Akron Beacon Journal article on OSU...

Talk about the Buckeyes the Wolverines the Hilltoppers the Ducks the Beavers the Chanticleers... or anyone else who isn't BG or an opponent in this forum.
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Falconfreak90
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Akron Beacon Journal article on OSU...

Post by Falconfreak90 »

as viewed by OSU players, media around the country and past and present presidents. Interesting read...I think the writer does a very good job of explaining how great a fan base OSU really has and why the Buckeyes are not viewed favorably by many. There is no doubt OSU has a vast army of followers...that can't be challenged.

I am not trying to flame anything here...I just thought it was a solid analysis.

Although the words at the end by a certain Gordon Gee basically sum it up. :roll: It's that kind of attitude that brings the anti OSU feeling...like no other college or university belongs on the same field, class room or anything else. And most of these Bucks fans aren't grads of OSU> :wink:

Buckeyes are team some love to hate
Ohio State must be pretty good to draw passionate detractors

By George M. Thomas
Beacon Journal sportswriter


Published on Friday, Dec 28, 2007

COLUMBUS: For some college football fans, Columbus will always represent a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Just like the Bronx will be for baseball fans, Boston for pro basketball fans and Dallas for pro football fans. With success comes a myriad of feelings from others — enmity is just one of them.

Kirk Herbstreit, a former Ohio State quarterback and current ESPN analyst, experiences it on an amplified basis simply because of the reach he has nationwide. Many view him as an ambassador for the Buckeyes and the Big Ten.

''What's ironic to me is that when I travel around the nation, that because people have such a bad taste in their mouth for the Big Ten, I think they feel that the Big Ten is an overhyped conference and they feel Ohio State is an overhyped team,'' he said.

Many of those thoughts probably could be attributed to the blowout loss to Florida in the BCS National Championship Game last January, but Buckeyes football existed long before then.

The reality, however, is that OSU and its fans are ubiquitous. With the university having one of the largest alumni associations in the country, it's rare to go to a Buckeyes road game and not find a sizable mass of bodies decked in scarlet and gray. Such was the case this season in Seattle when Ohio State took on the University of Washington, and the local me
dia noticed.

''More than Notre Dame, more than Michigan, Alabama, USC or Texas, Ohio State is the Yankees of college football,'' Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Art Thiel wrote. ''Because nothing says more eloquently that an American sports enterprise has reached the pinnacle than by being out of control and over the top.''

For Thiel, the fact that OSU's athletic department turns a profit, primarily because of football, and supports all 36 of the school's varsity sports, represents a great sin.

Even former Ohio State President Karen Holbrook got into the mix when she likened the school's student body to being out of control and condoning a culture of drunken orgies and riots complete with car flipping.

Such statements and perceptions trickle down, and with the Buckeyes being viewed as a team that doesn't belong in the national championship game in New Orleans on Jan. 7, it might be worse this year.

Coach Jim Tressel said the Buckeyes will have to go a long way before they reach the level of dislike that teams such as the New York Yankees enjoy. In fact, he doesn't sense that particular emotion at all from different areas of the country.

You'll forgive his players if they disagree. Defensive back Malcolm Jenkins said the acidic attitudes are obvious.

''You take it in and take it for what it is worth. There really is nothing because everything is controlled by us so we just take it as fuel, and it's pretty much us against the world so that's how we take it,'' he said. ''We are going to believe in ourselves and continue to look at each other for support and just try and get this thing going.''

Wide receiver and Canton native Brian Hartline had his views, too.

''If people do dislike us, and I don't know if that's the whole truth, if they do, the biggest thing is because we win . . . people that aren't your level, all they try to do is bring you down to their level,'' he said. ''If you're up higher, you have to watch out for those guys below you who want to knock you down. I guess that's what they're doing, but in general I think we have a big enough family that we're happy.''

They're happy and those throughout the nation appear to be happy to mock Ohio State.

''The gigantism — at 52,000 students, the nation's largest single-campus university — allows it to self-impose the word 'The' in front of the name Ohio State University. You know, sort of like how the announcer in New York describes a victory as 'Thaaaaaa . . . Yankees win!' '' Thiel wrote in the same column.

Some might wonder where the animosity originates. Returning President E. Gordon Gee, who hasn't been known for his prowess in dealing with the athletic department in the past at OSU, might have hit upon the answers.

''In many ways, I think we have the most incredible national fan base of any institution in the country. Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State and USC have these kinds of national auras around them,'' he said in a published report. ''So I think you're going to get a lot of people who feel distinctly about the institutions. But hate would not be the word I would use. Admiration. Fear. Jealousy. Envy. Try those words.''


Any thoughts?
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Post by 1987alum »

Fair enough.

I've grown tired of the back and forth about the Buckeyes and, for that matter, other programs and schools. I'm more content to focus on BG and enjoy the positives.

Ohio State fans can and should enjoy their team, for whatever reason they choose to root for it.
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Post by redskins4ever »

O-H- N-O

I live in Columbus, and I have buckeye drivel shoved down my throat 24/7, and am chastized and ridiculed for rooting for anyone else. Its a bully's mentality, so until other schools and programs knock them off their pedestal, not just in Football or basketball but in all sports, this attitude will continue. Im wishing LSU dishes out a large piece of humble pie.
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Post by Rightupinthere »

My distaste for OState stems from their fanbase....the same fans who never stepped foot in an Ohio State classroom.

I don't give a rat's pucker about their teams, students, alumni, or the institution's veracious appetite at the taxpayer's collective tit.
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Post by takeoffeh »

It's not the OSU football program I dislike. They have a good program, they have a good team. They should, they are a huge school with a lot of alumni. I can respect that. Their fans are terrible. Even the fans that didn't attent OSU, they ask me what College team I'm for? I tell them BGSU. They then ask what MAJOR college I'm for? I tell them BGSU. They ask why. That's where I went, that's where I played. They just don't get it. They have the attitude of, "There's only 1 school in Ohio."

Roll along you BG Warrior...
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Post by Jamie Gillis »

takeoffeh wrote: Their fans are terrible. Even the fans that didn't attent OSU,
I've never had a problem with the students or alumni. In fact, I tend to like most with whom I've had contact. It's the t-shirt alumni that are obnoxious. It's as though deep down they know that they have no real connection to the school, so they have to overcompensate by being these in your face, uberfans.

A student there from my high school once told me that he was kind of shocked because he'd see a lot of Michigan sweatshirts on campus. He said that they were grad students who'd gone to AA or part of the sizable portion of undergrads who don't really care about football and just like being contrarian. Said that nobody hassled them beyond some good natured ribbing. The interesting thing was that he said had someone worn one of those Michigan sweatshirts into some redneck bar where nobody had every stepped foot inside an osu classroom, they'd probably end up with a beer bottle smashed against their face. To me, that's the best summation of the differences between osu's real alumni and t-shirt alumni.

As for osu's voracious appetite with the state, that's a myth. All public, 4 year universities are funded by the same universal, model which is essentially a standardized per-student subsidy. I wrote a paper about evolution of Ohio's higher education funding for a public policy class.
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Post by takeoffeh »

Jamie, I agree with you 100%. I was probably a little vague on my post before (i'm at work...doing this in a hurry).

Roll along you BG warrior...
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Post by Rightupinthere »

Jamie Gillis wrote: It's the t-shirt alumni that are obnoxious.
BRILLIANT TERMINOLOGY!


:smt042
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Post by tekekini »

How many times a year do you have this same bitch fest thread?

I think I have seen this thread with the exact same content three times this month!

Forget about it and move on.


:roll:
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Post by Falconfreak90 »

tekekini wrote:How many times a year do you have this same bitch fest thread?

I think I have seen this thread with the exact same content three times this month!

Forget about it and move on.


:roll:
So don't read it. Nobody is forcing you to be here. :roll:

This is a discussion, not a bitch fest. Some of these articles cited were from as far away as Washington. Seriously, I love the "T shirt Alumni" reference. Going to the mall this holiday season, I saw more OSU gear than the Browns, Cavs, Indians, Kent State and Akron...combined. The people that have no connection to OSU feel the need to wear OSU gear EVERY day of the year...Hell I don't even wear BG gear EVERY day of the year....maybe 349 days but not EVERY day. Anyone can be a Buck$ fan...it takes someone special to be a BG fan. :-D

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Post by h2oville rocket »

Falconfreak90 wrote:...it takes someone special to be a BG fan. :-D
No one would argue that statement, Freak... ;-)
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Post by ZiggyZoomba »

h2oville rocket wrote:
Falconfreak90 wrote:...it takes someone special to be a BG fan. :-D
No one would argue that statement, Freak... ;-)

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Post by tiznow »

tekekini wrote:How many times a year do you have this same bitch fest thread?

I think I have seen this thread with the exact same content three times this month!

Forget about it and move on.


:roll:
That would be amazing since the article was written on 12/28.
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Post by tekekini »

tiznow wrote:
tekekini wrote:How many times a year do you have this same bitch fest thread?

I think I have seen this thread with the exact same content three times this month!

Forget about it and move on.


:roll:
That would be amazing since the article was written on 12/28.
Your kidding right? Otherwise, you missed the point of my post. It wasn't about the article. My comment was based on the comments that came after it, regarding your dislike of the fans and not the team...That is what I have read in three or four other threads in the last week or so.

Over your head I guess? Everyone else got it. :smt075
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Post by tiznow »

Did you have a few too many last night? You just don't pick up on things that quick.
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