The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I had marked this Arkansas game as a W for a while, but now that the season is a little more than 3/4 done, I'm not sure at all.  

Hapless though Arkansas is, they've scored points, and I believe their QB is quite mobile, which has given our defense fits for the last two years.  Our excellent defense is effectively neutralized with a running QB.....they just don't have the discipline it takes to not get hurt by it.  They can play a powerful offense like Alabama and look beyond respectable, because Simpson isn't a runner.  They could play UGA and frustrate them as well.  But give them Vanderbilt or Ole Miss.....well.....

I don't know much about Arkansas' defense, except that they're bad.  So is our offense.  What happens when an imminently movable object meets a highly resistible force?

I don't have much of a sense of how this one will go, but it's likely the last chance for a 3rd conference win.  @OU is not likely to go very well.  

Oh believe me, I'm extremely glad to have lived through many of the LSU seasons I lived through...   

I think I trace the death of my give-a-damn to a specific point in the 2014 LSU/Alabama game.  It didn't happen all at once, but I clearly recall a moment when I thought, "What am I doing?  Why do I care so much?  I'm not so sure this interests me like it did."  The interest was still rather strong at that point, though. 

I hate to say this, but that snowballed the next few years, and, unfortunately, while I gave it a lot of lip service, the 2019 season never excited me or caused me to care like I wished I did.  I was fully aware of what I was watching.  I knew I should be loving the hell out of it.  But it never meant as much to me as 2003, for example, or 2007.  Or other seasons that didn't end with NCs.  One sad piece of evidence of that is I can't name tons of guys from that team, just the major stars, really.  otoh, I can still remember the backup left-guard from the 2005 team, and a long list of people like him, from many years.  I remember events and game-flow from specific games, who we played, what point in the season we played them, all the narratives.

I've reached a similar point with following sports where I don't miss it if I'm occupied with something else - like overseas travel, working the weekend, or busy at something like a book fair or taking one of my nieces/nephews to their soccer games or dance classes. I still dependably follow sports, mainly through radio shows but I do not absorb myself in spectating sports to the obsessive degree with which I did for about a fifteen year period, from about 10 - 25 years old. I will probably always follow sports thanks to my personal history with sports giving me a childhood home of sorts, with which to pick back up on when I have the time. But overall I've reached a point where I can entirely replace sports with different interests I've developed into my adulthood.

Remember as a kid you and your friends were fascinated by something like Star Wars or any other kid property from the ongoing, ever changing Saturday morning cartoon lineup? And well into your teens you and most of your friends had moved on to other interests such as competing for a spot on the baseball team or getting your driver's license? But there was always those one or two classmates who kept themselves (and still do) immersed in Star Wars? 

I believe that like most, I similarly grew out of my kid like fascination with sports, though it took well into my twenties. Since then I've stopped following college football at a granular detail, such as recruiting and studying rosters. But, like you, I still remember rosters from that era more than I would know current rosters. For every few dozen of us, there's a man our age, like an adult Star Wars fanatic, who's never loosened their grip on living their life through college football. You can hear them dialing into Paul Finebaum's show.

And sports still has social value for me. I just bought six tickets to a game that I'll be going to with college friends, some of whom I only see once a year. Going to college football games are among the live events I most look forward to every year, but I'm glad to be free of the exhausting narratives, betting and fantasy leagues associated with fandom.

One thing I don't mind mentioning since it's related to a place like this:

I think my fandom ramped up back in the day when the internet became a new place for socializing our hobbies.  

LSU message boards were amazing, and multi-team message boards like this one were too, in part because there were enough other fans of my team.  I like to talk about cfb in general, but also it's nice to nerd out about the intricate details of a player, team, program, coach that no non-LSU fan is going to know about or care about.  

There used to be at least a half dozen LSU guys around here.  They fell away along with a lot of the other teams' fans over the years.  Not sure why.

My former favorite LSU-specfic website used to be amazing.  The guys there were hilarious, witty, and I constantly learned a ton from them.  There was a wholesale change of writer-turnover as contributing authors aged into other phases of life, and the younger guys who took their place, frankly, just weren't nearly as entertaining to read.  The comments section--which was the best part--also swiftly lost its mind one day.  Suddenly you had to be viciously against Trump, or you got piled on and hate bombed.  F**king everything got turned into that, somehow, on a friggin' website about LSU sports.  More and more, the people who weren't like that or else just didn't want to put up with comments sections being dragged into that, left.  In a matter of a season or two, the place went from probably well over 100 regulars, having awesome conversation, to probably less than 30, with far less posting traffic.  Last time I dropped in on the place, they were a thin lot, but basically still at it.  It took scanning less than two threads before I found the same political bullshit.  

I clicked X on the browser and don't reckon I'll be back soon.

Anyway, interaction with other online fans used to be a big part of the fun for me.  Heck, I miss a lot of the non-LSU fans this place used to have.  I miss logging in when I have a free minute at work and seeing that there were more new threads/posts than I have time to get to.