As my previous post reminds y'all, I've been a Florida State football fan for life.

You younger folks might not realize that FSU football hasn't always been stellar.

When I was a young kid, in the early 1970s, FSU football was a joke. The 'Noles wentn 0-11 one year and, I believe, 1-10 in 1975.

FSU had always been the weak sister of football in the state of Florida. Even Miami didn't amount to too much -- The University of Florida was really the only game in town.

Then, Bobby Bowden was hired and everything changed.

In 1976, FSU went 5-6.

In 1977, the Noles whipped the Gators 37-9 in Gainesville and ended up winning 4 in a row against the once invincible rivals.

And the rest is history.

Anyway, all that is to say that I'm no fair weather fan. I've followed the Noles since I can remember. And to be an FSU fan is, by definition, to not care too much for Florida.

Since I have children, we try not to use the word hate in our home. And really, it's especially silly to use that word in reference to football fans. I'm certainly not defined by my allegiance to the Noles (Note: while most of my relatives went to FSU, I preferred a smaller school and graduated from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.).

Anyway, while I don't hate the Gators or their fans, they certainly are annoying enough. They have struggled to accept FSU's ascendance, they whine about the refs almost as much as Carolina basketball fans and I can't stand those orange and blue colors -- amongn other things.

So, as you can imagine, being accused of BEING a Gator would be a particularly low blow against me.

Which brings me to the story.

A columnist at warchant.com wrote a column attacking media types for their reporting and writing on some issues at FSU that made the news -- specifically Wyatt Sexton's troubles and Ernie Sims' arrest. He called for apologies.

I rebutted that this columnist -- also the warchant administrator -- was not helping matters by making unsupported attacks on the media and was, in fact, being hypocritical. My response generated lots of feedback, much of it positive, even from FSU fans.

The columnist responded and I responded back and it was all VERY civil, even though we clearly disagreed.

Then, everything changed. The columnist claimed that I was a Gator fan because he had traced my IP address and banned me from the site!

I immediately e-mailed him and all the moderators of the site and identified myself. I told them my history, refered them to my blog, gave them my phone numbers and asked them to call me to verify who I was and that I was most definitely NOT a Gator fan.

Nothing.

So, to defend myself, I logged on as a new user and posted a summary of what had happened, asking for an apology.

I got banned again and finally received an e-mail response from the columnist/moderator saying: "Sorry, you're done."

Of course, the irony here is thick -- the guy writes a column about inaccuracies in reporting and asks for an apology, but when HE does the same thing, he sweeps it under the rug!

Anyway, I told you that YOU wouldn't care, but this is an outrage to me. If I had cussed, or attacked, or spread gossip or rumor, that's one thing. But I did not violate ANY rules of the board, was falsely accused of being a Gator fan (which everybody who knows me knows if false) and banned. Then, when presented with all sorts of evidence that the banning was wrong, nothing was done!

So, I am left to post on my blog and try to spread the word through other message boards -- hopefully, word will trickle back to Warchant that that guy who was disagreeing with Dot is NOT a Gator fan and was penalized for respectfully disagreeing with the site administrator.

End of rant.