Eleven Warriors

Got a few from Woody at my dad's house. 

Most Buckeye fans that I know are born into it. Buckeye loyalty isn't bought in a Walmart or in the campus bookstore. It's molded in memories of games and tailgates and fighting with mouth-breathing michiganders etc. This can happen at any stage of life (from the elementary school playground to a south Florida retirement home). 

I don't think you can call someone a walmart fan just because they did not go to OSU. I just like you 216DotCom did not attend OSU and am a diehard fan as well. I was born into it and grew up with it my whole life. I know a few people sadly that went to OSU and really don't care about the sports teams there. What irritates me more is bandwagon fans. A fan is someone that sticks it out through thick and thin not just during the good times

I don't think it matters. My parents are huge buckeye fans and never attended, but I do and I don't think differently of them. 

The only thing that makes me mad is when non-student/alumni fans try and voice opinion about academic things, an example being, "PRESIDENT GEE SHOULD BE FIRED FOR THE FOOTBALL TEAM IN 2011."

There are plenty of students that are horrible fans, you're free to take their spot! ;)

It's hogwash.  You don't have to go to a school to root for it.  I've never heard that term to describe fans of a school who didn't go there.

I actually attend "TSUN" so there aren't too many Buckeye fans that take kindly to that. It was good for my major and much cheaper with in-state tuition so I couldn't let my love for the Buckeyes interfere with that. I refuse to wear anything with that M on it and wear my OSU hat daily so I definitely rep for OSU (outside of the education). That being said, once I get my degree, I want to look into doing some sort of online certificate program so I can "have some sort of degree" from OSU. That would be pretty important to me.

As Brutus Greyshield said, I was born into it as a lot of my family is from Ohio. It's also fair to say that I get nauseous on a daily basis being around so many U of M football lovers. I get sh!t every single day of my life for being an OSU fan and wouldn't have it any other way.

I guess I'm a Walmart fan. I planned to attend The Ohio State University then life happened. I've been a Buckeye for 30 years though. Urban summed it up perfectly when he said"we're gonna make the great state of Ohio proud." He knows that being a Buckeye is something you're born into and not just a school. There are only a few examples of how much a University can mean to it's respective home state and I believe ours is the best example (total homer). I love this state therefore I love Ohio State.

Don't let someone else determine how loyal or fanatical of a Buckeye fan you are! I am 40, never attended OSU and have lived in C-bus most of my life. I have been a very loyal Buckeye fan the whole time and I could care less if an OSU alumni or anyone else wants to think of me as a "Walmart" fan. 

MSU fans have used the term Walmart Wolverines for a long time...they use the term for all those mich fans who meet some or most of the following: generally never attended mich or any college, are trashy/classless, talk trash about MSU and wear that Walmart style low level mich gear.

In my opinion Ohioans with no connection to mich are the biggest example of Walmart Wolverines, even real mich fans think it's weird that these idiot Ohioans like mich.

I know a lot of peeps buy different MLB teams hats and what not too match different outfits, not necessarily because they like them.  I think the same can apply to other apparel.

216, like the all the above posts said, you don't need to be an alumnus of the school to root for them. Interestingly, I'm an EMU alum as well. No shame in rooting for a team you love just because you didn't attend the school.

Born and raised in Cbus.  Growing up, my parents had a small restaurant on campus. OSU students, faculty, and employees who were our patrons helped put food on our table.  After we shut the restaurant down, my parents went to work for OSU. My brother and the vast majority of my friends went to OSU.  I decided to get out of Cbus and go to school elsewhere.  Never took a class there but I bet that I've spent more time on campus than many students do.  If not going to OSU makes me a Walmart Buckeye, then  Walmart Buckeye I am. But still a Buckeye and that's all that matters to me.

IF I agree and say that only people that attended should be fans would it increase my chance to get tickets?  If not then I don't care where you went to school or if you even did.  A good fan is a good fan. 

I would love to talk to your friend about people who attend major schools like John Hopkins who don't have a football team and try to tell them who they can root for.They would tell your friend to F$CK OFF! not everyone has the luxury to attend OSU and OSU grads better recognize that! It is a priviledge to be able to say you graduated from there but its doesn't mean you can stick your nose up at those that could only dream of attending OSU. 

and some attend but party so hard they didn't get to finish.

Point being, if the requirement to root for a team is that you had to have attended that school, then football profits would plummet! Your friends need to realize what amount of the population attends college vs. what amount of the population watches college football. Something tells me its a bit uneven. 

A "walmart fan" should really be what a true bandwagon fan is, someone who jumps around from team to team as they are successful. but if you have been a fan of the same team through thick and thin, then you are a fan! Besides, most people become fans of their teams before they are even able to attend college. I was a fan when I was around 10. Does that make me a "Walmart fan" back then?

I went to a small college in northern WI, we didn't have a football team. Even if we did I would have still rooted for the Buckeyes!

Lots of reasons why people root for teams, and regional identity is one.  Listen to recruits and some say they have always been a fan or liked to watch the Buckeyes as they were growing up.  College football in particular has felt a bit more pure than the pro version for some people, and the atmosphere on game day can be unmatched.  Like Tracy above, it provides a sense of connection and of home.  Football stirs such deep passions, and true fans know the true fans.

Big Ten sports fandom is different than most places. When I was in SoCal, no one cared unless you went to that school. In the MidWest college sports fandom is more like pro sports, sometimes even bigger. Frankly, OSU wouldn't have the fan base it does without "Walmart fans." Walmart fans make up the top teenage talent we need to then choose to go to OSU and play football. The more Walmart fans the better, IMO.m It only makes the fan base larger, the budget bigger, and the team more successful.

It's the Ohio born and bred kids that root only for UM to be different from the rest of their family and friends that drive me nuts. They aren't so unique or different since theirs hundreads of thousands of them in Ohio...most of us had a few to several of these kids in every class in grade/high school. Rooting for your states arch enemy to be different is stupid. I was surprised to hear Brady Hoke admit, in an interview, that he was one of these kids...I bet he rooted for the USSR against that Miracle on Ice USA team everyone else loved....likely a die-hard Mexican National soccer team fan as well.

I'm from Michigan. I've never heard any other fanbase referred to as "Wal-Mart." It's a term invented and mostly used by MSU students/alums to refer to any Michigan fan who didn't actually attend the school. It has a slight class connotation (i.e., that the fan in question can only afford gear from Wal-Mart), but FAR AND AWAY it just means UM fans that didn't attend the school.

It's a term that I don't think has much of an equivalence for the state of Ohio. In Michigan, there have always been two major, "big six" football programs. I've found that the term "Wal-mart Wolverine" carries an undercurrent of bandwagonism, implying that the fan in question, when presented with a choice of which school to root for, simply chose the more successful one. In Ohio, college football begins and ends with the Buckeyes. Yeah, Cincinnati's "big six" now, but that's a very recent development. No one (relatively speaking) grew up watching and rooting primarily for BG, or Kent, or Toledo, etc., just as no one (relatively speaking) in Michigan grew up rooting for CMU, EMU, or WMU. If you wanted to root for an Ohio college football team that you could watch on TV every week, (presumably - as I said, I didn't grow up here) your only option was OSU.

I have a lawyer friend who went to MSU for both undergrad and law school, and he is fond of saying that "Wal-Mart Wolverines" don't have standing. Which, regardless of your opinion on the term itself, is pretty funny.

http://walmartwolverines.com/

There are some funny photos in this blog!

I think every school, especially the big successful ones have "Wal-Mart" fans. The redneck jackass who gives the whole fanbase a bad name. MSU fans calling these Wal-Mart Wolverines is the benchmark for this, but it is not exclusive to UofM. It's really, to me, less about whether you attended the school or where you buy your gear, and more about the attitude you have towards the team.

Like I said, I've learned to separate the school and the sports teams. I like the Buckeyes and I like OSU. I live in Michigan but grew up in Ohio. Anyone in my family that went to college went to OSU and I used to go to games and hang around campus. I've visited many of my friends who attend OSU and so I have respect for the school too.

This may get me downvoted, but when I moved to Michigan I learned to not hate all things, not just containing that word, but specifically that school. I moved to just outside Ann Arbor and I worked for the city parks department, learned to really find some cool spots in the city, really nice secluded parks, great restaurants and markets. But then my step-dad got throat cancer. He went to a hospital in Flint and they told him he had a 50-50 chance to beat it with their treatments. So he got a second opinion from a Dr. at UofM. UofM had developed a new treatment for throat cancer and told my step-dad he'd have a 75% chance with their method. He went with them and they saved his life. He's 7yrs all clear in April. Then UofM hospital has saved 3 other friends and family members and I suddenly can't hate that place just because it's adorned with a blue and gold M.

I still have friends and family in Ohio that come from that mentality to blindly hate all things Michigan. They can't believe I live amongst such scum and villainy. Can't separate the fact that I went to MSU, which they think is just as bad because it has that word in it's title. So I just have learned that I can hate the Wolverines, but not UofM. I can even like some things UofM, like the hospital. If I could have gotten into UofM's law school, you better believe I would have gone. I would have still cheered for my Buckeyes, but I would have gone.

For the record, I am NOT a Sparty grad. this is just funny, and relevant to this thread

I went to Ohio State but am no more a fan now than I was before I went. I would still be a diehard if I had attended somewhere else.

Look I was born in Mount Carmel and have grown up watching OSU football and now live in south GA. cause I severed in the Army. While here in south GA. I meet my wife and got married no matter what is on down here when Game Day hits I am glued to the TV to watch OSU play. I did not get the chance to go to tOSU do to my stupid self putting the wrong things in life before my education, but one day I would dearly love to see one of my kids attend this school that I dearly love and respect to no end. I Love to watch anything OSU from football, wrestling, baseball, softball, and bball. If it has the Ohio State on it i am glued to it no matter what.

OH

If only people who went to the schools were fans of the schools, there would be no need for a BTN or other huge TV contracts, that's for sure.  Attendance would be lower too.  The school wouldn't seel as much gear and junk with Ohio State plastered on it either.

The great thing about Ohio State is that it's a state university for all of Ohio. I don't think people should feel bad for being huge fands despite not having any connection like being an alum, etc.

You can be a fan without having attended a school, but I suspect it can't ever be the same as someone who has been a student too. Even someone like me, who grew up as a fan because my dad was an alumnus--going to OSU myself definitely brought a different level of passion for me. Also, if I had ended up going to another school instead, there's probably no way I could have stayed a "Buckeye" in the same way.

Someone earlier in the thread pointed out that places that are crazy about football, and don't have local pro teams, tend to have plenty of these non-alumnus fans. Where I live in Texas, everyone follows the local high school, the Cowboys, and chooses between the Longhorns and the Aggies. I don't think having the degree matters much to anybody when it comes to bragging rights.

there's a world of difference between "being a fan" and "being a walmart fan"...michigan is famous for it, especially in the northern sections of the state, where you'll find slack-jawed yokels sporting the piss and blue and talking garbage when they can't even point to where ann arbor is on their hand. 

i've seen it in ohio with some of the hill-country ohio state fans...you know: the ones who load up the family trucksters in lancaster or chillicothe or ironton, crush a case of icehouse on the drive up, spend their football saturdays throwing beer cans and burned generic hot dogs at opposing fans, trying to start fights afterwards at the party-formerly-known-as-hineygate, and/or getting arrested for trying to break into a sorority house, pissing on anything that has the color blue in it, or trying to start riots. 

nearly every major program has them, but there certainly is a difference between them and the decent folk who grew up respecting the school and the program, and wanting to be a part of the tradition instead of a bane to its existence.  "being a fan" isn't that far from "actually went there fan", and should likely be qualified as being "woulda/coulda/shoulda went went there fan".  "walmart fan", however, is similar to its namesake - someone who doesn't have the self respect or dignity to carry themselves responsibly in public.

I made sweet, sweet love to a girl who was an OSU student, does that count?

Fandom is hardly determinate on attending said school.  There are thousands of reasons why one would not attend the school of their favorite college sports team.  Conversely, there is absolutely nothing wrong for never rooting for a sports team of the school you attend, and leaving that school as a lifetime (hardcore, in some cases) fan.

I almost prefer some Wal-Mart level fans than those casual fans that know squat about their "favorite team," but run-on the mouth like they're some sort of expert (Exhibit A: Facebook team fan pages, Exhibit B: ESPN chat). 

For example, the FB Michigan page posted about Devin receiving his red shirt and no less than 75% of the posts were negative because [now] Shane Morris would redshirt (he was going to the whole time, barring a DG injury), which would result in the following:  Michigan will suck because Shane is already Steve Young and Michigan is blowing 2 years of success keeping Gardner around; Shane Morris will be so angry, he'll transfer out of Michigan.  Etc, Etc.  You get my point.

The fact is, a ton of us on this website probably know more about our rival team than a large percentage of the rival team's fan base.

I did not attend Ohio State either.  As I mentioned in another thread, I was born in C-bus while my dad was in dental school, and my brother graduated from tOSU's dental school as well, but yours truly graduated from Marshall University.  As someone else said, life happened.  I followed my wife-to-be to Huntington, and the rest is history.  Ohio State is #1, and Marshall is my 1A.  The Buckeyes are my first love.  I own WAY more Buckeye stuff than Herd stuff, although I would consider myself to be a huge Marshall fan.  You can't not go to Marshall, though, and not come away with a deeper appreciation for the football program after what happened in 1970 with the plane crash.  My attendance of another school doesn't make me less of a fan or even not entitle me to be a fan.  That holds true for other schools as well.  I must say, though, that I don't understand the need for Ohio residents to pull for TTUN when you have a wildly successful, well-known program to represent you in the rest of the country in the Buckeyes.  Most Ohio-resident/TTUN fans do it just to be the sand in the craw.

On a side note, I did not enjoy the two times OSU and Marshall met on the football field.  Truly the two worst times I ever had watching a football game, although I was proud of the way the Herd repped themselves in Ohio Stadium in '04.

It is fun being a diehard Buckeye fan living in Florida.  Yes many hate TOSU...  There are many  Buckeye transplants like me...  I do however know locals that for whatever reason have become Buckeye fans.  Buckeye Nation is a living/breathing thing and is appealing to many who appreciate this kind of passion.  I also think our ability to recruit nationally helps.  Carlos Hyde and Jeff Heuerman coming out of Naples where I live has helped add to the local Buckeye Fever.

The connection one has with the university they attended is immeasurable. If I hadn't graduated from Ohio State, I don't know how I would feel about the Buckeyes and I don't want to know.

I understand why Michigan State fans created the Walmart Wolverine title. I've been up there and Michigan fans that didn't attend Michigan treat Michigan State fans that attended Michigan State as inferior because their football team isn't as popular. Sparty is just fighting back and it's pretty effective.

I see I'm a bit late to the party, but I don't think we should care too much for the Walmart fans label. I don't go to Ohio State, or any other college. I think Walmart fans are just those fans who can't spell, & make themselves look idiotic & therefore make the team they root for look bad through association. It's one of those things where you go on people of Walmart.com & see a fat guy with a mullet wearing Alabama gear & say "So this guy roots for Bama, what does that say about the kind of people they appeal to". But every team has that, & it really doesn't matter. I'm born & raised in Ohio, & it's my home. I love the winter, the fall, Lake Erie, & anything else I can remember about growing up here. One big thing for me as a little kid was during the fall, it was always all about haystacks, caramel apples, Halloween, & Ohio State football. Not because my family were huge Ohio State fans, they could care less about sports. But Ohio State was always there, it was always a part of your home one way or another. Whether it was the block O flags on people's porches or at the shops were you bought the pumpkins you planned to carve, or because you just had a blanket with Brutus on it when you were 4, it was always there. Maybe it plays a big role in our childhood memories, the appeal of better days. Or maybe it's because we just love our home, or what we feel the team stands for or represents. But for me, it's just about my home. If you have to attend the university to be a fan, then lets take the Ohio State football jerseys away from all the little kids too. They haven't attended OSU, so why should they get away with it? It's almost like saying you can't be a Browns fan if you're not a team employee. "Walmart Fan" means less than nothing to me. It's about hopes & dreams, memories & home. If somebody wants to take that away from you or anyone else just because you never went to their school, ignore them. They're not worth listening to.

I was raised to be a buckeye. My kids are buckeyes. I had a dog named Brutus. I never attended any class for osu. I did however help remodel and build many buildings on campus. I finished drywall for a union outfit for years. I own my own company now. And have done some jobs for osu on my own. I take great pride in my work. Great pride for my state. Great pride for my country. And great pride in tosu. I usually park behind the varsity club. I think the little park is called park of roses or something. And get to walk all over campus to where ever the job is. Early morning spring is a beautiful time to take the campus in. Then hit the oval up on the way back to truck just for some added sight seeing. I have busted my ass for 13 years on campus. I would think I would be considered alumni. I hope that ppl like me are not forgotten by graduates. And I hope that every student knows how blessed they are to be attending tosu. 

i just get a little irked by the people who celebrate championships but couldn't even name a player on the team, mostly because i know how much it sucks to be a fan when we lose, and those people get all the benefits of a good team without sharing in the sorrows.

I live in Florida and my wife is a Florida grad. I often comment to her about how many "Wal-Mart Gator fans"  we see. While all Gator fans (including my wife) are obnoxious and show hate towards Spurrier and Meyer, the "Wal-mart fans"  can be identified by the Jorts they wear.

Just because you do not go to school there and are a fan does not mean you are less a fan.

I went to Ohio University because I could afford it there because my mother worked there and I got a discount tuition price.  The entire time I rooted for Ohio State.

Even when Ohio U played Ohio State my whole family was over in my Ohio State room on my projector watching the game and my brother has 3 masters degrees from Ohio U his wife gradutated from Ohio U and my mom was working there at the time, and I was rooting for the Buckeyes over the Bobcats, and OU was making a game of it and everyone was against me and I was pissed.  Thank god OSU won that game and stopped that damn Boo Jackson.

But I have been an Ohio State fan since I was like 3 or 4, I used to tape record the games as I watched them with my dad and freaking listen to the tape of the game as a kid.  (yeah I was odd so what loved the Buckeyes)

I am 36 now and that is what 32-33 years of being a Buckeye fan.

So some alumni guy that is 22-24 and never followed Ohio State until he was 18 and started going to school there can call me a Walmart fan?  Uhm Fu%K off on that.  That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. 

Some non alumni fans are bigger "fans" than alumni because the non alumni fans go to every game and tailgate and make Ohio State what it is.  Ohio State is not just a school, it is a tradition for the ENTIRE STATE OF OHIO whether you graduated from there or not.