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I miss getting up early and tailgating outside the Swamp.  My friend and I started small and gradually grew it to a respectable effort.  We even ran an extension cord and plugged into the law school for some power.  Burgers & dogs turned into steaks, wings, stew....he even started making his own BBQ sauce.  
Noon games were meh, because we'd be out there at 7am setting up - making it all nice for the lady friends to arrive later and be comfy.
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Living across the country, I tend to watch every game live.  I turn down invitations to normal things I do often, but if it's unique or important to a friend, I have no problem watching the game later.  I kind of enjoy it, speeding through the commercials and what-not.
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The Zook years weren't great, but that's when I had front-row season tickets with the wig and face paint.  Since UM left, none of the HCs have panned out, but they've literally all had a 10-win and/or East title, so it hasn't been all bad.  None of them seem able to sustain success.  
I doubt I'll ever draw that line, though.  Even if we stink or are almost certainly going to lose, I want to see HOW it happens.  Was it close and got away?  Was it turnovers?  How was the effort?  The Vanderbilt game was what all Gators fans worry about - that lethargic noon Vandy road game.  This team wasn't good enough to go through the motions like many a past team was.  So it was a loss.  It was gross.  And even though EVERYONE in Gator Nation knows to be wary, it still bit us in the ass.
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Not fun stuff, but there's always the next game...

I remember as a kid looking at the sports section of the Sunday paper, they'd have B&W photos of the key plays in a game.  There was a special sports section just for college football, it was lengthy.  The reason?  Nearly every game was only on radio.  Maybe 1-2 times a year my team would be on TV, which was a 20" or so "color" TV where I could never get the grass color right.  This has changed massively over the years of course, and now I can sit home and watch in HD with my own sofa and drinks and whatevers.  And after market tickets to any significant game is $200-800 for nose bleed seats.

I'm just not interested in spending $300+ for bad seats any more or going to see them pound "Sanford".

Obviously my line in the sand is well known. 

That said, I will state that I may have confounding factors that are different from some of you (and the same as others). 

After my time at Purdue, I moved 2,000 miles west. As a result, I was basically shut off from any in-person interaction with the program. I saw one game in the mid 2000s during the 2-year stretch I lived in Atlanta and came up to see college buddies. I ended up seeing an away BBall game @Northwestern one time when I came back on a business trip. I took my wife to the Foster Farms bowl when Purdue came out west, and took her to a Purdue home football game in 2019 when we scheduled a vacation to Chicago. 

Those are literally the only four in-person Purdue athletic events I've attended since 2000. 

So what does that mean? Well, I described that a Purdue win for me became a relief, while a Purdue loss was a disappointment. Hence, I *never* got the upside of the equation. The few things I could really point to were the Purdue wins vs OSU in 2009 and 2018, and the Foster Farms Bowl which was a win I attended in person. 

Had I truly been somewhere that I felt the community of other Purdue fans, I might have enjoyed wins more, and it might have made the disappointments more tolerable. But seeing Purdue win a meaningless conference game against the Illini from my living room that kicked off at 9:00 AM here on the West Coast, well, it didn't excite me much. But seeing Purdue lose that game? It pissed me off. 

There are a lot of reasons to disengage. Cost of attending games is one (if you're local). Priorities of other things (family, kids, etc) is another. 

But usually those things in fandom presume that you are balancing the thrill of victory with the agony of defeat. If you're disconnected from the community already, it means you're balancing the malaise of victory with the agony defeat, and that's not a healthy balance. 

old man

like me

I will say that being down here for 3 years has changed my fandom a bit. I'm not as die hard as I was. Weekends are my only time to do fun things, and there are a whole lot more fun things to do here than up North in the winter. Especially for hoops.

The time zone doesn't help either. I'm not staying up late for a 9PM eastern tip. 8PM would be fine, but at 10PM I'm in bed.

There’s a joke to be made about retiring to Florida and not being able to do fun things on weekdays. 

I'm not retired. Oh well.

Was the plan to retire? Or do I have your timing mixed up?