2. Ohio State
Meathead Overlords. The Spray-Tan Empire. The university was bankrolled in large part by the man who gave Jeffery Epstein all his money.
The worst thing in that collection of outright slander of the Ohio State University is the documented truth. That’s where we start with Ohio State: The truth is always worse than anything one can make up.
That truth is real, real, real bad. Their fans really are all variations on the cops Ralph Steadman drew for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Their commitment to football is so total and so divorced from the rest of campus life that Justin Fields openly admitted in the media that COVID quarantine wouldn’t be that different than the usual because they didn’t see the rest of campus much. Their greatest coach ended his career by punching a player on the field and believed civilians could be massacred in combat as long as they were older than five or maybe six years old. Their stadium feels like a mausoleum for dead fascist weightlifters. Buck-I-Guy shows up to funerals and signs things like he’s on the team.
The least endearing habit Ohio State has as a fanbase is believing everyone would like to know their take on the situation – all of the situations, actually, at all times. Their most endearing trait is how morbidly funny most of their disasters are. Buck-I-Guy really did show up to a funeral and sign a team photo. Woody Hayes really did pop Charlie Bauman in the jaw on national TV, the Bucks really do lose to Purdue every four years for no reason whatsoever, and they really did lose another coach over some illicit tattoos. If America is Hellworld, then Ohio remains its dull, fiery furnace, a place where petty sadnesses have to be laughed at by anyone with a conscience just to maintain a veneer of sanity, and where the conscienceless celebrate the blessing of being on fire 24/7.
Someone is emailing me right now from a CrossFit in Akron to tell me how wrong I am. This is why Ohio State is a perennial top-five team. The commitment never sleeps, even when all I want to do is close my eyes and not think about how much I didn’t respect Braxton Miller when he was a college player.
But the Ohio State fan never sleeps. I can hear him typing this from outside my bedroom window, because he is definitely the type of rube who never turned off the keystroke noises on his iPhone.
