Blog: Why I'm an IU football fan and I don't care who knows it

Forget the no-cheering-in-the-press-box requirement. I'm freaking loving every minute of this.

I’m not supposed to be a fan.

I know, the paradigm has shifted; now you’ve got Bill Simmons and almost everybody on sports TV sharing their team allegiances, and nobody makes an effort to maintain any level of objectivity.

Except, well, me and a lot of the old dogs in my changing business.

I don’t diminish others for playing up their fandom – that’s the media ecosystem we live in – but I also don’t take their commentary seriously when they’re talking about their own beloved teams. Like Simmons talking about Deflategate all those years ago? Why should we listen to him? He’s a Patriots guy. He’s going to be objective?

We still live by the no-cheering-in-the-press box dictum.

Once, I was at an NFC title game for my newspaper in Cleveland, and a bunch of us media types were watching the Browns-Broncos AFC Championship on a nearby TV. When the Browns scored to go ahead at one point, I let out a too-loud “Yes!” – not because I was a Browns fan but because if the Browns made the Super Bowl, I was going to go to the event for the very first time in my young career. You have to understand, it’s all about me. Well, the other reporters in the press room looked at me like I had two heads. That was verboten. I got castigated, and rightly so.

Anyway…(get to the point, Bob!)