Brown Sox Nation?

I don't want to make any enemies here ... but I'm a Red Sox fan. I'm from the Boston area, and I've been a fan for years. I'm not a bandwagon guy, so don't give me a hard time about it, all right?
Anyway, something happened a few years back with us Sox fans, right around that heartbreaker of a 2003 League Championship Series against the Yankees. I don't know if it started out as a marketing campaign, or as media hype, or as something more genuine—baseball karma, maybe. But that was right about when Sox fans became “Red Sox Nation.”
The term had been around for awhile, but all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone was a member of Red Sox Nation: folks who grew up in New England, or went to college there, or who hated the Yankees, or who just loved a great, dramatic baseball story.
For a couple months, the Sox became America's ballclub, with a bandwagon the size of the whole country (except maybe New York and St. Louis). Their fans—the diehards and the Johnnies-come-lately—were part of something big. And when the Sox won the World Series at the end of 2004, it felt like a pretty good thing to be a part of.
My point is this: You're a citizen of a “Nation” too: Lehigh Nation. Most of those Red Sox Nationalists have long since fallen off the bandwagon. But Lehigh Nation is a lifelong affiliation, and it's truly national—international, in fact.
You're in Lehigh Nation when you join your classmates to watch the football team beat Lafayette, or when you hoist a few at a Lehigh Happy Hour in your hometown, or watch your local ballclub take on (and hopefully lose to) the Red Sox—but also when you get on the Web site to check the Lehigh basketball scores, watch construction on the new STEPS building webcam, read your class column in the Alumni Bulletin, or drop a note to your freshman roommate on Facebook.
If you come back next month for Alumni Weekend or Young Alumni Reunion —and I hope you do—you’ll be right there at the heart of Lehigh Nation. But the Nation travels wherever you do: to the South Side, South Carolina, or Southeast Asia.
You have tons of opportunities to reconnect with your alma mater, no matter where you are. And we're working on creating more opportunities for you all the time—on campus, online, and on the road. So get yourself some Brown and White gear (a pair of socks, maybe?) and wear it with pride—the flag of the Lehigh Nation. It feels like a pretty good thing to be a part of.
Bob Wolfenden
Assistant Vice President for Alumni Relations