EconomyOk2490 7h ago

I mean if it helps deepen the betrayal feeling, its not unbelievable got a handy with Kraft from a trafficking victim

Just doing my part

22

u/No_Argument_Here 8h ago

but I don't feel the bone-deep betrayal that they felt

Well, yes, because one is a consensual relationship with an adult woman and the other is RAPING CHILDREN. The fuck

19

u/Badloss 8h ago

Joe Paterno never raped children, but that's not really the point regardless. The parasocial relationship is what I'm comparing here. I do not view professional sports figures as members of my family or religious-adjacent objects of worship, but college sports communities often do engage in this

•

u/yrogerg123 56m ago edited 50m ago

>Joe Paterno never raped children

The closest thing to actually raping children is knowing somebody is using the power of your organization to systematically rape children and using your power to cover it up.

If anything, it's worse than a private citizen who is a pedophile. I'm not even really exaggerating here, Sandusky did this shit for decades because Paterno enabled him. I don't think Sandusky would have nearly the access he did to his prey if Paterno didn't shield him with the Penn State badge. Paterno is a level of evil that is hard to articulate.

It's similar to the Cardinals and other seriously powerful people in the Catholic church who actively covered for and enabled pedophile priests instead of excommunicating them and turning them over to authorities to receive the punishments they deserved. Protecting and enabling evil within an organization is worse than individual evil, because the scale and access to vulnerable people is so much larger.

•

u/Badloss 47m ago

I'm not sure who you're trying to talk to here but I don't think it's me, I agree with all of this and it's not relevant to any of the points I was making

1

u/AUsernameThatIsTaken 3h ago

What you’re writing makes sense. People are adding small deviances from your point and I appreciate you keeping a tight scope

3

u/wackychimp 6h ago

College fans have a shared origin story. Not only do you love the team (like you would in Pros) but you also likely love the campus, surrounding town, etc. You also came into your own as an 18 year old on campus, met lifelong friends, maybe even met your spouse there.

You also share that with the players. They went to the same classroom buildings, partied in the same dorms, bars, campus quads, as you did.

3

u/TheseusOPL 1h ago

The difference is in your first sentence. You are a Patriots fan, someone who went to Penn State would say they are a Nitany Lion.

This mostly is for alumni, etc, but it often continues with families.

2

u/JohannesVanDerWhales 1h ago

Vintage Gulf War era Patriots joke: "Did you hear the iraqis have a new plan to win the Gulf War? Yeah, they decided to shape their Scud missiles like a football so the Patriots can't catch them!" Yes I remember the before times.

1

u/TeacherPatti 9h ago

You are right. I live in Ann Arbor, MI, but am not a U of M fan.

•

u/DaMercOne 27m ago

College fans also get more emotionally invested because there are more sports involved, so it’s that much more a part of their life.