General Discussion

Envy is a very dangerous thing. I look at it as being similar to the Ohio State/the rest of the Big Tens hatred towards University of Michigan - where I went. With the exception of Northwestern and a few other big ten schools, most of them have hated Michigan with a passion forever. Ohio State played Tennessee in a bowl game and all the Ohio State people could talk about was how much they hated Michigan while they were playing Tennessee. Michigan’s attitude is more of a “rah-rah let’s beat Ohio States football team.” Not that “we hate the entire school for just existing.” We were getting beaten by them in football for quite a few years in a row but they still had chips on their shoulders and were threatened by us. Michigan State is very similar to Ohio State and their dislike of U of M.

One explanation is the academic record- Michigan is harder to get into, has a reputation for being one of the most liberal Universities out there. I read somewhere that Michigan is thought of by a lot of Ohio State fans as a “smarty-pants elitist” liberal school. And Michigan State is thought of as Michigan’s “little brother” despite them being quite a bit larger - probably because U of M has been around a lot longer.

I think it’s very similar to the red state/Republican attitude vs. the blue state/Democratic thing. (Ironically, our main color is blue and their’s is red).

Nick Saban:
“You know, we’ve kind of gotten on their, sort of, fans a little bit. But, you know, these Ohio State fans? You know, they’ve got a psychotic obsession with Michigan and they need to go get therapy or something to try to get it fixed,” Saban said.

“They have a chance to win the national championship and here you are, you know, and nobody’s excited about their opportunity to play because they, you know, lost to Michigan, which was a tough game and they lost the game, probably, by some of the mistakes that they made. Those are correctable things.”