I think it says a lot about the extent to which our popular culture is defined by fandom that ESPN can cut this commercial about the Ole Miss campaign to sign up Admiral Ackbar as its mascot and slyly make the humorless cheerleaders and preppies who oppose the change as the villains:
Fandoms have their own methods of normalization and regulation, of course. But as a wedge into the culture of athletic worship, as a kind of alchemy to transmogrify sports culture into something that more people can participate and have a stake in, this rates as relatively novel, and if this video is evidence, actually pretty successful even if the formal effort failed. The fact that this campaign got as far as it did is evidence, too, that no institution is as monolithic as it seems. Rebellions, nerds, and creative thinkers are en masse everywhere. Fandom just gives us a common language.