January 7th, 2015 at 9:16 PM ^
January 7th, 2015 at 8:34 PM ^
It's Kentucky.
January 7th, 2015 at 8:57 PM ^
Lived in Cincinnati now for over 20 years, when I first moved here it was the middle of the Cooper years and Buckeye fans were not that numerous in the area. It was more of an NFL town then. BUT, once Jim Tressel came along and won the National Championship the love affair began. The whole tattoo affair and one subpar year seems to have cooled them off a tad but they're coming back with their love for Urban Meyer. Bunch of bandwagon fans here in this area. Bengals fans until they lose, Buckeye fans until they lose too. The actual Bearcat and UK fans hate OSU with a passion though.
January 9th, 2015 at 12:06 PM ^
I live about 20 miles N/NE of Cincinnati -- Mason area -- and...well...I'll say this: there aren't as many Buckeye fans here as you'll find from Dayton northward, at least not in my opinion. That said, there are still a fuckton of them, and two of the biggest ones you'll find live across the street from me. One, directly across. The other is a diehard OSU football fan AND a diehard Kentucky basketball fan. Yes, I think he gets the award for most annoying sports fan on the planet.
Still, I think in Cincinnati, your odds of running into a Notre Dame fan are just about as good as running into a Buckeye fan. ND has a strong presence here...and has had that presence really since the days of Gerry Faust leaving Moeller HS and going to coach ND. Faust was an institution at Moeller; he was there for nearly 20 years as the head football coach. In terms of their college football fandom, many people followed him right along to South Bend when he left in 1980.
But yes, there is some considerable backlash toward OSU fans in the Cincy area -- and yes, much of that does come from UC fans. Understandably so, really. Even though UC football has resurrected itself somewhat since the days of good ol' Conference USA, it'll still always be under the thumb of OSU football. Always. And many OSU fans like to remind UC fans of that on an almost daily basis.
January 9th, 2015 at 12:44 PM ^
There were already a ton of ND fans here in the '60s and '70s (and probably before but I'm not that old).
I think it's the natural result of the dominance of the four Catholic high schools in football. There are about 30 D1 and D2 high schools in the area and as mentioned above, 19 of the 22 Cincinnati players now in the NFL went to one of those four schools, only 3 came from one of the 27 (I think that's the number) big publics.
There's also, probably for the same reason, a lot of ND resentment here too. I've never met so many people whose favorite team--not even second favorite--is whoever's playing Notre Dame.