This Saturday, the Ohio Bobcats will make the short drive up Route-33 to take on the No. 2 team in the nation, the Ohio State Buckeyes. As shocking to the outsider as it may seem, and despite their school affiliation, not all Ohio students plan on pulling for the upset.

In an effort to turn Athens green this weekend and expose the fallacies behind rooting against one’s alma mater, here are the top five reasons that every Bobcat should be dreaming of a shocking victory.

-Your school selection: From the moment that a student signs his or her admission letter to Ohio University, he or she is bound for life to the school, for better or for worse. A college choice is almost akin to a marriage; whether you grow to love it or hate it, you are tied to your university forever. All previous rooting engagements pale in comparison to the bond created with the university one chooses to attend.

Though this may seem like an obvious reason to root for the Bobcats, but breaking up is apparently hard to do for those who grew up rooting for the Buckeyes. The issue of whether one can be a fan of both is a debate for another day, but the battle lines, at the very least, should be drawn on Saturday.

When the childhood Buckeye fan became a Bobcat, a decision was made by either the fan or the university they root for on the football field. Either the fan decided that they didn’t love OSU enough to attend the school, or the university decided that they didn’t love the fan enough to let them in. Allegiances for this Saturday’s showdown were created at this seminal moment in a student’s life.

The argument that an Ohio student can root for the Buckeyes and still love Ohio, just not its sports teams, is an insult to their fellow students who don the Green and White on the field. Bobcat athletes live in the same dorms, take some of the same classes and are molded just as much by their time in Athens as the average student.

They compete at the same level, the Division I Bowl Subdivision, as their more famous opponents and pour out just as much sweat and blood in preparation. Ohio Bobcats football may lack the glamour and flash of the Ohio State powerhouse, but they carry our flag. If an Ohio University student loves the University, they will be cheering on their fellow Bobcats to the final whistle on Saturday.

-The biggest win in school history: A common chorus for those who will be rooting on the red side of the Horseshoe this weekend is that they are pulling for the Buckeyes because they are in the national title hunt, a feat that the Bobcats cannot pull off even with this signature victory. The counter-argument lies in the fact that if Ohio prevails, it will be the biggest victory in the history of the program.

Even if Ohio State goes on to win the national title it would still be one of eight. An upset, no matter how unlikely, would be the greatest moment in the century-plus history of Ohio Bobcats football, period.

Mark Parsons’ punt return fumble–with the Bobcats up by two with seconds left in the 3th quarter–turned the tide in the 2008 thriller between the two schools. Only a quarter and a few seconds separated Ohio from that aforementioned greatest win two years ago, and it would only make a win this year that much more significant

-The Eagleson Bill: At the turn of the 20th century, the two previously founded universities in the state–Ohio University and Miami University–were enmeshed in a power struggle with a newcomer, Ohio State University, that was chartered in 1870 as the Ohio Mechanical and Agricultural College.

Of seminal importance during this period was Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes was a founder of Ohio State University as a governor, and after returning to Ohio after his one term as President of the United States, used his political influence to lobby on behalf of greater power for OSU. The debate came to a head in 1906 when a controversial bill handed the new kid on the block an advantage.

Despite heavy protest from the previously founded and more well-established state universities, the Eagleson Bill was passed. The bill mandated that only Ohio State among state universities was legally allowed to offer doctoral education or conduct basic research. The bill formally and legally locked in Ohio State’s status as the state’s leading institution and left the others to fight over scraps.

Even though the schools had similar enrollment, OSU was significantly handed the golden ticket to the Big Ten Conference six years later instead of the other major state competitors, Ohio and Miami.

“The Big Ten Conference is comprised of world-class academic institutions who share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public service,” says a mission statement on the conference’s website.

The Eagleson Bill meant that, through law, only OSU could meet the necessary criteria needed to enter the conference. The boost to one of the premier collegiate conferences put them on the path to success and left their rivals to join the less famous Mid-American Conference a few decades later.

-The 89-year in-state drought: The Oberlin College Yeomen were the last in-state opponent to beat the Buckeyes, winning 7-6 way back in 1921. To put that in perspective, the United States agreed to a peace treaty with Germany to put an end to World War 1 less than two months before that game.

Ohio State decided not to risk losing its luster again following the loss, avoiding in-state teams and thus making very few rivals within the borders of Ohio. The Buckeyes have faced the other majors colleges in the state–Akron, Bowling Green, Cincinnati, Kent State, Miami, Ohio, and Toledo–only 18 times since that date, and none before 1990.

As a result, the Buckeyes were able to maintain their facade as the only legitimate football team in the state and all but ignoring its rivals as insignificant.

-Ohio State’s identity crisis: At some point since its existence, Ohio State decided to buck the trend of every other similarly named state school in America by dropping the “State” suffix to its name and ignoring the already established school named Ohio.

Imagine the confusion in Ann Arbor and East Lansing if the Spartan band spelled out, simply, “Michigan” in the build-up to their rivalry game. More to the point, because one is a major-conference team and one a small-conference school, there would be still be significantly backlash from Philadelphia if Penn State all of sudden decided to refer to themselves as “Penn” or “Pennsylvania.”

Ohio Stadium, Script Ohio, “O-H”…”I-O,” the block O, the famous Jesse Owens picture above (if you understandably thought he was an often overlooked Bobcat alum, you were wrong), the “OHIO” group pose, the Ohio chant during the chorus to “Hang on Sloopy,” you get the idea.

OSU’s attempt to claim the Ohio name as its own, despite the pesky fact that a university bearing that name was founded more than a half century before it and had a proud history in its own right is not a recent trend. In 1917, the school attempted to change its name to the “University of Ohio,” though no other state in the union had ever given two of its schools such similar and confusing monikers. Its request was denied by the state legislature, but that hasn’t stopped them from continually running away from that persistent “State” tag.

“Ohio State is interested in being Ohio State University and Ohio University,” said former Ohio athletic director Tom Boeh said in an article from the Post in 1997 detailing the tension between the naming rights. “I think it’s odd as heck that they want to have both names. But I think they think we’re not relevant enough to bear the name of the state.”

His last point is the one that should most irk the Bobcats, and rightfully so. The Buckeyes insistence that they are The Ohio State University–ignoring the numerous other Ohio state institutions–shows that Boeh may not be far off in his guess behind OSU’s motivation.

Saturday is the Bobcats’ grand chance, its shot to assert its relevance on the national football stage and to show who Ohio is to the entire country. If all Ohio students can’t get behind that idea, its hard to imagine what they would ever root for.