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?

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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.

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u/dodoaddict 5h ago

there’s no billionaire owners to really drive

there’s no billionaire owners to really drive yet

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u/SkittlesLentil 3h ago

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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/humanist-misanthrope 4h ago edited 3m 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

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u/Plug_5 10m ago

*n't

FTFY

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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.

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u/savagemonitor 54m 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.