THE FIVE FANS YOU MEET IN HELL: NUMBER ONE

While Fearless Leader enjoys a week away from the Internet Factory (No Accidents In The Last 5 2 Hours!), we're taking this week to remind you of the five fan archetypes you should avoid - and avoid becoming.

What you will be watching in exactly one month is a far more structured, disciplined, well-funded, and athletic version of the games of two hand touch you played at recess or after school or on hurricane days. (We did this, because Florida.) The participants work immeasurably harder and suffer through far more pain. The stakes, emotional and otherwise, are exponentially higher.

Guess what? A Monopoly game broadcast on national television where every player has spent $400 million on practice facilities, utility scouting, and dice optimization film study is still just a game, and games are, at their core, supposed to be fun. They're not fun to lose, of course, but we're not altering the course of human events. The Red River Shootout does not decide whether Oklahoma or Texas gets antibiotics this year.

The Humorless Bore refuses to acknowledge this, instead insisting that super seriousness is somehow aligned with "tradition" or "class" or "the game." Or whatever proper noun pie crust he wants to overstuff with meaning. Humorless Bore is not interested in hearing someone who doesn't root for his team criticize that team, especially if they're poking fun. (Humorless Bore, it should be noted, has hated EDSBS and will always hate EDSBS because we are, according to Humorless Bore, shills for Florida/Georgia/Tennessee/UCLA/Rutgers/West Virginia/Oregon/NC State/Texas Tech/Boise State/Bovine University.)

Humorless Bore hates that we are writing this right now, and will be posting it to a message board to point out that we are hacks and "trying too hard." Humorless Bore cannot help but react this way, because he has invested far, far too much of his well-being in a game that he cannot even slightly control the outcome of and therefore has no room for self-effacement or levity. He simply doesn't have the emotional funds for it.

Do not be a Humorless Bore. It's a decidedly unpleasant person to be around but, perhaps more importantly, it never, ever seems like a pleasant person to actually BE.