Ride or Die!

"Either you all in or not bruh!"

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery but where I'm from loyalty is! If you want to impress me stay in the passenger seat when I‘m doing bad. Give me your full support. They call it ride or die in the hood! I only want to hang out with people that are going to have my back regardless of how successful I am. Whether I'm up or down, I want to look over and know you're still ridin'. That's how you'll flatter me!

West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen gave the Mountaineer Nation an ear full this week for not being so flattering to his team. They only had 46,000 fans show up to last Saturday's game against Bowling Green and during his weekly press conference he let the fans have it.

“You only get seven opportunities a year,” Holgorsen said. “What’s so hard about it? It’s too cold? Wasn’t too cold for our players. Wasn’t too cold for our coaches or managers or trainers; they’re out there. So why did we have 20,000 people less at this one than we did last week?”

“The funny thing about it is we’re all talking two weeks ago about how much difference the fans and the crowd’s going to make to the LSU people. Well, LSU played well in front of 62,000 of our people and then turned around and went home and played a 1-3 Kentucky team at noon and [they] have 95,000 people there. You want to talk about an elite program, that’s one of them. I don’t know about this place.”

I completely agree with him! If you're a fan then ride or die with your team. Don't come through only when they're winning. You've got to be in the front seat when boyz are losing too. I'm seeing it first hand living in Indy with the Colt starting the season 0-4! I'm a die hard OU Sooner fan not a Colts fan but it's crazy to see the amount of people in the emergency room with sprained ankles and pulled hamstrings as a result of jumping off of the Colts bandwagon in the first month of the season. It's incredible!

It's getting so bad that I may show up to Lucas Oil Stadium for a game and they'll let me get my ankles taped in the training room, get a full body message and return a kick off or two just because. For extra measure, I might even call a play or two.  They're desperate for fan support the way these people are running and giving away their tickets at this point.

If it's your team you've got to ride with them. That's why I've got tall respect for cities like Chicago(all sports), Cleveland(Browns), New Orleans, Dallas(Cowboys) etc. They'll ride regardless of the record. It’s like family! They can talk about their team doing bad but you better not say a word! How many friends would you keep if they only came around when you had some money? That's shady to treat someone like that. So why would you do your so called favorite team that way?

I can remember when the New Orleans Saints fans were wearing brown paper bags on their heads years ago and the team was known as the "Ain'ts"! They were disgusted but they kept coming to the games. That's flattery bruh! So when they did finally win a championship it meant everything to the fans and the team because they suffered through the bad times together.

If Peyton Manning doesn't play around here it's a ghost town! Sorry excuse for support and it's not just football fans either. Go on down the street to Conseco Field House where the Pacers play and you'll get some playing time too. I had a triple double last year, twice! They're giving tickets away with food included. It's banana's man!

So the West Virginia head man Dana Holgerson was dead on for giving it to the fans! You either ride with me when I'm down and don’t try to get in the Bentley when I'm rollin'.


Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Twitter:@jaygravesreport