I was recently doing what all college students have perfected in our spare time: mindlessly scrolling through Facebook’s endless pile of terrible Buzzfeed articles/quizzes to entertain myself at how creatively stupid some of them are (do we really need to know which Star Wars character your poodle is?) when I stumbled upon an article that actually caught my interest. The tagline of the Lightly Buzzed article was that they had ranked the Razorback football team as preseason number one in “Worst Teams in the country”.  

Now being the raving lunatic of a Hog fan that I am, I decided to explore the article to figure out what writer I was going to have to hunt down and verbally assault in his office. As I read however, the premise behind the teams ranking became clear: it was not the program alone that was to blame for being at the bottom of the barrel, but the Hog fans religious/zealous/glass half-full expectations about the team’s chances. Strangely enough, I came to agree with at least the principle notion that Hog Fans come to expect too much of their mainline sports teams. Having grown accustom to success at the very upper echelons of the SEC, we fans have been spoiled into thinking it was a guarantee owed to us by Jeff Long, Brett Bielema, Mike Anderson, and Dave Van Horn. The fact of the matter is that Razorback athletes and personnel across ALL sports display their talents and sacrifice their time to achieve something truly great: win championships. That’s it. They don’t put their hearts into training and competition in order to cater to our expectations, but to satisfy their own competitive spirit as a student athlete. Therefore, as one of the responsible raving lunatics, I have decided to change my attitude for the upcoming year. No more laughing with my buddies at social media fights with Brandon Allen’s family, no more verbal outbursts when A.J. Derby gets the call, and certainly no more thinking I can coach/play call/be married to Jen better than Brett. From now on I will cheer for my peers on the field, on the court, or in the pool and appreciate the opportunity to see such high caliber athletes preform their sports at a very select level.I am going to learn to not focus just on football, baseball, and basketball, but to be a true Razorback fan to all the world class programs our athletic department has to offer (especially Swim and Dive, you ladies are the real MVPs). Hopefully if a die-hard fan like myself can change my outlook about Razorback sports, then you all can to. Let’s get back to being the best and Woo Pig Sooie.