pretending to like them. Was enough to move me from "don't like" to "neutral" w/ them (but no further), and I always hated UF anyway. UF was because I hated Spurrier from dook, but I later thought he was cool, which was certainly influenced by being a Redskins fan.

What you write makes me think a little bit about being a NOVA public school white male, maybe I can tie this to the nationalism/JoeyWahoo psychological thing, will try to stay on the rails here...

NOVA when I was growing up was a pretty bland, culture-less thing, neither Northern or Southern, kind of like Orange County-East, anonymous. My personality is pretty "liberal" per the Jonathan Haidt paradigm, open to new things, disrespecting of authority. But the cultural vacuum of NOVA perhaps led me to value tradition, I glommed onto it primarily through colleges sports w/ UVa and the Redskins.

The great part of growing up in NOVA was having friends from all backgrounds- white, indian, asian, black, muslim and it wasn't even a thing. But I did take notice of the lack-of-cultural-identifiable-ness in college and after. Could notice the differences- these Boston/Long Island guys are dicks, the Southern guys are nuts. There was just a clear "culture" people were coming from, was interesting more than anything to me.

I loved UVa, but there were no shortage of elitist pricks to be sure, kind of the nature of it as a pull for snobs from CT to TX. People who slam UVa for that snobbishness though don't realize how many exceptionally cool and interesting people from all over that it also pulls in, which is something I think is cool about UVa for a state school. I don't think other state schools necessarily offer that to the same degree as UVa.