Eleven Warriors

Well it is Sparty week for you, my 11W friends.  And as part of my continuing efforts to contribute meaningfully to this really excellent blog, I would like to help you all get your hate up for the visitors from E. Lansing on Satruday.

Some of you may remember this story from last winter; a billboard appeared on I-94 near Detroit Metropolitan Airport, which happens to be not all that far from Ann Arbor.  Somebody snapped a cellphone camera photo, posted it online, and it became an instant college football blog classic.

In no time flat, the headline became "Michigan Fans Purchase anti-Tressel Billboard."  And why not?  You think of rivalry, and you think of trashtalk.  You think of big rivalries, and you think of trashtalk on a tactical nuclear scale.  And in the loosely-sourced world of the blogosphere (which is only slightly less loosely-sourced than, say, ESPN, Sports Illustrated or some of the Detroit newspapers), what you automatically presume is that, "Aha!  Michigan anti-Tressel billboard = University of Michigan anti-Tressel billboard."  You would presume that; and you'd be wrong.

Enter MGoBlog.com, and the story gets very much more interesting:

http://mgoblog.com/content/tressel-billboard-not-our-fault

As per usual, Michigan State fans are responsible for the stupid billboards.

You're welcome.

The comments, scattered throughout the blogoshpere, were very much more interesting.  Hate, it seems, rules the college football world.  While Brian Cook and some of his select cognoscenti seemed very peeved that such a stupid and tactless stunt could ever be associated with the Maize and Blue and were relieved to prove its true provenance, there seemed to be a sizable contingent of Walverines(!?) that liked the damned thing and wanted to take credit for it.  And at the same time, as soon as anyone floated the presumption that "Michigan" was responsible for the billboard, Spartyland went into attack mode, ridiculing the billboard as the product of an altogether too-long losing streak.  Not realizing that one of their own had created it.  "The enemy of my enemy is still my ememy, cuz they are all my enemies" I suppose is how that one goes.

Have a nice weekend!