Still, I think it is important that I respond to this post again and clarify why I found it offensive. You see, even though you are replying to my post by quoting it, you aren’t replying to what I said. Your post ignores the topic of the comparable reactions of GT and VPI fans and complains about fan attitude to Duke this year. The very thing that I said I was not talking about, as I will try again to make clear.
However, my biggest problem with your post was that by quoting me and saying, “I’m going with more recent history,” you introduce two misleading ideas: (1) that I introduced the reference to the years of “CPJ’s tenure,” when it was actually you, and (2) that I was on the side of those “crapping on Duke.” Both of these ideas are false.
Now, this last point is not an idle point. I had someone say the following to me in a GTSwarm Conversation about this post from you:
You see, this person understood my position as the opposite of yours rather than what I actually said.
So, let me unpack my thinking in case others also misunderstood me. You wrote this:
It seems to me that the substance of this post is not simply, some VPI fans don’t take us seriously like some GT fans don’t take Duke seriously but also that this occurs, as you say, “from them owning us during CPJ’s tenure.” I understood from this post that you were saying that VPI “owning” GT from 2008-2013 was a comparable reason for the VPI dismissive attitudes to GT as GT over Duke over the same time period is for GT dismissive attitudes toward them. So, in my response to this post I challenged the logic of this comparison:
First of all, I want to make clear that I was not calling you crazy. I was calling the particular suggestion that VPI-GT was comparable to GT-Duke as a basis for fan reaction crazy. I did it based on the data I provided. “During CPJ’s tenure” to use the language that you introduced, GT has played VPI to -3, +5, -7, -11, -3, -7 before this year’s +3. So 5 of the six years were decided by a touchdown or less. In contrast, “during CPJ’s tenure” GT has played Duke to +27, +39, +10, +7, +18, and +14. So, I used average margin of victory between these two series to explain why I considered your suggestion that these two situations are similar to be crazy. A series in which 5 of 6 games are decided by a TD or less seems to me to be much less “owning” than a series in which 5 of 6 were decided by 2 scores or more, and by 3 scores on average for the six games.
Then, if you look again at my second paragraph, I also tried to make clear that I was not using this to suggest that Duke hadn’t got better or that they wouldn’t be a challenge for us. My post was not directed to any conversation about where Duke is at now. Frankly, I don’t know how I could have said that more clearly, but both you and
@John failed to understand it, so that could be on me.
My post was simply a response to your post comparing some VPI fans to some GT fans based on relative “owning” of another team “during CPJ’s tenure.”
So as I hope to have made clear, I was bothered by your post because it implied (as my conversation partner affirmed) that I was saying something that I wasn't saying and ignored what I was saying. Still,
@John assures me that posts that are misleading in this way are fine while posts like my first one which engage the substance of a post with data are suspect if they use that terribly offensive word, “crazy,” when referring to someone’s opinion.
Anyway, in case others failed to follow the logic of our brief conversation, I wanted to clarify what I was saying. Again, I did not mean to disrespect you. I consider it respectful to take someone’s point seriously and engage it, whether positively or negatively. I reacted the way I did because I considered your post disrespectful since it ignored the substance of what I was saying and gave the impression that I was saying something I was not.
