Red Sox Nation. Raider Nation. RG3 even called out Baylor fans as a ‘nation’ while accepting the Heisman Trophy. Whatever. How can you be a ‘nation’ when your school isn’t even in the Top 10 in popularity in the state of Texas?
In fact, Texas is about the only state in the nation that even deserves discussion as to whether or not it should be a ‘nation’. Here in Annapolis, we root for Navy. They play for quite a large nation. It’s called the United States of America.
Whatever happened to just being a fan? I’m a Tigers fan. Is that still possible? When Detroit rumbled into Baltimore in August last year for a three-game set with the Orioles, the entire family went to the Saturday night game. 25,000 fans showed up, and 20,000 of them were rooting for the Tigers. No “TigerNation”, or “trickeration”, and we didn’t need the “walk-off”, either. Just a 6-5 win for the boys from Motown.
Fans rooting for their team. Is that so hard?
As for the other lame terminology, ESPN’s in-game college football highlight crew quite literally created ‘trickeration’ – it’s not even a word – unless you trust Wikipedia. That gem was preceded by “walk-off”, another ESPN-created term and subsequently run into the ground before I could even think about embracing it. When you win walk in the winning run, it’s not a “walk-off”; it’s called bad pitching.
I really started to notice the use of “nation” during the bowl season. With apologies to Joan Rivers and Dick Clark, the term ‘Nation’ just needs to go quietly into the good night with all the other tired cliches.
Regards…
~ T.C. Cameron covers prep sports for The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, MD and is the president of the Maryland Pro Chapter for the Society of Professional Journalists. Tweet him @TCCameronSPJ
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