Yes. I have had this conversation many times with osu fans. It usually goes something like this:

osu fan: osu is the official university of the State of Ohio.
me: No it isn't. There are lots of other public universities in the state.
osu fan: Yes it is. It's right there in the name. Ohio STATE University.
me: That's just the name.
osu fan: Yeah, but it means we're the official university of the State of Ohio.
me: So does that mean Ohio University is the official university of Ohio?
osu fan: Yeah, I guess so.
me: And Ohio is a state?
osu fan: Yeah.
me: So....osu is the official university of the STATE of Ohio, but Ohio University is the official university of OHIO, a state?
osu fan: [blank stare]


I disagree. "Rooting" for a team in any particular game doesn't necessarily make you a fan. I was rooting for Oregon to beat Florida State. That doesn't make me an Oregon fan...it just means that I arbitrarily shifted my emotions to support one side over the other for a limited time. "Fandom" requires more than temporary emotional investment.

I had an interesting conversation at work today.

Hanging from my desk is a poster of our home men's basketball schedule.

A guy who I don't know but works on my floor walked by and noticed the schedule. He stopped and stated "this is great." He then stated he wasn't from Ohio and thought it was very strange how there is no interest in Ohio sports. He then referenced "Michigan and Michigan State" and wondered how "Ohio and Ohio State" weren't similar to that. He stated "even alumni" don't seem to care about other state colleges in Ohio like they would other places. I agreed with him completely. I was pretty thrilled he said something. This is the first conversation on these lines. Prior to this, I have gotten a lot of talk about the Akron rivalry (where I work) and a lot of references to DJ Cooper and our Sweet 16 run.

This led to a sidebar among the people who work immediately around me. One lady (not from Ohio) mentioned the amazing amount of pride all OU alums have in the school and agreed it was strange sports don't seem to transfer as much.

Like LuckySparrow mentioned, I do believe that this issue is improving. A decent amount of people I graduated from OHIO with have posted on social media excited about the Buckeyes. At the same time, I continue to be blown away by how many conversations I see about Ohio basketball among my friends on social media. I expect it from certain people (such as people I know post on BA) but it always makes me happy when I see people who are not huge sports fans discussing our basketball team.

it comes from a culture where football is a very big deal (Friday Night Lights shine just as bright in Ohio as they do in Texas) but the two pro sports teams in the state have been sources of pain and disappointment for decades. The Buckeyes, in contrast, are without question one of the most winningest sport teams, period. You take a culture that is obsessive about football and combine it with the hardships of living in the rust belt and you have the perfect recipe for an obsessive fan base looking to identify with a winner. Local papers and TV news in northern Ohio cover the Browns, in southern Ohio they cover the Bengals, but all of them cover the Buckeyes. Contrast decades of that kind of coverage with the fact that Ohio University's football team played its first ever nationally televised game in 2005.

What better evidence than the news this week about the town of Oregon, Ohio temporarily changed its name to "Oregon, Ohio Buckeyes on the Bay, City of Duck Hunters." Oregon, OH is 11 miles from the University of Toledo, 23 miles from Bowling Green, and 132 miles from Columbus.

I like your "fandom" with this addition - add in after 2) MAC, 3) Schools with ex OHIO players and/or coaches on the current coaching staff (well, usually, BC would be an exception)

Mark, I think it would be more effective, to shout "Bobcats" after the O-H-I-O thing. It think it would confuse them less, and make the point better. Just one man's opinion.

On a recent trip in the South I was surprised at the number of people who saw my OHIO ballcap (all it has on it is the arched OHIO), who did NOT confuse me with an OSu fan. One man, in Alabama, saw the hat, and asked how our team was doing, and then added, what a good team Ohio STATE (emphasis his) had. Another, kind of proud of himself, rattled off about 10 of the 13 MAC teams, and then asked about Frank Solich. I've notice this before in places like North Carolina and Georgia. I'm beginning to think OHIO has more problems with recognition in certain parts of the Buckeye State (notable up near the Mistake on the Lake) and in some bordering states than we do elsewhere. This is kind of puzzling, but the ink that OSU gets in the Ohio press, as discussed elsewhere in this thread, probably has something to do with it. Sports journalism in Ohio is not exactly balanced, and this goes back a long, long time. I can remember back in the early '60s when a certain team in Southwestern Ohio had a pretty darn good basketball team, but the state media just slobbered over Jerry Lucas and his teammates and even after the Bearcats defeated the Buckeyes, they got less coverage than the school in Cowtown. Then this past year, OSU was defeated in the NCAA by Dayton; yet, this year how much statewide coverage has Dayton received compared to the Evil Empire? This is not good journalism.

I am rooting against State. I refuse to feed the monster.

I didn't grow up in Ohio so I have no youthful tie to State.

And, I (probably naively) consider them a rival.

Also, as others point out, they crap on our heads every time they use Ohio.

We are Ohio, they are State.

Great point, and as related to my earlier long post and the comments of the person I cited, I feel that OHIO has a significant "opportunity" to increase its marketing presence in state, and is clearly presently under-performing, at least to my taste. The press will do OHIO no favors relative to tOSU's positioning.

I resigned from the Alumni Association Board of Directors a couple of years ago, and in my resignation letter I stated that I felt the largest issue the Alumni Association faced was capturing and retaining the share of mind with our in state alumni relative to our alumni's view of tOSU, and felt that tOSU and its prominence (particularly in the press) was a serious threat to our success in keeping our alumni engaged in OHIO. Many of my peers on the Board contacted me after reading my letter and stated politely that they had no idea what I was talking about, not understanding why I could feel so. Many of my 20 peers on the Board were open about their dual allegiance to OHIO and tOSU, and most were not diploma holders of the Scourge on the Scioto. Many of them are living examples of my point.

My message to them: Many of OUr alumni hold the view that while they love OHIO, they also view tOSU as being in the "big leagues", primarily related to athletics but also in academics. I believe that much of this can be attributed to the fact that tOSU is regularly in the press in all markets across the state, and it puts the other state institutions at a competitive disadvantage in getting out their message and competing for a share of voice.

The passage of the Eagleson Bill in 1906 by the Ohio Legislature solidified tOSU's advantage in becoming the state's flagship, assuring it of a funding advantage from the state FOREVER and establishing that it would be the only school allowed to offer doctoral education or conduct basic research for an extended timeline. Those things cemented tOSU as being the largest institution in the state. This of course extended to its acceptance into the largely closed club of AAU shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, many of our alumni equate quantity with quality, and fail to acknowledge that our alma mater is nationally prominent in many fields, and is worthy of praise beyond tOSU in many disciplines.

I hear folks stating here that they justify their support of tOSU because they play "big boy sports", and we are in the "minor leagues", and there is nothing you can say to be more condescending to our student athletes that are investing daily just as much as their ICA peers in Cowtown. I am of the opinion that many of our pedestrian alumni also allow this view to seep into their opinions regarding our academic status as well, which is incredibly condescending to our administration, faculty and staff, not to mention students AND alumni, and it frankly pisses me off.

I've unfortunately accepted that our largest problem in competing with tOSU has less to do with tOSU itself, and more to do with the fact that many of our alumni simply do not take OHIO seriously, and don't wear OHIO's achievements as a badge of honor both in academics and athletics, but primarily in academics. They love the campus, they love the town, they love their experience during their time on campus, but they don't own and promote the history and OUr academic achievements past and present. It is simply too easy for them to fall in line with the endless litany of tOSU press and accept the prevailing (and often flawed) sentiment of the general populace.

What OHIO has achieved it has done without the legislated advantage that State has had for over a hundred years, and I find that to be incredibly admirable, more so than simply having a built in advantage against its competitors. If we as alumni don't take OHIO as a serious enterprise and act as its largest cheerleaders, then why should we expect anyone else to take OHIO as serious as they do tOSU?

Anyone who doesn't wear OHIO's accomplishments as a badge of honor needs to burn their diploma.

RJ, is it good journalism to have almost daily preseason stories on the OSU basketball team run on the state AP wire and virtually none on Dayton, last year's best Buckeye State basketball team?

the state of higher education in the State of Ohio is a JOKE!

UCLA would like to have a word with you. ; - ) https://grad.ucla.edu/departments.html

You are actually making my point, as when I am educating people who are unfamiliar with OHIO about OHIO, I regularly use the Berkeley/UCLA comparison to help them understand how OHIO is different from State. (smaller and a more liberal arts bent versus larger and more vocational bent)

And to my understanding, Berkeley was not granted the financial and legislative advantage, with imposed restrictions on the other University of California and Cal State campuses, that tOSU was granted. If you have data that confirms otherwise then I stand corrected, but my uncle (an OHIO alumnus in the '40's) taught at UCLA for a couple decades and gave me a pretty fair grounding on how California funded the growth of their state university systems. It did not mirror what Ohio did when it assigned State flagship status.

And to expand, the UC system has two flagships, not one: Berkeley, which came first, and Los Angeles. Both OHIO and Miami lobbied for flagship status at the time that the Ohio Ag and Mech was ultimately assigned flagship status. Wouldn't it have been cool to have three land grants as flagships, not just one?! But that would have taken vision and selflessness that the Ohio Legislature did not have. (and as Billy noted still does not exhibit)

Yes,California has had two flagships emerge. It's also California with almost 40M people and two "global class" cities with metropolitan areas larger than the 3Cs combined that are six hours away. It's an apples and oranges situation to Ohio. Does Ohio need a secondary flagship? Perhaps, but guess who will fill that role, and it's not Ohio. UC is already much better positioned and has the support of a large regional business/political infrastructure to assume that role than Ohio. So does Ohio need "multiple flagships?" Should every school be free to add on doctoral and research programs. Should the state pump resources into Journalism and Avionics and dilute funding for better programs at Ohio, just because somebody up there wants one?

Actually, the UC system has always had something very similar to the Eagleson Bill. Cal State campuses do not offer Doctoral degrees by state law. And the UC system itself is governed by a centralized President and office in Oakland that manages and allocates resources and approves programs. Cal and UCLA might be rivals in many senses, but they are not true unregulated, competitive institutions as the situation in Ohio devolved into. So if you really want to replicate the UC system and be the second flagship in Ohio then you would be putting Ohio University under a centralized President and Board of Trustees that would inevitably be located in Columbus and dominated by OSU.

When I was acquiring my rooting interests as a youngster in the late 60s and early 70s I became attached to instate teams that I was exposed to through television, newspapers or magazines. Obviously Ohio State got more exposure than any other Ohio school through that limited media. I also picked up rooting interests in the Cincinnati Reds as that time was the birth of the Big Red Machine. When the Bengals started a team in the late 60s I gravitated to them also.

I had a brother graduate from OU in 1970 and the first college game I ever attended was in Peden Stadium. So naturally I became attached to the Bobcats too but continued to follow the Buckeyes. I am truly a homer for the instate teams whether that be college or professional.

I spent about 15 years as a wrestling coach in southeastern Ohio and have had wrestlers go on to compete at Ohio University and Ohio State and I equally support each program. There are only four division 1 college wrestling programs in Ohio and it pisses me off every time I see top notch high school wrestlers leave the state. I would love to see OU, OSU, KSU and CSU get all the top talent to stay in state.

In the rare occasions when OU and OSU play each other I want to see a very competitive game and can live with either team winning as long as both perform admirably. But I want each team to win every other game on their schedule and will root for all MAC and BIG teams when they play out of conference games.