Honest question: for what? To feel more like you? we? belong to some kind of neat club?[/b]
Let me ask this another way: if the team ran the table and won the natty next year and there was no change in fan support, would you care? If you were at the game with 300 fans while Washington bent over Alabama in a sea of crimson would you enjoy the game any less?
You know where I'm going: Miami won 5 natties and were within a hair of at least two more while playing in a leased rust bucket of stadium in a bad location with fans who would show up for big name and consequential games only. Their fans also don't travel very well, and never did.
So I assume you're not saying that UW fans need to "step it up" to win the natty. Because I don't believe that to be the case.
That's literally why people follow college football instead of the NFL. If we're bashing pageantry and traditions I'm actually out
And yet, for reasons I don't really appreciate, the NFL dominates over cfb. You may not be saying that it isn't; your comment was a little ambiguous on that point.
In my travels, there are segments of some fan bases that really consume that part of it that you call "pageantry and traditions", and others that don't, and yet still things change anyway. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate tradition, but I certainly don't eat and breath it the way a lot of people do around here. I don't hate all things past ... if it were up to me, I'd go back to the traditional bowls and vote system because it was more interesting. But here we are anyway with NIL and the rest of it.
So, how do you connect "stepping up the fanbase" and the club to which some want to be initiated and pageantry and tradition? Does that mean that because Michigan's fan base is perceived as being, what, more fanatic, that they have better tradition and pageantry?