Be True To Your School

It's T-minus five days until I begin my road trip from New York to the Bay Area, where I'll be starting graduate school this fall.  One of the most common questions I get asked is "Are you going to become a Stanford sports fan, or keep Princeton as your college team?"  It's come up so often that I figured I'd address it here on Caught Looking.

I've been waiting for a major college sports program to root for my entire life.  I grew up on Long Island, an area devoid of big time college football (although Hofstra did have former New York Jet Wayne Chrebet and current New Orleans Saint Marques Colston at one point) or basketball (rooting for St. John's hoops is more painful than rooting for the New York Knicks, if you can believe it).  In college I became a big I-AA (or FCS, as it's now known) football fan and an even bigger Ivy League basketball fan, but I've always admitted that Princeton athletics lack the atmosphere and passion that BCS conference schools possess.  Now, by chance, I'm headed to Stanford, a school full of sports tradition and right in the middle of a wide open Pac-10 football and basketball race.

The perfect opportunity to convert from small time Ivy League sports to big time Pac-10 athletics, right?  Well, not exactly.  While I'm definitely going to become a fan of the Stanford Cardinal and plan on attending some football and basketball games this fall, I'll never care about Stanford the way I'll always root for Princeton.  I think it's definitely okay to adopt your grad school as your secondary team, but you always have to stand by your undergrad squads.  While it might be tempting to abandon the Tigers for the bright lights of the Pac-10, I would never consider doing it.     

While I'm excited to be a part of Pac-10 sports, the Tigers will always be my first love.

Within the Pac-10 (and all of FBS football, for that matter), I'll be happy to don the cardinal red and cheer for Stanford.  But in basketball, where the Tigers and Cardinal could conceivably compete, I'll never give up on my alma mater.  When Princeton (a 13-seed) and Stanford (a surprise 4-seed as Pac-10 champions) meet in the first round of the 2011 NCAA Tournament, I'll be in the stands decked out in the orange and black.