It’s a fan fest! Weeeee

My story of becoming a Hurricanes fan was pretty straight forward and like many others. I was a young, impressionable sports fan back in 2001 looking for a college football team to follow. Due to living in the Washington DC metropolitan area I had plenty of professional franchises to follow but no (in my mind, anyways) college team within my “direct” vicinity or any that I had an affinity for. Virginia Tech was six hours away and in rural Blacksburg, wasn’t interested. Al Groh bored me to death over in Charlottesville with his vanilla 34 defense and grind it out running game. Maryland…. Don’t get me started on the Terps.. If the average sports fans think Miami fans are delusional and or obnoxious, don’t go to College Park, I’ll leave it at that.

So in 2000, I was essentially a budding sports junkie looking for a college football team to sink my teeth into. Here came the big bad Hurricanes into the National Title against the stuffy, boring Nebraska Cornhuskers and they blew their doors off in style, I was immediately hooked and here we are.

Of course if you know the local DC area you’d probably find the timing of this incredibly hilarious. As many of you know, the DC sports landscape is…. Barren. When it comes to a winning tradition the last twenty or so years, don’t look to the Deadskins, Nati-nals or the Lizards. So naturally, when I picked the Canes I thought I was getting at least one wringer to follow. Blame it on me if you’d like but I’ll never forget watching the Canes football program slip and slide one loss at a time back to mediocrity but that just hardened my resolve to follow the squad. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to my favorite teams being terrible but at least I can say I’ve been loyal over the years.

That loyalty and passion brought me to State of The U where I started out as a commenter and then decided to try my hand at the “fansided” posts. The manager for the site at the time (LT if you’ve been with us that long) contacted me and asked if I could compose a few player pieces and from there the position took on a life of its own. Five years or so later I was in the pressbox during a few games and even interviewing players and coaches after both wins and losses. It’s been a wild ride.

It may have started as a bandwagon hopping idea when I was in seventh grade to follow the Canes but it sure as heck has been interesting over the years. There haven’t been many highs (up to our standards anyways) but there sure have been lots of lows. In the end, if they get this ship pointed in the right direction over the next few seasons the feelings won’t be expecting to be great but rather appreciative of the success.

Hopefully.