Thursday, June 26, 2008

Why do you care?

If you peruse the discussion boards enough, you will find that there is a sub-segment of Georgia Tech fans who really care about the fortunes of our rivals in Athens. You will occasionally find these rants from Tech fans about how the recent success of UGAg absolutely drives them to drink, pull their hair out and even give up sports all-together. I just don't get it. Well, let me clarify - I understand it, but I still don't get it. So here's my question - why do you care?

Here's my position on the mutts - I don't care a lot about what happens to them other than when it overlaps with the fortunes of Georgia Tech. I care how we perform against them head-to-head, but my feelings are pretty ambivalent as to what they do on their own. Am I upset that they made it to the College World Series final and almost won the whole thing? No. I don't really care much. There's a little part of me that was glad to see them lose, but not much. It's mainly that part of me that doesn't want to hear the gloating from them. Now, do I care that they beat us in the Regional to get there - yeah. But what steams me is GT's failure, not UGAg's success.

Do I care that their football team is getting major hype pre-season? Not really. Heck, the way I look at, it just means there will possibly be a lot more at stake for them when we meet in November. That's when the wins are the sweetest.

Do I care that UGAg's hoops team won the SEC championship out of nowhere? Not really. Honestly, it doesn't even sting that they beat us on our home floor. We did the right thing by opening our doors and I'm proud of our school for that over the results of the tourney. However, I'm using my brain cells to focus on where Paul Hewitt is taking us as opposed to the fortunes of the crew in Athens.

You'll notice that I rarely mention UGAg on this blog, while many of the UGAg blogs devote a decent portion of their weekly coverage to the Jackets. For me, one reason is time. I have 3 girls under 7 years old, a full time job, responsibilities at church, etc. I chose to focus my blog time on Georgia Tech sports - not UGAg sports. But mainly, I just don't care much what they're doing. I don't even spend much time figuring out ways to slam them. If I did, it would just invite the throngs over here to turn the site into a smack board, which I'm not that interested in. Even posting on this topic is likely to result in some non-regulars to make their way over.

Understand one thing though - I really don't like UGAg, and the basis for that is precisely my loyalty. Clean-ole-fashion-hate is alive in my heart. However, for me, it's about crossing paths, not what goes on when our worlds are apart. From that perspective, I'd like to see better performance from the GTAA. They've gotten the best of us recently. It's a fact. I don't like it and want to see us be more competitive.

However, bottom-line, their successes and failures really mean nothing to me. Does their success drive you crazy? Why?