One thing about families is that they need to be tough to survive.
No family on the planet is immune from a little dysfunction, and Buff Galaxy is no exception.
We can stand shoulder to shoulder and still not see eye to eye. That's okay.
If you show up to cheer success, that's easy.
The hard part is knowing what to do when the success is hard to come by?
Some take the rah, rah approach and beg fans to show up and cheer. This is the segment who are sunshine pumpers who drink kool aid and subscribe to the power of positive thinking.
Some turn into arm-chair experts and evaluate every piece of information, every word, every web site, and every game stat in order to better understand the problem and perhaps offer some expertise or some solution.
Yet another group have been burned enough times that a more cautious path is taken. Like they say in Missouri, "show me". There are pessimists and curmudgeons who know success when they see it, and don't candy coat problems when they exist.
Finally, there are those looking for entertainment and a good time. Wins = happy. Loses = sad. This group doesn't care about practices, or recruiting stories, or politics within Dal Ward or Regents hall. Give this group a tailgate, a chance to watch Ralphie run, and some quality football, and call it a day. If the scene is morbid and negative, then it's adios. Call me when things turn around.
True Buffs can fall into any of these categories. You can tell who they are because they buy tickets, make donations to CU instead of or in addition to 20,000 other worthwhile charitable entities. They know that the worst day on CU's campus is still better than an average day at work. And the best day in Folsom is close to heaven on earth.
God bless all you sunshine pumpers, arm-chair experts, curmudgeons, good-times seekers, and various other riff raff who love CU as family.
But beware, you sunshine pumpers. It's perfectly normal in a family for siblings to fight. If some sunshine pumper demands that everyone in the Buff family should unconditionally pump sunshine because of the shoulder to shoulder thing, then you are itching for a fight and probably deserve to be kicked in the nuts.