B.I.E. you hit the nail on the head. It's not the gear as much as the plane. One of the problems first time draggers run in to is throttle application. Most trainers being trikes and "reasonably" powered, tend to teach newguys that it is fine to go full throttle, bump the rudder/nose wheel a little, then quickly take off. Bad things happen where the ground meets sky.
You mentioned J3's which got me to thinking(an unreasonably slow and cumbersome process). My Cub is the old Sig 72" wing, I fly it with an older OS 28 in the nose and usually take off at about 2/3 throttle. Also the guy who taught me to fly, taught me to slowly advance the throttle instead of firewalling it. The small motor and the slow throttle advance gives me a very rewarding scale like takeoff.
Now, we take our garden variety taildragger, add our understandable penchant for overpowering everything(because we can and it's fun), and then throw in the newbe notion that the faster I hit the power the quicker the plane gets in the air and away from the plane eating Earth and we have the recipe for ankle biting ground loops.
The other thing I got to thinking about is that with the exception of trainers I would bet that 75 to 80% of the planes at our local flying fields are tail draggers. Meaning? Eventually, most everyone firures it out.