If you're a Texas A&M fan embarrassed by the Yell Leaders, you're part of the problem

Texas A&M fans embarrassed by Yell Leaders are showing something they don't intend

With the recent introductory event and press conference for new Texas A&M basketball coach Bucky McMillan, longtime Aggie fans anticipated one specific aspect of the event. It wasn't McMillan's speech, a certain reporter's questions, or what anticipated answer the new A&M head man might give.

No— instead, it was something that has been part of A&M athletics longer than most fans have been alive: the Yell Leaders.

The Yell Leaders, one of A&M's most readily-identifiable traditions, have come under fire a lot over the last couple of years— not only externally but internally. As rhetoric has ratcheted up from opposing fanbases, attempting to score points by mocking salient aspects of the Yell Leaders' routine, there has been a growing discomfort in some corners of the Aggies' fanbase— especially among younger fans— about the Yell Leaders' role in A&M athletics.

But here's the thing: if you're letting that get to you, you're the problem.

Before I explain myself, I want to say what it is that I'm not saying: I'm not saying that what the Yell Leaders do is patently the most normal and unremarkable thing of all time. I'm not saying that their jokes at Yell Practice are hilarious. I'm not saying that their outfits are haute couture. I'm not saying that they occupy some special stratosphere in the landscape of college athletics as the tradition that ought to be revered the most in the canon.

But what I am saying is that if you're an A&M fan, the jabs from opposing fanbases really shouldn't bother you. And if you're letting them gain enough of a foothold that you're agreeing with them— that the Yell Leaders should be a far-diminished presence, in this case— then you're, frankly speaking, kind of soft.

I get that the online college sports sphere is dominated by interminable dunk attempts by one fanbase upon whoever else, and everyone is attempting to go viral by essentially doing the tweet equivalent of the Jim from the Office face anytime anyone does anything. No one wants to get embarrassed by the outgroup going "hey, get a load of this guy!"

But there's a certain embarrassment that is part and parcel of being a sports fan at all. It's embarrassing to care as much as we do about the athletic performance of these players who most of us will never meet. It's embarrassing to believe, year after year, that this season might be different. It's embarrassing to step out in that kind of hope and fall on your face.

By earnestly caring about anything at all, you open yourself up to embarrassment. That's just the nature of things.

If you think that the embarrassment of losing a game you thought you would win is not worth the elation of winning a game you thought you would lose, you— and hear me clearly here— don't have to watch. Just go do something else with your time!

This is the fundamental incongruity with people who are sighing that the Yell Leaders being at a press conference is "goofy." On a very real level, it's "goofy" to have any emotional investment at all in how well the players wearing your teams' color are hitting, catching, passing, or shooting varying balls, or what the numbers on a scoreboard say when the time hits zero.

The whole thing, from one perspective, is unserious. But we are not constrained in this life to only have emotional investment in the most serious and grave matters that we could ever encounter.

If we as fans are in a race to the bottom with this oneupmanship in who can be the most jaded and aloof, then I have bad news for you: at some point, you just have to stop caring altogether. The one who is most skilled at scoffing and derision is the one who has completely stopped allowing himself to love anything at all.

Let me be clear: whether or not you like the Yell Leaders being at a press conference is not a referendum on being human. But what I'm saying is that if you saw the above video, or saw the coaches and AD gather on stage to saw 'em off, and began to worry what "@longhornburner20238572010238" would have to say online when he got a hold of the footage, then you've lost the plot.

I say that because the only way to be protected from any and all criticism is to never stretch your neck out at all. The criticism is going to come, no matter whether the Yell Leaders are at a presser or not. So just lean in anyway!

The Yell Leaders are not the greatest tradition of all time across all sports across the entire globe. But they, just like any other tradition in college sports, are emblematic of something vital: the passion that goes into supporting your favorite team. If you want to repudiate that passion because it's too embarrassing, that's fine— just be honest about what it is that you're doing.