As far back as I can remember, I was taught to hate Michigan. As we sang our fifty states song, we would shout out BOO when we uttered the M-word. Ohio and Michigan are sworn enemies. My Great Uncle Herman (The biggest OSU fan on the planet) would quote former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, when he’d say:
I don't buy one goddamn drop of gas in the state of Michigan. We'll coast and push this goddamn car to the Ohio line before I give this state a nickel of my money.
That’s the attitude towards Michigan in Ohio. So when I decided to attend that school up North, it was met with shock and awe. Every time I said where I was from, it was met with shock and awe. People could not understand how I could cross state and allegiance lines to become a Wolverine. My dear Uncle Herman was crushed, just as he was when my mom did the same thing over 30 years ago when she left Dayton for Ann Arbor.
This conflict runs deep, it’s said to have begun in 1897 when the teams first played one another. OSU and Michigan play each other every year, it’s called The Game, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. While some families dread talking politics at the Thanksgiving table, try being a Michigan Wolverine in a house of OSU fans when the Turkey is about to be carved…
I’ve always called the Michigan - Ohio rivalry the OTHER conflict. As opposed to THE conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was odd to be facing one conflict amid the other as I watched the OSU-Michigan game with my parents in my Tel Aviv apartment. As Michigan stormed the field after their victory and tried to plant a flag in the Horseshoe, fights began to break out among the players, it was intense. The cops had to come break it up, a sea of black uniforms breaking up the white and yellow of the Wolverines and the red of the Buckeyes.
The OSU-Michigan conflict, some believe, has roots from the Civil War in which Ohio won Toledo from Michigan, so the conflict is one of territory. Though I don’t know why anyone would start a fight over Toledo.
Then there are the opinions that say it’s just a rivalry, one built up over decades of losses and wins, wins and losses. For example, the legendary Snow Bowl of 1950, which I learned last night that my grandma and grandpa attended, a game played in a blizzard in Columbus in which OSU lost to Michigan, effectively giving the Wolverines the Big 10 title.
I can’t help but compare the conflicts that have become central to my life. Unresolvable conflicts rooted in culture, conflicts that destroy families and Thanksgiving dinners alike. As my father screamed at the TV and I wore my Michigan jersey, my heart felt torn. I was born an Ohio State fan, but chose the Wolverine life. I feel connected to both teams, both cultures, both fandoms. Yet, I am stuck in the middle. I want both teams to win, I want both cultures to feel fulfilled, I want the conflict to be resolved.
But maybe the conflict is the culture. Perhaps the thing that keeps the opposing teams energized is the prospect of winning, of beating their rivals, of being declared the best. Perhaps it is part of our human condition to want our team to win.
In a 1945 essay by George Orwell, The Sporting Spirit, Orwell likens the sporting arena to modern day warfare. He says:
At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behavior of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe – at any rate for short periods – that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
He is talking about international sports here, but I think it’s relevant on the national scale as well. A win for the University of Michigan is a win not only for the college football team, but for the state, the fans, the culture. It is a rivalry that has extended past the field. On Ohio State’s campus the week before The Game, the entire campus is cleansed of its M’s. Every sign, every plaque, every map is edited by removing each “M” with red tape.
George Orwell again:
If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Yugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators. I do not, of course, suggest that sport is one of the main causes of international rivalry; big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism. Still, you do make things worse by sending forth a team of eleven men, labelled as national champions, to do battle against some rival team, and allowing it to be felt on all sides that whichever nation is defeated will ‘lose face’.
Orwell makes a good point here on the battles fought on the pitch. While sports games may not be the contributing cause of international or inter-state quarrels, it certainly doesn’t help.
If tribalism and fighting is part of human nature, how can we learn to put our differences aside and work towards harmony and coexistence?
