No offense to 'Nut, but I thought it's a pretty baseless assumption myself. I grew up in one of, if not THE, biggest redneck counties in Tennessee, and spiked hair was all the fad when I was in 5th grade. I had a spike myself. I've never heard any redneck say anything about spiked hair. Frosted hair on a guy, maybe. But not spiked hair.
And there have been lots of UT athletes from California. Tyler Bray is from California.
JP Prince didn't have a lot of tattoos or anything like that. OTOH, Bobby Maze was covered in tattoos and I never heard any of UT's "redneck" fans complaining about him.
The conservative/redneck equation is interesting.
So did I dude. I grew up in Morristown. I have had First hand experience with all kinds of racism/bigotry growing up. No offense to you, as I like you and I am sure you are a nice guy, but I don't speak of redneck experiences with a lot of fondness. I am not sure that being a white guy growing up in a redneck country in TN you would experience what I did, as it is anything but "baseless" for me.