the more things change ,the more they stay the same 1948 LIFE mag article

"If Columbus can be said to have a municipal anthem, it must the song which commences, 'Oh, we don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan----' and is familiar to every fourth grader in the Franklin County schools."

Last winter, Clyde Moore, a Columbus newspaper wit, cracked in his column: “Ohio State to get Isotopes! What postion does he play?” Sometimes the boys who have been preposition do a little propositioning themselves. The following is from a letter received some years ago by Wally Butts, head coach at the University of Georgia: “Dear Sir, To be very truthful with you I am uncurtain as to how to begin this letter. I am now a student at Ohio State University, I have changed a little sence you last contacted me, when I was still in high school. Sence your staff last contacted me, I have played on the Ohio State team, witch won the National Championcship, witch you probley remember. Well, Mr. Butts this is really why I am writting this letter. I am interested in coming to your University, that is of course if you are inerested in my coming down there. I would appreciate it very much if you would think this over as soon as possible and give me a answer as soon as you can. A few facts of myself. I still have three years eligibility left to play football. The cost of living here in Columbus, Ohio as gone up quite a bit, I think you now what I mean…” It is only fair to add that the writer of this letter was admitted to Ohio State under the relaxed wartime rules and flunked out freshman year.

With what, it is hoped, was not typical Michigan sportsmanship, the Michigan rooters booed as the Ohio State band appeared, but when it finished they threw their hats in the air. Their own band was so pitiful in comparison that when the Michigan team later made its trip to the Rose Bowl it was accompanied to the Coast by a band largely composed of Detroit ringers carrying Petrillo cards and subsidized by the Buick Division of General Motors – or at least so the report was around Columbus.

"As a member of the University of Michigan Marching Band, I would like to lodge a complaint against the obviously misleading sources of information for your article “Frenzied Football” … In addition I find it hard to believe that any student of Ohio State or any resident of Columbus would be so poor a sport as to spread such rumors.”