“When you are born and raised in Columbus, you were born a Buckeye fan, no matter what,” the caller says over the line, his voice pocketed in static. “Now, the reason why we see it so big up this way, and even the whole state, is because it’s The Ohio State University. There is no other university that is better than Ohio State out there, period.
Inside the booth at AM 850-WKNR, there’s a beat or two of dead air. It’s the last hour of The Really Big Show. Co-host Aaron Goldhammer has his eyes pinched shut, his head shaking from side to side.
“Wh … Wha … What?” he says, cranking out the word bit by bit, lacquering on another layer of sarcasm with each syllable. “What do you mean by that? There’s no university that’s better than Ohio State? I went to a university that’s pretty good, it’s NYU. I liked it.”
“And you like that,” the caller says. “But to me, I am The Ohio State University.”
“Yeeaaaaaaaah!” host Tony Rizzo cuts in. “What’s your name?”
“Mike,” the caller says.
“Mike: O-H!” Rizzo shouts.
“I-O!” the voice on the line chants back as those familiar tom-tom hits come in and the ridiculously ill-fitting fight song “Hang On Sloopy” fills the airwaves.
The topic on the table is Ohio State University fans and what makes them so damned passionate. Or, as Rizzo put it moments earlier: “Why are OSU fans freaks?”
Or: Why are so many of them such myopic assholes?
The phone lines are jammed, and e-mails are clogging the KNR inboxes. The hosts say it’s the usual: When conversation hovers around anything OSU, no volume of response is a surprise.
In broadcasting talk, Buckeye fans “move the needle” — they drive up ratings on game day, open their wallets for tickets and swag, and burn fuel or buy plane tickets to support their teams far and wide. But the passion cuts both ways: They’re also more likely to blow a blood vessel if the ball doesn’t bounce their way.
The school has a longtime reputation for producing a class of fan that patrols the school’s legacy like a rottweiler circling a junkyard, teeth bared for the most harmless of insult or lack of proper respect. And though every big university has its intense fans, Buckeye fans have a rare gift for pissing off everybody else, including members of their own tribe.
“I’ve got an email for you,” Rizz pipes in. “Dear Rizz: I’m a huge Ohio State fan. However, I’m not blind or deaf. I will never wear it on my sleeve, I will never answer an O-H-I-O cheer, because Ohio State fans are obnoxious, annoying, and arrogant.”
And this week it will happen all over again: Co-champs of the Big Ten, the Buckeyes have earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA basketball tournament and a path to the championship that experts say is way easier than the one they faced last year. So they will probably win: two, maybe three or more tournament games, and their fans will go ballistic and make sure you know about it. The rest of the world that surrounds Buckeye Nation on all sides will roll its eyes, forced to deal with another bout of idiocy from the most obnoxious band of sports fans this side of the Duke student section.
How then could something so insidious rise from the joyful heartland of America?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BUCKNUTTERY
Peering back through the shifting mists of time, it all starts with Woody.
Ohio State teams were buoyed by passionate crowds before legendary football coach Woody Hayes took command in 1951. But many say it was Hayes’ tenure that set the pace for the blitzkrieg Buckeye fandom has become.
“It’s almost as though Ohio State football began with Woody Hayes,” says veteran sportswriter Dan Coughlin. “Woody began history. He was Adam and Eve combined.”
To fully appreciate it, you must deliver yourself back to the days of pre-BCS football, before computers determined national bragging rights. For decades, regional rivalries ruled the day, with one granddaddy of a bowl game eyed from afar — and only one team that got to play in it.
No one grabbed hold of those stakes like the fiery Hayes. Over the course of his career, the Ohio-born coach went 205–61–10, including five national championships — a track record that elevated OSU among the biggest of the big-time programs.
It was also Hayes who powered the beef that defines the school now more than ever. Between 1969 and 1978, known in Buckeye history books as the “Ten Years War,” Hayes blew the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry into epic proportions, famously rebranding Michigan as “that school up north” — even openly refusing to buy gas in the state. Never mind that Michigan’s coach was a former Hayes protégé.
“Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler took the intensity of the Ohio State-Michigan game and moved it from the sports page to the front page,” Coughlin says.
Fittingly, Hayes’ career crash-landed when he attacked an opposing player in the 1978 Gator Bowl. But his flameout only sealed his fate as the patron saint of OSU athletics. Not only did he hand future Buckeye generations a winning tradition; he passed along an attitude. Today, when fans manage to put words to their intensity, they nod to Hayes’ white-knuckled, hippie-hating fury, whether or not they actually ever witnessed it.
After Hayes got the boot, subsequent Buckeye coaches led teams through seasons that failed to match that high standard. National titles disappeared. And John Cooper, a fine coach by most measures between 1988 and 2000, amassed a 2-10-1 record against the Wolverines. Rather than defuse the fervor of Buckeye nation, Cooper’s foibles seemed only to galvanize fan hatred for those who doubted OSU supremacy.
“This is your team, your love, your passion, and now you got to put up with national people on TV, talk shows, Jim Rome: ‘Ohio State can’t win. They choke. They suck.’ You’ve got to listen to that every day,” says Duane Risko. The former host of WKNR’s Inside the Buckeyes program, he doesn’t softpedal his love for the scarlet and gray — and he still gets riled up thinking back on the negativity he endured. “We suffered, we were taunted and laughed at. ‘You guys suck, you blow, you can’t even beat friggin’ Michigan!”
The program’s savior proved to be a mild-mannered straight arrow in a sweater vest. Jim Tressel took over the program in 2001 and quickly reestablished Buckeye swagger with an unlikely national championship at the end of the 2002 season. Tressel would go on to collect six Big Ten titles, five bowl wins, and an 8-1 record against the school up north. In the Buckeye pantheon, he sat right next to Hayes.
The rekindled sense of pride isn’t lost on Risko.
“When it was our turn finally to stick it in their ass, Jim Tressel comes up and breaks one off in theirs, then they say, ‘Oh it was luck,'” he says, still relishing the conquests of years ago. “Then he turns around and does it again, and again.
“Tressel had us back in the hunt again. And now, all these fans around us who were breaking it off in our asses for years, now we were able to say, ‘Yeah, who sucks? Who blows now, huh? Take your urination-stained helmets and go beat it.’ Well, we got revenge. We were celebrating.
“Look at Tressel’s run. That’s why he was loved, because he restored the fan base to where old men could wear their hats and their jackets, they could pull them out of the closet. You could go down to Uniontown, Youngstown, Marion, Ohio, Rio Grande, Ohio — wherever you went, people were wearing Ohio State stuff once again. Why? Because Jim Tressel beat Michigan and restored the proud, rich tradition.”
The recaptured glory was also enough to knock some fans a few notches down the evolutionary ladder, to a subspecies of douche: the Bucknut.
THE FREAK FACTION
It was in January of 2008 that sports blogger Spencer Hall found himself sitting amid a thicket of OSU fans at the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans, with No. 1 Ohio State squaring off against No. 2 Louisiana State. In the first half, LSU’s All-American safety Craig Steltz went down with a shoulder injury. About ten OSU fans surrounding Hall stood up in unison, with their index and middle fingers bent together into a mushed “O” shape.
Hall figured he knew what was up, but he asked what the gesture meant anyway. A nearby fan grabbed his fingers together into the shape.
“Pussy,” he said.
The pussies went on to win, 38-24.
“It’s really hard to get over the anecdotal evidence,” Hall says today. He writes about college football for SB Nation, a gig that lets him see up close each big program’s fan base — and the stereotypes rivals throw at one another. He’s mocked up a vivid profile of the Buckeye Everyman.
“It’s everything negative and easily mockable about the Midwest compressed in a single entity,” he deadpans. And it’s more than just a vibe. The classic Bucknut has a defining set of traits all his own.
“The stereotype is angry, probably has a goatee, probably watches MMA and wrestling on the side, may live with his mother — may. And also, he’s perpetually defensive about Ohio State’s struggles.
“They wear jerseys,” he adds. “People don’t wear the jersey in the SEC. It’s not something adults do.”
And Buckeye Nation has earned the appropriate national accolades for it. According to the Bleacher Report’s list of the 25 rudest fan bases in all of college athletics, Ohio State came in fourth — the highest ranking of any Big Ten program. (The top 3 spots were held down by West Virginia, Alabama, and LSU, making OSU the No. 1 rudest team among civilized cultures.)
“They don’t live in the real world. They live in a world where they see everything in the world of sports, with these scarlet-and-gray glasses they have on,” says WKNR’s Goldhammer. Born and raised in Colorado, he delights in riling up listeners by putting a finger in the eye of Brutus Buckeye.
“I’ve seen Yankee fans, [Colorado] fans, Bronco fans, University of Wisconsin in Madison — nothing is like Ohio State that I’ve seen. Nothing even belongs in the same conversation.”
Bruce Hooley is Goldhammer’s stationmate at WKNR, an OSU graduate who wrote about Buckeye sports for The Plain Dealer for years. In exchange for his effort, he sometimes received death threats.
According to Hooley’s math, 20 percent of Buckeye fans are passionate alumni. Another 40 percent are simply sports fans with an even keel. But the remaining 40 percent have repackaged whatever personal insecurity complexes they’re hefting around into a superiority complex about OSU football.
“For the 40 percent freak faction, really, their quality of life is tied to how the football team did on Saturday,” he says. “There’s a reason why they say a few bad apples can spoil the bunch.”
Most observers agree that Buckeye fanatics hit their most rabid just as Jim Tressel began his belly-flop from grace over failing to report the free swag his players were stockpiling like Halloween candy. An NCAA probe has resulted in a one-year ban from competitive play. Sadly, college basketball’s governing body has no authority to rein in Ohio State fans in any similar fashion.
Naturally, Bucknuts responded by calling BS or blaming the media — ESPN in particular. Many believe the broadcasting empire went after Tressel because it felt threatened by OSU’s influence among fans. Even now that Tressel has resigned from the program, a bad aftertaste lingers.
“It hurt, because I knew Michigan fans were just waiting for this, they were going to urinate all over us,” says Risko. “There are those who don’t like Ohio State, so naturally they hate and pile up. But Bill Clinton can sleep with more women than anyone in the White House, and everybody loves him and they forgive him. But Jim Tressel? They don’t want to forgive, except for us loyalists. We look and say he paid a heavy price.”
Perhaps nobody has felt Buckeye Nation’s misplaced wrath more than former quarterback Kirk Herbstreit.
Now an acclaimed analyst on ESPN’s GameDay, Herbstreit sits in the penthouse of college football broadcasting: the smooth-talking nice guy called upon to handle the network’s biggest games. But along with that job goes a need to speak objectively. When he believes his alma mater is overmatched, he says so. When their coach screws up mightily, he calls for his resignation.
Of course, Buckeye douchebags have no use for such genuine expression. And so they abuse Herbstreit at the slightest provocation.
“Five times a day, there would be a car parked at a stop sign, people knocked on the door, they’d ask for autographs at the front door, they’d drive by real slow, 12:30 at night,” Herbstreit told the sports blog Outkick the Coverage last November, referring to the mobs that would form outside his Columbus home. “I was getting up in the middle of the night to see cars outside in the street. I had no idea what they were doing there. The thought that in this crazy world we live in, somebody’s driving by your house five times a day or more, that starts to work on you emotionally. But we dealt with that for four or five years.” (ESPN didn’t respond to Scene‘s request for an interview with Herbstreit.)
The Columbus Dispatch didn’t help matters when, in the summer of 2009, it published Herbstreit’s home address and included a handy map to his place on the front page.
But the levee broke with the Tressel scandal.
“When your own puts the dagger in Tressel’s back, I think that’s where Herby made his one big mistake,” Risko says. “For him to call for his head, I think people looked at him as a Judas. That’s where he should have let somebody else do the dirty work.”
A year ago, Herbstreit moved his family to Nashville. In an interview with The Dispatch, the former Buckeye golden boy was blunt about the reasoning.
“I don’t like moving. I love living here. I don’t want to leave. But I just can’t do this anymore. I really can’t keep going like this. Eighty to 90 percent of the Ohio State fans are great. It’s the vocal minority that make it rough. They probably represent only 5 to 10 percent of the fan base, but they are relentless.”
LEAVE ROOM FOR PITY
People who study this kind of depravity — and yes, those people are out there — are quick to offer explanations.
“Let’s just say someone very publicly berated your brother. How would you feel?” says Dr. Adam Earnheardt, a communications professor who has watched the Buckeye bandwagon from his perch at Youngstown State.
“Any time someone is hypercritical about your favorite team — a team you identify with with your whole heart and soul — your immediate reaction is defensive. You are attacking the very core of my being, so I’m going to do everything in my power to preserve that, and part of that preservation is denial.”
A lot of extreme fan love isn’t so much about welding your personality to the team, Earnheardt says, but playing up to how others think extreme fans should act. They get huge tattoos, for instance, or maybe egg the home of a prominent ESPN analyst, not out of honest compulsion alone, but because that’s what superfans do. It’s the difference between Oh, that’s Brutus, he likes OSU and Holy shit, Brutus is the most insane Buckeye fan out there!
“You’re creating your identity as an extreme sports fan. This is the level of sports fandom people want to think you’re at,” he says. “It’s all about self-performance.” Once you’re Brutus the holy-shit guy, you are personally validated. You’re a standout. And you’re a moron.
Earnheardt adds that Ohio State’s reputation has bloated its fan ranks beyond all reasonable proportions.
“For the most part, when you look at Ohio State and some of the other large programs, there is a lengthy history of winning traditions that will solidify the fan bases for a long time,” he says.
In study-speak, researchers call it “champ followers.” It’s the main draw for fans who have never stepped near the OSU campus, much less walked out with a diploma. “What ends up happening is that passion for Ohio State kind of trickles down to other people who may have been on the fringes, may have been mere spectators before, but because of the passion the extreme fans have, it almost infects other people.”
Ohio State’s ubiquity across the state also plays a role in its fan following. Football hotbeds like Texas and Florida have multiple teams that vie for the hearts, minds, and foam fingers of fans. Ohio has no shortage of Division I programs, but none that specialize in athletic conquest the way Ohio State does. No matter how hard you look, you will not find Zips Nation.
And around these parts, any whiff of victory is bound to engender admiration.
“A lot of it has to do with the Browns, Indians, and Cavs not being all that good over the last 40 years,” says WKNR’s Tony Rizzo. “The Browns had one run in the ’80s, the Indians had their runs in the ’90s, the Cavs had their run in the 2000s. We’ve never seen all three teams that good. We’ve never seen any of the teams win a championship in 45 years. And we’ve never seen a team sustain being good for six, seven years.”
Anthony Lima of 92.3 The Fan paints with a somewhat broader brush.
“In our area, the pro teams are garbage, the industry is dying, there’s brain drain, the weather is shitty,” he says. “Ohio State is the one thing in this state that a lot of people can latch onto and actually puff their chest out about.”
A FRESH WAVE OF SMUGNESS
“Let me tell you something buddy,” a new caller chimes in, striking back at Goldhammer. “Your selective outrage kills me … You’ve got Cam Newton’s daddy trying to sell him for a quarter of a million dollars …”
With that, the caller has been cut off, but his comment lingers briefly in the air. He’s suggesting that OSU haters — at WKNR, at ESPN, and everywhere else — take joy in piling on Tressel and other scapegoats, but tiptoe around other schools’ more serious infractions, like when Newton, the former phenom quarterback at Auburn University, was caught up in a pay-to-play scandal engineered by his father.
The calls continue to come in, and although March Madness is a week away, The Really Big Show never steers away from the pigskin — never mind that the first kickoff is still half a year away.
At the moment OSU had slumped to its knees in the wake of Tressel’s disgrace, and a rare season of middling football, and — gasp — a loss to that team up north, news surfaced that Urban Meyer was headed to Columbus. The man who had twice delivered national championships as the head coach of Florida is back in his native Ohio, poised to return the Buckeyes to the top of the rankings just as soon as the NCAA will let them back in.
Bucknuts have tentatively scheduled the BCS Championship parade for January 2014 — the very moment they will be bowl-eligible again.
In the meantime, any talk about OSU rapidly devolves into an echo chamber for Bucklove of all shapes and sizes.
“The colors: Is there any better?” a caller to WKNR waxes poetic. “We bleed red. Everybody bleeds red. So isn’t everybody an Ohio State fan?”
“We could do another six hours of this,” Goldhammer says during a commercial break.
This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2012.
Great, refreshing article. Columbus blows and this is one of the many reasons why. I didn’t go to Ohio State and don’t care about the team, other than the fact that most of the good players are from Cleveland.
I graduated from OSU and the spirit is unlike few places in the country. Of course their are knuckleheads but nothing close to what is down at a Browns game. Radio and newspaper people love to talk about OSU good or bad because it is certain to trigger a lot of responses. Football rules the roost and the Buckeyes are a powerhouse. It is great fun to be a Buckeye fan because we have some of the best football in the nation. For those that have never been to an OSU game I suggest you go early, enjoy the band and atmosphere and you will enjoy that as much as the game. OSU Footall has had its blemishes but it is still a world class program that we should be proud of.
I found Mr. Swenson to be every bit the arrogant douchebag he accuses OSU fans of being. The whole article oozes condescension. For nearly a decade, I lived on or near the OSU campus in Columbus. Fans are passionate, to be sure, but other than a few obnoxious drunks, nowhere near the stereotype Swenson tries to reduce us to.
Also, hearing “Hang on Sloopy” at Browns and Indians games is just awful. This is Cleveland, we don’t need to borrow the tradition of a college team. I heard the Bengals play it as well. Columbus is a boring city with no character that was designed to serve Cleveland and Cincinnati. It thrives in its ability to attract mediocrity. The only thing it has going for it is the university and the state government. People there are boring OSU zombies that devour anyone who moves there into the same ideology of only caring about OSU football and thinking the fact that shopping malls exist in the city make it cool especially because you can eat at Olive Garden or Applebee’s afterward.
here’s the problem, this is an outside looking in article so there is no homeotwn discount if you will. The Responses seem to be from the inside out and want to just toss it off as a few meaningless driunks, well it’s not a few meaningless drunks, it’s a lot of idiot drunks who are becoming the core symbol of Buckeye Fever. But that is not OSU’s fault it is the culture of fandom. It’s not just OSU it’s everywhere. I went to the Heights -St. ed’s Football Game last year and was moderately surprised at all the Ed’s alums getting tanked before a High School football Game on lee Road.
I live in Cleveland and graduated from Kent, from Northeast Ohio and if I happen to cut myself I bleed Scarlet and Grey…I am huge fan of The Ohio State University since I was a little kid…
But I am not a bucknut… Dooshbag Buckeye fans with no perspective need to be singled out and beaten until they understand rational v irrational…
They represent The Ohio State University and NOT in a good way…
I’m one of the 20% mentioned in the article (OSU ’85) – and I take umbrage at Mr. Swenson’s characterization of the “freaks.” I am just as much of an OSU freak as those who love Ohio State (but missed the opportunity to go there.) That 40%…? I love them!
Also – ESPN did indeed target Tressel and hyped his miscues (Lying to the NCAA? Oh my!) Why did they target him? The Big 10 Network, that’s why. By skipping the middleman (ESPN, CBS, etc.) the Big Ten Network’s TV revenue goes straight to the schools, so they get a bigger cut. By focusing 1/2 of every half hour of ESPN Sports Center on Tressel at the height of this trumped-up episode, ESPN committed corporate thuggery. Herbstreit was certainly an accomplice. It’s all about the money, and Mr. Swenson’s cursory-level insight is just right for someone like Mr. Goldhammer, the most petulant, narcissistic Howard-Cosell-wannabe I’ve had to endure in quite a while.
I’m not sure which percent of OSU type fan I am but as big as an OSU fan as I am, I am also a Cleveland fan.
But I don’t get why Cleveland doesn’t understand OSU… Cleveland fans continues to support the Browns even though they haven’t been worth watching since they came back. To not get the O-H-I-O cheer is like not returning a bark on the walk to the stadium. Or Cavalier fans that burned jerseys in response to “the decision”. I just seems, to me anyways, that we have way more in common than not.
Jackie, I’m forced to go to Columbus at least once a year unfortunately. Columbus has German Village with a couple mediocre restaurants. I’ll give Thurman Cafe some props that’s about it, although I did get hassled by a bum for money outside the restaurant and THEN IN THE BATHROOM right after. Sure, there a few places in Columbus but the vast majority of people want to watch OSU and eat garbage. Most people in Cleveland don’t give a crap about nightlife as you describe it. We don’t want to go clubbing with a bunch of loser college students. We want to sit and have a beer and have conversation. Cleveland has some distinguished class in that sense. And if you haven’t been on W.25th, the Westside Market is booming more than ever, and the area is becoming a brewery district with several great restaurants. The restaurants in Tremont/Ohio City blow away anything in Columbus easily and there are far more places in that small area than any place in Columbus. I find downtown Cleveland to actually be quite clean these days. You’re one of the typical mediocre people that finds Columbus cool because you can party with college douches and moved to Columbus. The malls I were referring to were Polaris and Easton. People think Columbus is amazing because of a couple of large malls with chain stores. They apparently don’t realize that you can find that anywhere. Have you ever wondered why pretty much every road trip food TV show that travels always go to Cleveland, and they pretty much never go to Columbus? Anthony Bourdain had a whole episode for Cleveland that he considers his favorite episode. I think he eventually went to Columbus as part of a larger show in later seasons and did one thing there. Diners, Drive-In’s and Dives has a bunch of things in Cleveland. Zero in Columbus, and Guy Fieri was born there (they moved to CA very quickly). Rachel Ray food shows. I think Man v. Food did actually go to Columbus because of the college atmosphere, but he came to Cleveland too of course. Unique Eats. Anything. You name it. I can’t list all of the shows. Columbus isn’t even on the national food map, and Cleveland has a pretty decent presence actually. Another thing, have you ever noticed how there is basically no one famous from Columbus, but there are a myriad of famous people from Cleveland. Why? No inspiration or culture. Why don’t you go hit up the French Market?
On the money, Jackie!! Columbus is a CLEAN city, which is definitely not something I can say about cincy and especially cleveland. Grew up in Strongsville, got my undergrad at OSU and honsestly if any of you have ever stepped foot on the compus itself, you would realize the university is nowhere close to the representation that the ‘bucknut’ fans give OSU, as a few of you have stated. Ohio definitely has its classless fans that flip off an opposing player getting hurt or start a fight over a bumper sticker, probably more so than other areas in the midwest, but overall, its not that bad here. Also, if you ever traveled anywhere in the country outside of ohio, there are plenty of buckeye fans and alum that are passionate and respectful.
What reason would anyone outside of Ohio have to visit Columbus? NONE. There are reasons to visit Cleveland, and people do. COSI and the Columbus Zoo (which may or may not be the best) are not recognizble to people outside of the state and are not enough to make people come to Columbus.
The author clearly is as myopic as the claims he makes about Ohio State fans. Most big-time programs have their fair share of the same thing. Ever spent any time in the south? Tallahassee or Alabama perhaps? I guess since this guy hasn’t seen it, it doesn’t exist. Lucky for humanity, everyone isn’t so stupid.
haha, ya Cleveland is a real vacation spot. If i didnt have family in Ohio, there would be no reason to come here for anything. and did someone from Cleveland complain about bums in other cities??? REALLY????? I lived at Reserve Square for a year and Bridgeview for 2 (in the NICE area, lol) and I’d be lucky to make it through the parking garage in either without getting harassed by the ‘less fortunate’ or stepping over one using the ‘facilities’ beside my car. Cleveland is one of the dirtiest dumps in the country.
“An NCAA probe has resulted in a two-year ban from competitive play” Really? Did this “author” do any research??
@BrianWilson You defend your fair city with the rabid vehemence of a…a…dare I say Bucknut?
Brian, have you ever heard of Jack Nicklaus? I hear he is pretty famous. But he is no Anthony Bourdain
This brian wilson sounds like a fat lazy slob that has nothing better to do than stuff his face and bash Columbus. The mistake by the lake has NOTHING on Columbus cuisine. Cleveland just has more restaurants not better. Cameron Mitchell has some of the finest eateries in the nation not just the state of Ohio. Not to mention Schmidt’s sausage haus, a world renowned restaurant for over 100 yrs! No place in Detroit’s little brother could touch LaScala’s for italian cuisine either. Have you never been to the Ohio Theatre or listened to the Columbus Symphony Orchestra? Of course you wouldn’t care for Easton because you probably can’t walk very far. Columbus Childrens Hospital is known for its leadership in the fields of childhood cancer and superior burn units. As far as The Ohio State University is concerned you have The James Cancer Unit, Batelle, OSU research ( which leads the nation in many categories), Stephanie Speilman breast cancer center, The Best Damn Band in the Land, Script Ohio, the Silver Bullets, the Best Coach in college football, Brutus Buckeye, best uniforms(scarlet n gray), best students, best athletes, best fans, best fight song, and best venue ( ‘The shoe’) ! So go stuff your self Brian and live fat and happy in your dirty lil town!
@Matthew I’m not saying Cleveland is New York, L.A., or Chicago. I’m also not saying Cleveland doesn’t have bums. Take a logic class. What I am saying is that Cleveland is more of a tourism spot than Columbus. It’s not that difficult to prove really.
@Patrick You’ve proved yourself as a real douchebag. All you basically did was do a bunch of bucknut nonsense and come up with fat jokes. You did not refute anything. I am also already aware that OSU exists so you don’t need to keep listeing OSU things to pretend like there is a lot in Columbus when it is all OSU related. You would fit right in Columbus. Not only does Cleveland have more restaurants, it does have better ones. The reason there are more restaurants in Cleveland is for aforementioned reasons. Most people in Columbus are eating at chain restaurants. E. 4th St. is more of a national dining destination than the entire city of Columbus. So is Ohio City or Tremont. You dropped a couple restaurant names. I could come up with a list off the top of my head longer than your comment. You haven’t dined anywhere. You know nothing and sound like you’ve never been to Cleveland. The fact that you brought up the Columbus Symphony Orchestra is about the dumbest argument ever. That’s nice Columbus has their own orchestra. So does Akron. The Cleveland Orchestra has been long regarded as one of the best orchestras in the WORLD. You bright up medical. Are you really trying to touch Cleveland’s medical industry? Do you know anything about Cleveland? It’s like you are gift wrapping the arguments for me. I don’t care about seeing a bunch of chain junk in Easton just like the Mall of America is pretty much just as boring. You should try going outdoors in Cleveland. You might find that there is a big lake on the north coast with some great recreational opportunities and attractions along it. There’s also some nice beaches to hang out. Ever check out Huntington Beach or Mentor Headlands. I doubt it. You’re too into the Columbus hike. I love a great day on one of those beaches. It is awesome that we have those places to stop in Cleveland. You literally can take a romantic walk on a beach with an ocean-like view and a view of the city. How are those romantic walks along the Scioto? How about our national park, which is one of the few in the midwest and eastern part of the country? Why do people come to Cleveland other than the orchestra, hospitals, and lake? People wanting to see professional sporting events like the Browns, Indians, and Cavs. It’s very common to see outsiders at games. People wanting to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. People wanting to see all of the national parks. Like I said, it’s not Chicago, but more reason to come here than Columbus. People wanting to eat at celebrity chef restaurants. Very easy.
@Jason – at least it’s not for a school I didn’t go to or even a football team at all for that matter.
@Pamela – You might noticed I used the clarifier – “pretty much no one famous” but nice job identifying the famous person from Columbus. I also am not sure what you mean about Anthony Bourdain. Do you and the other people who agree with you think he’s from Cleveland?
*Ahem* Cleveland Clinic 1 of 5 best in the world. Case Western Universities University Hospitals again rated VERY high world wide…
Cleveland Orchestra known as one of the Big 5 in the world….Severance hall…You can’t imagine anything so beautiful
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—Very good attraction spoken from a frequent visitor, we fought hard for it and beat out NYC, Chitown, LA and Seattle…
Founded in 1798 and grown from ethnic neighborhoods OVER 200 years old including Italian, Jewish and Hungarian to name a VERY few…Cooking was taught to people like Michael Symon and Rocco Whalen before they could drive…
Oh one of my absolute favorite places to go in the world is the only one like it in the world…Rays Indoor Mountain Bike park..Google it…Friggin’ H-U-G-E…If you are an avid mtb fan you have already been there…
-Awsome network of Metroparks with walk/run/bike paths to work all that delish food and beer off with literally hundreds of miles of interconnecting paths that reach from CleOh to Akron….
Not saying that Cleveland is better…But we’re not worse…What I am saying is that we’re just two of MANY freaken great reasons to Visit the Buckeye State…
Oh…
GO BUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Jackie I find your last comment to be pretty reasonable. I am not making unfounded claims however. It is true that Cleveland dining gets a lot of national press and Columbus dining gets virtually none. Just look TV food shows and the fact that Cleveland has celebrity chefs. But the college people is what makes up a large part of the scene. I don’t think all college students are losers. I am a college graduate myself. I think most of the ones at these places are. But I highly doubt you have really experienced the greatness of Cleveland as well with its dining, real people, and outdoor recreation. A small list of people from Cleveland: Wes Craven, Don King, Paul Newman, Arsenio Hall, Bob Hope, Halle Berry, Jim Brickman, Drew Carey, Tracy Chapman, Ernie Anderson, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Henry Mancini, Eric Carmen, Chef Boyardee, Harvey Pekar, Superman, and we have some rappers too just like Bow Wow in Bone Thugs, Kid Cudi, MGK, and Chip.
@Pamela – You might noticed I used the clarifier – “pretty much no one famous” but nice job identifying the famous person from Columbus. I also am not sure what you mean about Anthony Bourdain. Do you and the other people who agree with you think he’s from Cleveland?”
I guess sarcasm detection is not one of your strong suits. I have no idea where Anthony Bourdain is from nor do I care. Judging a city by which food shows have visited is about as lame as the “article” we are commenting on. We get it, you don’t like Cols. No problem
Again reasonable comments. People that a born in a place and then move immediately are not the best example but ok. I know TV shows are not the only thing, but the fact that they all go to Cleveland and very few go to Columbus is telling. Michael Symon has brought a lot of attention to the city. But Zack Bruell has been plugging away at New American fine dining for a long time and lot of of those shows aired before Michael Symon was really popular (before he was an Iron Chef). But the fact that Michael Symon has helped isn’t really a knock, it just means that something great came out of Cleveland. It’s kind of like saying the W. 25th is only doing well because of Great Lakes Brewing Company. Most places usually have anchors. You could say Columbus would barely exist if it wasn’t given the government because there is no real reason to have a city there. I have a job but sure the economy is tough right now. The only thing I have to disagree is that “people knock Columbus all the time.” A few in the know people do but Cleveland is knocked far more by ignorant people.
Tressel was indeed a target due to the Big 10 striking out on its own. The attacks made a major issue out of what happened at Ohio State, yet the players there were clearly not on the take, they were not taking cash under dorm doors, nor were their parents getting six-figure bonuses for having their kids attend Ohio State.
No, if they were, they would not have needed to sell any rings or trinkets that they owned.
Also, none of those actions the players made that the NCAA cited as infractions were done with the coaching staff knowing about it. No one has alleged anywhere that this was the case.
Yet in the national eye today, Ohio State is a dirty program that committed terrible NCAA violations, and that is not the case.
ESPN was indeed party to attacking the biggest draw for the Big 10 network, and this is the very reason I don’t carry the networks at home and I do not visit their website. Pathetic–to be a supposed news outlet, and then execute such an agenda, is the most horrific violation of the ethics of journalism imaginable. THAT is the story, and I wish it were told.
I grew up in a family that loves OSU (two of them even went there) but it never rubbed off on me. I went to Kent and bleed brown and orange. The ‘rents moved to Columbus later on, so I have been to Columbus many times, and you know what? It is a boring town filled with boringness. Strip malls and Olive Gardens and Applebees and very little culture. Most of the restaurants are chains, unless they are in Short North, the only cool place in all of Columbus. It is White Bread Land. And all they have is Buckeye football. That, in a nutshell, is why Buckeye fans are so obnoxious. It is all about an inferiority complex. I live in Los Angeles now, and I can still say that Cleveland at least has some world class culture, with the Cleveland Orchestra, Playhouse Square, excellent fine dining (does Columbus have a Michael Symon?) and three pro teams, even if they suck most of the time. Ever been to the Columbus Art Museum? It would fit in one wing of the Cleveland Museum of Art with room to spare. It irritates me to hear the OHIO chant or the stupid Sloopy song at Browns games. Keep your Buckeye crap in Columbus, this is Browns Town!
The futile prattling and butthurt reactions of Arch City’s finest prove nothing if not that these people are easily trolled.
Fox Swenson continues to deliver the kind of contentious, necessary thoughts which reside resentfully in the back of your mind in searing prose on a week-in, week-out basis.
When my ex-girlfriend’s grandparents heard I was accepted to OSU for grad school, they started planning for our move there, unable to accept that I would go anywhere else.
But really, Columbus is a clean city.
I will never, NEVER, understand these people who graduate from another college or university and then root for the Buckeyes, a school that potentially plays their alma mater, as if they graduated from OSU.
Funny, I remember Cleveland fans burning LeBron James jerseys in the streets last year. This is what you would call shotty journalism. If you don’t like it move to Michigan
You would think a dude like this would try to lead by example.. And not act in every way how he accuses Buckeye fans to be.. Smells like a jealous hypocrite to me..
This is a pretentious bit of hipster douchebaggery. Seriously. Idiots who use things (sports fandom) to act like idiots are in everything. If this were aimed at sports fans who attend live games, your idea would have merit… if this kind of crap didn’t happen at ANY EVENT where lots of people and lots of alcohol coincide. These same douchebags are at concerts, local and national. They are at carnivals and major festivals. They are at Tea Party rallies and Occupy #Whateverthehell . Painting Ohio State fans in such a broad brush, and then trying to imply that they are somehow WORSE than any other fanbase (Spencer Hall’s team, Florida, as recently as 2009, had a fan hit an OSU player over the head and caused head injury/brain swelling, for example.) is intentionally dishonest and just someone being extreme for attention. I am not saying sports fans are this noble group of awesome dudes, I’m not even that intense of a sports fan, nor do I condone what any drunken douchebag does, but at least acknowledge you’re writing about all of them and not targeting one team (That happens to be massively popular and will garner attention, MUCH more popular than our local teams), and then half cherry-picking information and half-drudge reporting (Exaggerating/making stuff up, like that the 2 year BOWL ban (NOT competitive ban) had nothing to do with problems with fans, but more about the economics of college football/relationships with boosters and alumni.
Get attention by having talent, not by trying to sling mud and hope some of it sticks. And again, I’m a very casual sports fan. I catch MAYBE 1 game a month, and only if I don’t have something better to do. I can’t imagine how angry this must make reasonable people who have genuine passion for their team.
And if you have read Spencer’s site, you would know that it’s mostly satirical and he has written scathing things about pretty much every fanbase everywhere. They make fun of everyone. And /his/ site is insulting /and/ entertaining. This is just insulting.
I will say it again, graduated from Kent but bleed Scarlet and Grey…
Live in and love CleOh to my last dying day…
One more comment….
If you live in Ohio….You are blessed, be it Kent or Cleveland or Orrville or Wooster or Massion or Canton….
Did I forgoet the Queen City of Cinci? NO!!!
Did I foget C’Bus??? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Did I foget Akron or Athens or Amherst or Astabula? NO DUMBASSES!!!!
I wont forget Mentor or Mentor On The Lake or Geneva or Geneva On The Lake that looks more like the Hamptons of New York??
ALL OF YOU…SHUT YOUR SUCK HOLES and revel in th fact that you all live in OH-IO and are all proud BUCKEYES….
Quit being douchbags and splitting hairs…
I love going to C’Bus so come up to CLE…We will be so friendly you will want to retch…
HA!
Hugs!
Undoubtedly, most Bucks fans are just enthusiastic about their team and all around good eggs, I know quite a few. However, since my undergraduate days in Ann Arbor (the Bo and Woody era) I have too many times run into the muscle-head, working class, hate-filled pukes that psychologically over identify with OSU. There was a time that a Michigan plate could invite slashed tires in Columbus, though these antics were not likely attributable to those with the brain cells to gain acceptance and graduate from a great institution like OSU, yes I salute it as a great school. The reason that stereotypes are entertaining is that there is often a grain of truth. Cheers to the good sportsmen and fans on Scarlet and Grey as well as in Maize and Blue and a pox on the vicious, knuckle-dragging, fools that taint the name of either school.
Ohio sucks and so the people have to grasp onto something , so they are over glorified cheerleaders . Yes, they are obnoxious and loud because they really don’t understand the strategy of the game and are spawn of ignorant degenerates who taught them to be louder and more obnoxious instead of having intelligence. Ohio sucks and Ohio state academics are a absolute joke .