The OFFICIAL RULES for College Sports Trash Talking

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year until some douche bag starts talking trash about “his” school beating your school in the NCAA Tournament. It seems like every year I have to have this discussion with some idiotic fan so I thought I would memorialize the “rules” for everyone’s benefit. So here you go, enjoy. Pass them along to family, friends and co-workers, but by all means know them, learn them and live them.

Rule 1: If you didn’t attend or graduate from the school, guess what? That’s NOT YOUR school.

You can be a fan. You can cheer for the school, but you CANNOT talk trash if you did NOT attend the school. In other words, bandwagon Duke Fans, etc., if you didn’t get a degree from Duke, it is NOT YOUR school. You have to actually set foot in a classroom, pay some tuition, buy an overpriced textbook, attend a game or two, hang out at the local pub or club, date a sorority girl, drink or have sex on campus, possess a sweatshirt bought at the local bookstore, then, and only then is it “your school”. If so, feel free to talk trash all you want. You earned it!

Rule 2: Under very “limited” circumstances, you can talk “some” trash if you were born or raised in the college town (e.g., Morgantown, WV) or lived in the college town at some point during your childhood.

For example, if you were born or raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, you can be a trash talking WVU fan. You can talk trash if WVU wins even if you attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania. The exception ONLY applies if you did not attend college or you attended a college of “lesser value” most notably located out of state. I do not mean that as a slight to your actual worthless college degree from that fine liberal arts school located in the middle of nowhere, but I mean the college you attended was not in a major conference or did not have a basketball or football program. You cannot be a “WVU trash talking fan” if you attended Ohio State. Ohio State has a basketball team (and a cheating football program…”allegedly”). You are now an Ohio State trash talking fan, not a WVU trash talking fan. You can still be a WVU fan, but keep your mouth shut.

Lastly, I must address those poor, underprivileged Marshall fans. Before you go shooting off your mouth about any WVU loss in the NCAA Tournament, you must actually make the tournament field and win a game in the NCAA tournament, and then you can run your mouth. In other words, you can never run your mouth.

These are the rules. Know them. Learn them. Live them.