- It’s grating on the eyes to encounter a word in the middle of a sentence that looks like something someone accidentally typed when they rested their elbow on the keyboard.
- It’s uncreative. As uncreative as, say, Michigan fans calling MSU “little brother” or calling Ohio State “O$U.”
- Most importantly: It conveys a sense that MSU fans will only really be happy when we clearly feel athletically and/or morally superior to Michigan.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no particular fondness for our maize and blue rivals. When I turn on a Michigan football game, more often that not I root against them. I do this, I think, for the following reasons, in descending order of importance:
- I have a flaw in my mental wiring that causes me to almost always root for the underdog in any sporting event not involving a team I am a fan of. (Note: Michigan may technically be an underdog the rest of the season, but I still don’t consider them an underdog in the cosmic sense.)
- A sense that football recruiting is, to some extent, a zero sum game and Michigan’s loss is our gain. (This may be less true now with Rodriguez and the spread offense at Michigan. It doesn’t look like Michigan’s all that focused on in-state guys at this point. So maybe this is where my lack of recruiting knowledge has led me afield.)
- A lot of Michigan fans exude a vexing arrogance of the V-neck sweater variety.
(Basketball is different. It’s been hard to get too worked up about the Michigan basketball team for the last decade; more often than not, they’ve been the underdog. And there’s enough quality basketball recruits to go around. Plus I think an in-state rivalry approaching what Duke and UNC have would be good for the MSU basketball program. That may actually be true for football, too.)
But, ultimately, my happiness as an MSU fan is defined by MSU’s success, or lack thereof. Sure, Michigan’s loss to Toledo provided a moment of schadenfreude, but did it make MSU’s win over Northwestern any more or less important? Would the 2000 national championship have been any less exhilarating if, say, Michigan had been an NCAA tournament team that year?
And can someone point to an elite college program in either football or basketball whose fans define themselves as much by the failures of their in-state rival as they do by their own successes? Michigan State University has the potential to be one of the top athletic schools in the entirely country. We already have one of the half dozen most respected men’s basketball programs in the country. The football program shows every sign of becoming a perennial top 25 team under Mark Dantonio. And we’re pretty good at a bunch of other sports, too.
So why not focus on our own success?
Final comment: This post was prompted, in part, by the use of “scUM” in a couple comment earlier this week. Don’t read this as an indictment of those particular commenters. I understand that it’s become standard operating procedure. If people want to use it in comments, I’m not going to lose sleep over it or delete the comments. But I do want to go on record as to what I think about it. (Instead, I’ve noticed I sound a bit McCainesque in referring to “our friends down the road in Ann Arbor.”)
Well penned. My sentiments exactly. Thanks for leading the way in making MSU fans a bit more prominent on the blogging scene. We’ve come a long way since as little as a year ago, when “The ES” was the only spartans blogger. It does seem like he focuses more on Michigan’s woes than MSU’s wins, and in doing that, was giving the rest of us a bad name.
Agreed – well said. I too hold a great deal of disdain for the usage of “scUM”. Seems very middle-school’ish to me. That said – I’d be lying if I said I didn’t relish in watching UM falter. The win over NW was great – but it was kind of just the icing of the cake to also get to watch UM (and ND for that matter… largely due to Charlie Weiss) lose.
I am a culprit of the scUM adage. I agree with everything on this post though. In fact, I posted over on The ES’s board the other day, saying how he has a “MSU blog” not a “michigan haters” blog. I suppose I have been using scUM a lot lately mainly due to seeing it all the time and that naturally carrying over into my internet vocabulary. I will work on keep the sc away from the UM from now on.
Having said all that, I usually root for UM. I root for any Big10 team when they are playing OOC games so that the conference looks better (whether its basketball or football). However, I genuinely dislike RichRod, have ever since he made that “promise” to always stay at WVU, then immediately had his agent lobbying for him to get the Alabama job. He just appears to be the kind of man that will do anything to win, legal or not, and he rubs me the wrong way. For that reason, I will root for UM to lose everygame in football until Rich is out of our conference.
I don’t use ‘scUM’ cause it seems childish, but I don’t buy the idea that hating U of M is defining ourselves “as much by the failures of their in-state rival as they do by their own successes?” I still hate them (and Notre Dame) whether they win or lose, or whether we win or lose. I feel where your coming from here, there are the ones who litter, say, the mlive forum with stuff about Wolvy are boring at best.
But let’s tamp down the fires to where this guy won’t make youtube videos:
Philosopher Eric Hoffer said something along the lines of ‘Religions can arise without the belief in God, but not without belief in a devil.’
You’re awesome.
Agreed. Great points by the commenters… it’s nice to have a Spartan viewpoint on the web that’s a little classier than the ES.
“A sense that football recruiting is, to some extent, a zero sum game and Michigan’s loss is our gain.”
I think this is largely true. UM’s ability to clean up the state on guys like Lamarr Woodley and others has been key. It seems like every highly-rated DL and OL in the state has been UM’s to lose for quite some time. I believe Dantonio’s commitment to MI recruiting will pay dividends.
Kudos to you kj. I hate that stupid crap. As a UM homer, I hate when some of the idiots use “little brother.” I hate any variation of OSU (fOSU, O$U, UoOS, etc). I couldn’t take The ES for a long time just due to his blatant Michigan hate. If I tried to start a civilized conversation, it ended in calling me scUM. I’ve found posters on this site to be much less idiotic than anything I experienced on other State sites. Thanks for starting this.
I think it’s fine to root against U-M. They’re our biggest rival; of course Spartan fans will have visceral reactions to them. Sports would be boring without rivalries. People who are just as happy when U-M loses than when MSU wins, however, are losers.
scUM is kinda the same way for me. It really evinces a major insecurity; people who use it are so skittish about them that they can’t say the real name, or you have to take a (hackneyed and stupid) ? Call them M, call them U-M, call them Michigan, call them 2-4 (heh) . . . whatever. Just don’t be that guy [ES link goes here]. It’s not creative and it sure as hell ain’t classy.
This is why I can’t stand the RCMB. Which is too bad, because I’m sure there’s good info on there that I miss out on . . . but the amount of WOOO ANOTHER YELLOWBELLY scUM LOSS, OMGDICKROD LOLOLOLOL!!!!111 I’d have to sift through to get it would drive me up the wall. No thanks.
Ditto what you said, SW. All of the salient points have been made, anything else I say will be little more than reiteration.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good chuckle when they lost to Toledo. I am happy they’re getting a bit of a comeuppance.
Err, “People who are just as happy when U-M loses AS when MSU wins, however . . . ” Yeesh.
Goodonya, I wince just a little bit whenever I see a commenter use ‘scUM’.
However, I delight in the failings of the UM athletic programs. Partly its unabashed schadenfreude directed at people who could use a bit more dissatisfaction with respect to their fandom (builds character, you know) and partly its an appreciation of irony. But I think its a wholly different kind of enjoyment than the enjoyment I get from being an MSU fan. For me, the two are incomensurable.
(Confession: I also delight in spectacles of athletic incompetence; I find 70-3 football games entertaining. I find little league baseball entertaining–and also endearing. So of course the trainwreck against Toledo was high entertainment for me.)
(I don’t rubberneck at accident scenes, though.)
As for other fans who delight as much in another teams failure as in their own team’s success, I do believe that fans in the Pac Ten, especially Cal and UCLA, may have this problem regarding USC. I’ve been living in California for a while now, and the polarized feelings about USC (among some) are as extreme as anything I saw in Michigan.
Great post, kj. I am guilty of using “scUM” in the past, but typically in back-and-forth jokes with UM friends via text messages. I think all good rivalries have fans with severe dislike for the other team (Yet to find a single UNC fan willing to pull for Duke… ever) and some good jabs are necessary. Still, after reading this post, I am going to steer away from “scUM’ going forward.
Thoughts on the using the term “skunk bear”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Bear
I Guess since I used scUM I have no chance at winning the copy of College Basketball Prospectus. Joking aside, kj makes some very good points. Um is hardly scum and is a top notch university. However I disagree that we shouldn’t root for them to lose. I had 3 spartan fans call me after the Toledo loss so we could discuss how bad UM is. I will always enjoy watching them lose.
Chris, we won’t hold it against you.
And it’s not that I’m opposed to rooting against UM. It’s just the balance of how much we care about their failure vs. our own success.
Understood kj, however without much success in football lately all we have had is the hope that UM would lose. As far as rivalries go, I was always irratated with UM fans saying their biggest rival was OSU. The last 10 years I have not cared about UM in basketball, only Wisky. I would rather beat Wisconson and Bo Ryan any day. So I have to agree with you that both teams being successful will only heighten the rivalry.
Hopefully, as we achieve greater success in football, that will change. As I alluded in the post, eventually both programs being successful may be mutually beneficial. How much sweeter would a win vs. UM be if, say, that win boosted our stock in the BCS standings?
Agree with this 100%. I love being a MSU fan because our fans are (on the whole, and relative to many other schools) humble, fun to be around, and welcoming. Terms like this undermine the things that we have going for us, and make us seem as arrogant and petty as those guys down the road. We should rise above it. Root against UM all you want, but be respectful while you’re doing it, and it will piss them off even more!
kj,
Reason #2645 I love this blog. Nice work once again. The regulars here are more rational and methodical than elsewhere in blogspace, MSU-related or not, so I wasn’t surprised those monikers didn’t occur here very often.
Getting a good laugh out of ND or UM disasters is always a good time. Go ask a UM fan, and they feel the same way about ND and OSU. For some reason many of them have a constant sense annoyance and entitlement with respect to MSU prevents them to have the same satisfaction with anything that goes on with MSU, but that’s their problem, not ours. I don’t need to blindly wrap myself around that s**t, especially since I’d have trouble living my life, seeing as how my wife and several of her closest friends went there.
The thing is it has to at least be funny. mgoblog used to have the same opening paragraph for his MSU football preview that was painful to read but was at least well written and funny — if only it didn’t make me want to claw my eyes out. (I’m a glutton for opposing points of view. This is why I watch Fox News and Bill Maher back to back.)
“scUM” and “yellowbelly” just isn’t that funny. “Skunk bear”, however, is hillarious. Nice work, TMadison25. Throw in a “skunk bear” here and there sparingly when highlighting anything ridiculous out of the UM camp, or all the time if you are out drinking and watching games with your friends or family who went there, and I think we’re good.
By the way, formerlyanonymous guy, nice backhand! I can’t see too good, Dad, is that Johnny McEnroe over there?
I don’t care for the low-brow insults that fly either direction. Any monkey can fling its poop at another. But likewise, I think a team and its fans can define themselves based on their own successes and failures, and simultaneously feel intense negativity toward another team and its fans without being inconsistent. I’m in that camp.
No, the Toledo embarrassment didn’t make our win at Northwestern any more significant or even pleasing to watch. Michigan getting the game tossed into their lap when Wisconsin fell apart didn’t make our win at Indiana any less meaningful or enjoyable to see. But man do I love having seen the maize wheels come completely off their blue bus this year, having played only one game on the road thus far at that.