I'm going to do something that may not be the smartest thing I've ever done but oh well, this is getting ridiculous. I wrote that blog entry. And I will admit that after looking back on it and looking at all this conversation it does sound a little crazed and whiny.
My initial (over)reaction was to the photo gallery of abusive fans. I personally don't view the Crazies as abusive when you compare them to many other fan sections around the country. To see us featured multiple times in there - and for what we thought was an awesome dig at MD based on fact - I got a little upset. Also, I believe the photos accompanying the online article might have changed and I know I saw the earliest version - but when they are talking about all sorts of abusive and vulgar actions in the text, they also represented that text with pictures - and I didn't think our picture from the MD game was the best choice.
I wrote the entry as a fun rant - I like to do that. I can assure you I'm capable of proper grammar and style when I write papers - but this wasn't a paper I was turning in - it's a blog. I understood the dramatic tone I was taking but didn't realize how strongly people would react to it - perhaps I went too far in my rant but I often find I get carried away when I start writing something like that. So sorry if I riled your feathers; SI riled mine and it appears more than it should have – I’m over it.
As for tent 1 - we're proud of being tent one; our senior captain especially, who has been tent 2 for the past 3 years. Yes, we've been obnoxious about it and we likely could have benefited from toning it down - but we're just a group of really good friends who have fun together. We're not so exclusive and if it appears that way it's likely because we enjoy each others' company so much and only had the chance to really get to know the top few tents during pre-blue that it seems that way. If you've ever tented with a group of your friends you can find it will make or break friendships - and sometimes it can be better to band with people who are more acquaintances than anything else. But we found that our friendship has gotten stronger. We're all avid fans like everyone else in KVille who has decided to brave the long and sometimes cold season (the warm weather has been great this year however) and while KVille is an event all its own, we're all really there for one thing: helping to beat the Tar Heels.
Maybe its too late to be writing this defense and even apology but better late than never. So here it is: I'm sorry that some people have come to hate us. While I'm not willing to accept full responsibility for that I'll take some of the blame - we could have and should have toned down the obnoxiousness of our tent 1 pride. We could have mingled in the late-night party scene more - perhaps tent 1 next year should place one of its tents in the center of KVille so as to not be as isolated as they can become on the fringes. But tenting is essentially over, so those of you tenting on the boards - let's just all have fun the next 2 nights for p-checks and lets all channel any pride or animosity into making the floor of Cameron shake and the decibels reach unbearable levels on Saturday night.
See, I have a tendency to ramble. It’s perhaps a fatal flaw.
GTHC