A wise take on professional sports fandom and the level of emotion today from Coach Harbaugh. Something everyone should hear/read and think about.

He might be becoming more wise with age, but I think a lot of the perspective he is expressing is from the experience of watching the games on TV as a spectator, which he normally doesn't do. He got to see all the hype, the manufactured storylines, etc. that is presented to fans. 

My daughter sent me this, and I'm pretty sure it was directed at me and not my husband.  

I've lived amongst the Buckeyes the majority of my life.  Have many friends and family that are grads and even former players at OSU.  Never had any problems what so ever.  Staying away from social media and opposing fans sites is the smart play here.

I mean if the kids who literally just spent 3+ hours destroying each others bodies for our blood-lust can hug it out and and shake hands and smile at each other at the end of it then that really should tell us all something.

And whether people will admit it or not, it's happen-stance that most of were just born and raised where we were, which dictated the team we grew up rooting for. A few hundred miles difference in where that happens and plenty of the members of this board would be scarlet and gray fans.

Unfortunately the media has to portray everything in 'our side must win or apocalypse' terms, both in relation to sports and other issues we don't talk about here because that's what draws in the eyeballs and brings in the money.

Fuck Ohio. That being said...it's a game. I don't hate Ohio State fans. I worked with one on my faculty before I switched schools. We engaged in trash talking, yes, but we didn't hate each other over the rivalry. Hell, I'm a Yankee fan surrounded by Red Sock fans--a rivalry as toxic as it gets--and I count a bunch as friends. Real life is hard; sports fandom should be fun. Anyway...Boston Sucks.

What this most demonstrates about Harbaugh is that he's become a great teacher, and he's player-centered.

No wonder his players would run through a wall for him. What player wouldn't love being coached and taught life lessons by Jim Harbaugh?

I lost my shit and put a big dent on my fridge when we lost to MSU on the "trouble with the punt" play. Since then, I have learned to disconnect myself after the game (win or lose) and resume normal life.  Have plenty of co-workers and friends who are MSU and OSU fans and we get along just fine. 

A lot of these comments are "I live by one, I know one at work, one lives next door to me but we live in neither MI nor OH..."  I have lived in Columbus for over 30 years and this last month has been insufferable.  One of my co-workers, OSU alum, said I must be re-thinking my move here way back before he was born.  I said I love Columbus, but I was just pissed I was so polite during the Cooper years.  These fans when surrounded by their kind are neither kind nor reasonable.  I played golf with Knowles (he played football at Cornell with one of my best friends) last summer before he had coached a game and he started to give me a little shit.  I said to get ready because these fans were terrible losers and worse winners.  His kid went to UofM btw.  After last year's defensive shit-show from them he felt the wrath all summer.  They may be fine outside of their natural habitat, but in numbers in and around CBus they suck. 

This post should be made a sticky.  There is a darkness over college football that very much needs to go away.  I am hopeful that expanding the playoffs will help so that a program can sustain a loss or 2 during the regular season and not have people ready to kill themselves.  It's all gotten a bit absurd!

This hatred is a natural consequence of a socioeconomic base that encourages us to expect great things for ourselves, but that is also designed to systematically keep us from ever actually achieving a state of personal contentment. College football provides a vicarious outlet for our feelings of inadequacy and frustration, and fans of "rival" teams come to symbolize the vague and often ineffable obstacles we face in our lives. If Ohio State and its monomaniacal fans were "Ahab," Michigan is their white whale -- the "pasteboard mask" they must strike through to reach a state of existential peace. 

Agree entirely, and the behavior of the players on both sides reflected that on Saturday. Play tough, hit hard...and no cheap shots or pushing/shoving after the plays, everyone concerned for Zinter. It was classy and made the game more fun for me to watch.

Yes, it is manufactured…from the furnace of hate deep within my soul. 

I'm happy to live with a healthy dose of dislike for OSU, their AD and its coaches. And I'll admit that in my youth, I would extend that to the players.

But, yes, with time comes some wisdom. And "hating" a 20 year old kid* is next level unhealthy and detached from reality.

* I have "kids" older than most of the players... They are kids to me.

You really want me to take advice from a duck? 

Fuck you. Fuck OSU as a team, a program and as a MF'in school.  And if you down with OSU Fuck you too!!

- /s obviously, just joking.  Be well and have a wonderful Holiday Season NotADuck

All that manufactured hate is great for line-go-up, though. It's not a flaw, it's a feature!

Fuck ohio

Hard not to hate when OSU, blatant cheaters for decades, tries to destroy and smear our entire program with nonsense. Hard not to hate when MSU tries to injure our players literally every year. What exactly do we do to them that is equivalent? Nothing. Fuck them. Leave the B1G.

Respect is earn,not given. That fan base as a whole hasn't earned 1 grain of respect.

Fuck their fan base they are demented … fuck their coach who resorts to getting a private investigator to come up with dirt because he can’t out coach Harbaugh… the nuts team played a great game and came up short … but it is their coaches , AD and media that stokes this rivalry to its lowest depths … they are worthless and I hope that this latest loss makes them as miserable as miserable can be … nothing but respect for their players 

Harbaugh is not wrong.

I've found that most of the true worst hatred comes online/social media or when people are around a large number of fellow fans (like at a game).  There is a toxicity to tribalism that you just don't see from the same people in normal real life situations. 

I know maybe a dozen OSU fans well enough that we usually communicate during the CFB season.  Every single one of them has given me crap and I've given every single one of them crap (the last 3 years have been amazing).  But it's all good-natured and no one has ever been upset about the back and forth.  But I know one of them specifically posts on Eleven Warriors and I've seen his posts and they are extreme anti-Michigan, showing a toxic lack of respect for the program and parroting conspiracy crap that we've all seen over the last month.  I think its strange and it slightly changes my view of that person but I also know he's taking on an online persona in a forum designed to bring together likeminded people.  I'm not going to like ignore him if he needs help with something at work (he's a colleague), but when talking sports, his posts are always in the back of my mind.

I'm not saying its necessarily acceptable to act like that, but I sort of understand the psychology of why this happens.  And I'm sure I do similar things occasionally.  After the Big Ten tweeted about Harbaugh's suspension, I responded to every tweet with "Fuck the Big Ten" and then when OSU/MSU fans clapped back at me I fought back.  I later felt stupid about it and deleted the tweets (but seriously fuck the Big Ten).  It is what it is, but its good to at least be able to recognize that you are being a bit extreme and can reel it in a bit.

For whatever it's worth, we had genuine hate for Ohio in our day. Respect, because they were a top program and there was never any bush league MSU-style bullshit. But we hated them and wished nothing but ill towards them.

I don't know if that was better. But it certainly wasn't ginned up by the press.

I agree with the overall premise. We've seen how the 'rivalry' with sparty has devolved, and it's a slippery slope with the bucknuts. I'd just as soon see our rivalries play out like an MMA bout - two guys beating each other bloody, but true respect when the bout is over.