Saturday marked MU’s inaugural Southeastern Conference football game, and though the media’s opinion of Tiger fans has been positive in some respects and [negative in others](http://www.redandblack.com/opinion/classless-missouri-tigers-have-no-place-in-sec/article_3d6fd828-fab5-11e1-aa74-0019bb30f31a.html), we’d like to commend students for their conduct this weekend.
Other SEC schools can continue to say we don’t belong, but that doesn’t matter. At kickoff Saturday, we showed up. We were proud. We proved something.
Tiger fans came to Memorial Stadium in droves. We cheered ear-splittingly loud. The bleachers were overflowing. Anyone at the game could tell this was important — this was big. And no matter what the scoreboard was, we were proud of our team, of our school, of ourselves.
Maybe we weren’t a perfect fit for the SEC, but we were sure as hell going to make a place for ourselves.
MU has its own traditions, traditions other SEC schools might not understand. We’ve been around longer than plenty of SEC schools, and we’re just as proud of our traditions as anyone. For as long as some schools have been wearing their Saturday best to games, we’ve been wearing T-shirts. We’ve been chanting “M-I-Z! Z-O-U!” for as long as some schools have been belting their fight songs.
Traditions, by definition, take time. A move to a new conference won’t change ours overnight. They might never change.
That isn’t to say Tiger fans aren’t trying. Plenty of students showed up in bow ties and sundresses Saturday, an attempt to try the SEC standard. We’re not against its way of doing football, but we can’t be expected to drop our history and pick up the South’s. MU’s move to the SEC was perhaps as much a surprise to MU students as it was to anyone else. We’re still working out how to adapt to the conference without losing our own traditions and identity as a university.
There was no way of knowing how that first game would go, so MU and Columbia were as open to the experience as they could be. In polite, Midwestern fashion, we opened downtown to Georgia fans, tailgated with them and even let them rent Lowry Mall for the weekend. Both teams had their shares of bad fans, but in general, Missouri and Georgia fans were cordial to each other.
As far as rowdiness, reported incidents [actually decreased](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2012/9/11/game-day-arrests-down-last-year/) compared to the conference opener against Iowa State University last season. We’ll say it again — it wasn’t an ordinary Saturday.
With the spotlight on Missouri — and not likely to shift away any time soon — MU exceeded its own expectations. We were gracious hosts and handled ourselves with class. If we can carry that attitude throughout the season on and off the field, we’ll convince the skeptics. For better or worse, whether we’re welcomed or not, MU is in the SEC. It’s a rare chance to make a new legacy for ourselves, and Saturday was an admirable start.
