Reasons To Hate Xavier

28. January 2009  - Published by Jimmy Dinsmore
Comments (1)

I saw this email that Lance posted on his blog and thought I'd post it here and give my take as this email epitomizes my dislike of Xavier basketball.

"The biggest reason there is no Xavier talk is that there is no controversy with Xavier.  The players act with class, the coach is as non-controversial as can be, they graduate, the AD is on the same page, and they play as a team.  What is there to discuss?"-From an emailer

Now, some will say, I just hate X because I went to UC and support them. That is partially true. I have a great deal of respect for Xavier's program and Sean Miller is a class act. Unquestionably their fans should be proud. But, it's these same prideful fans that make me always root against X. They have let their recent success go to their head. And, no matter what, they always feel it necessary to bring up Bob Huggins, horse punching, Donald Little, or UC's various other discretions of the PAST. They act as if their players are saintly and above all of that. Then, they also try to defend the A-10 as some  kind of power conference, when it is a mid-major program, with one good team. I heard one X blowhard arguing why a recruit  chose UK over Xavier and I laughed. Because UK is a big-time program, even at their worst. Xavier is not an elite program and are even second fiddle here in town (even when UC is down, UC is still top-dog).

In a national scope (which is what is important for college basketball), Xavier is a virtual unknown. Ask anyone outside of the the tri-state area where Xavier is located and they probably won't even know what Xavier is, and certainly won't know it's Cincinnati. The X fans are so narrow minded, and arrogant, that they cannot realize this or accept it. 

They should just accept it and watch their team play great basketball. But, their fans cannot follow the lead of their classy coach.

College Hoops , , , , ,

Comments

Adam Bartel
Adam Bartel
1/28/2009 10:30:52 AM #
Jimmy, you're dead wrong on your "virtual unknown" point.  Read any sports website or college hoops blog and they're quite familiar with X.  In fact, I'd bet that if you took a poll of 100 readers of any major website, they'd probably be more likely to be able to name XU's head coach than UC's.  The days when people knew/cared about you just because you were part of a BCS conference are long gone.  Virtual unknowns don't get matchmaker-made games on network TV - what they did with it was pretty miserable though.

And X fans have gotten bad; I sat between fans of both schools during the Shootout, and neither one exactly made their school proud.  But let it go to their heads?  Really?  Maybe it's because I'm not a grad of either school, but I saw arrogance every bit as bad as this from UC fans, if not worse.  Everywhere I looked there were trash-talkers who didn't even know they had a hoops program two years before Huggins got there, telling me how bad-ass their program was, and they seemed to have no problem justifying every single transgression that one of the players committed (and remember it as you will, but it was bad back then).  And now those fans are dressed as empty seats, as self-described "Huggins fans".  And I know that you saw some video with X fans cheering the Kenyon injury, and I'm sure the empty-seaters will be dismissed as "not true UC fans", even though those may very well be the types of fans on X's side that are doing the things that upset you so much, and that's all fine and dandy, just so long as you can accept that, in its heyday, UC fans were every bit as bad as what you're seeing from X'ers now.
Comments are closed