Doc's TML: Buckeyes get very little love in Cincinnati
The Morning Line
Paul Daugherty, pdaugherty@enquirer.com 10:17 a.m. EST January 7, 2015
Ohio State Buckeyes cheerleaders and mascot Brutus Buckeye lead the team onto the field prior to the Sugar Bowl against Alabama. (Photo: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports)
We here in the Republic of Cincinnati, sequestered as we are in the far southwest corner of what the rest of Ohio considers Ohio, don't care much about The Ohio State University, sports-wise. Never have.
We have UC and X and even UK. The fact that OSU is barely 100 miles up 71 doesn't make much difference. We're a republic of immigrants, a melting pot of Bearcats, Musketeers, Wildcats and stuff. We don't close our republic's borders to Buckeyes. We just make it hard for them to become citizens.
How come?
My son went to Ohio State. I thought he got a terrific education for the price. By the time he was a second-semester junior or so, his class sizes were less than 20. He developed personal relationships with his professors, to the extent that a few wrote nice letters that helped him get into grad school.
It's a huge campus, but retains a collegial feel. Kelly said there's nothing like going to a football game there. He still says the atmosphere at Ohio Stadium is far better than what he's encountered at PBS and – sigh – Heinz Field. He's a Stillers fan, an accident of genetics on his mother's side.
Anyway, we have this thing against our own state university. I've been here 26 years, and never figured it out. Perhaps youse can help me.
I can guess some of your reasons: (1) The big bro-little bro complex. OSU won't play UC in basketball, didn't play the Bearcats in football for many years, especially during a time when UC was a legit threat;
(2) The whole THE thing. Reeks of arrogance. Unnecessary for a school of Ohio State's size and stature.
(3) We here in the Republic somehow think we're a cut above the rest of the state. Admit it, we do. A general reluctance to embrace the future is emboldened by our belief that we're good as we are, and if you don't like us, there's something wrong with you.
We don't proclaim that outwardly. Just the opposite. But our insular nature makes itself clear enough. If you're one of us, you can't be one of them. I was here 20 years before I felt like a local.
(And, yes, the local media, Enquirer included, has all but ignored Ohio State forever.)
Geography doesn't help. Ours is more interesting and beautiful than much of the rest of the state. Nor does culture. We are closer as the crow flies to Louisville than Cleveland, and have far more in common. I've had a hard time calling Cincinnati Midwestern; it's closer to Southern. Cleveland is Eastern. Columbus – flat and Big 10, with corn fields barely 10 miles outside its borders – is Midwestern.
Pro teams don't help, though Cleveland has one more than we do, and is Buckeye Central, outside of C-bus.
I'm going to write this for Sunday, the day before OSU plays Oregon for the championship of the quasi-am football universe. I don't know how many OSU alums live around here, but I'll find out.
I wanna know from you why the indifference (at best) for our state school. I had a good friend once threaten to cancel his Enquirer subscription because one Sunday in the fall, we ran an Ohio State football story on Page 1 of Sports, and put the Bearcats on Page 4. OSU had played someone big; UC had played someone little.
Tell me why this is.
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http://www.cincinnati.com/story/daughert.../21382767/