A better understanding. The people that head to HR don't represent psu well at all. Trying to see if they are the outliers or if it is just typical of the fan base. Any insights on what has been said on HR to earn the ban hammer by posters?
Better understanding?
I look at folks as basically the same. From a wrestling standpoint, Iowa fans aren't overall unlike PSU fans, or Ohio State fans, or Okie State fans, or Minny fans, and on and on. Iowa fans, in wrestling, are used to winning championships, so that's different, but again, I look at people as basically the same. The dynamic that's new in the past decade is that PSU is winning championships. That places a target on our back, and causes many emotions from other team's fans. For the most mature fans, imo, it creates respect and a want for their team to improve. For the least mature, it causes vitriol and hate, accusations and false claims, to an extreme. All others are somewhere in between.
If the shoe was on the other foot for the next decade, let's say Iowa is winning championships, and Penn State wasn't, I believe the mood and the content on this board would turn for the worse.
Fortunately, the turn-for-the-worse is the result of only a handful of posters spitting their hate. I know a lot of Penn State fans, and have interacted a bunch with other fan bases, and it is refreshing and enjoyable to sit and talk wrestling with most. From an HR standpoint, the worst of Iowa posters control the board. Hateful posts against every aspect of the PSU program, or an attack on PSU posters, to the point where the name-calling is atrocious, gets "likes" galore, and then it becomes mob mentality and a feeding frenzy. To those, "class" is a foreign character trait, and classlessness reigns.
The HR board is a good board to me, as I apparently find it easier than most to ignore the worst of their posters, believing that each one has, for the world to see, shown their ignorance, immaturity, mindlessness, etc. by their posting, far better than I could verbalize (better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt). Penn State, Cael, the NLWC, and all, don't need me nor anyone else to come to their rescue, and preserve their honor. Again, hateful people say hateful things, and trying to talk about it with folks that are that full of hate is fruitless.
Therein lies part of the problem. In the itsy bitsy corner of the wrestling universe, called HR, some PSU poster are answering hate with hate, and it escalates from there. Believe me, in 45 years of going to PSU football games, wrestling matches, and many other sports events, and my involvement with the wrestling program, I've seen some horrible behaviors. If there's solace in seeing that, it's the knowledge that it's a minority.