Ah, Michigan State. One of a very few reasons I am glad to be from New York; none of the douchebags from my high school graduated and became douchebags from Michigan State. Let’s be real here, everyone who went to high school in the state of Michigan has at least one classmate who couldn’t be saved from their sad Sparty fate. And everyone who has a “friend from State” likes to pretend that their friend “isn’t like the rest of those douchebags.” Well, tough shit kid, your high school BFF just turned into an UNACCEPTABLE turd sandwich, and you did nothing to stop them.

But wait, you say. CMR, you are from New York, how can you hate MSU and their fans so much? Elementary, my dear MMers, let me count the ways:

1. FYS. If you are not a hockey fan, you may not be aware of this one. I saw this firsthand at Yost as a freshman, and it is seriously one of those scenes that will haunt you for the rest of your life. Shit like this is not supposed to happen in college hockey, nor hockey at any level, yet it happened at Yost, and I hope to never witness an event so egregious that every usher in the stands turns a deaf ear to the student section: 
   FYS.
2. “Our parties are better and our chicks are hawter!” Oh yea Sparty? Since your parties are so sweet, (paying for fratty ice is sick, brah!) stop crashing ours and stop trying to get me to dance with you, I can sense your inferiority complex from across the room. I also sense that I should try using smaller words too: You are rather ugly and not even clever, nice, funny, or (sure, I’ll go there) rich enough to make up for it… explain again why you deserve hawt chicks?
3. “LOLMart Wolverines!!” Well that’s up there with Nicky Minaj calling Lil Kim trashy. Try again.
4. “Look at how old that picture is. They had to go that far back since a wide out from U of M has caught a ball.”* What is this I don’t even? Many facepalms to you, you poor uneducated soul.
5. “You're right. It's not a rivalry. The Spartans have won the last two games.”* I’ll say the same thing I told the troll on DB’s porst: there’s a reason no one else brags about beating two of the worst Michigan football teams in the past 130+ seasons. Congrats guys, you accomplished the football equivalent of kicking a puppy and bragged about it. If you had taken a better look, you might’ve realized it was a wolf hybrid puppy. Those mature around age three. Your bad, brah. And by the way, if winning the last 2 ends the rivalry... was there ever one to begin with?
6. Oh and on that note State fans… you don’t get to call anyone “Little Brother,” let alone Mike Hart’s team. Stop trying.
7. “Wow, it certainly was nice of my friend here at UM to get me and my brahs these tickets… TIME TO REPAY THEIR KINDNESS BY MAKING A COMPLETE ASS OF MYSELF!** I will pick a fight with the diabetic girl standing in her seat in front of me!”***
8. And of course… history. My grandparents’ true disregard for Michigan State football (they’d rather drive out for a homecoming against Eastern than the MSU game, since EMU and MSU have about the same standing to them). Spartan Bob and Clockgate. Mike Hart vs Coach Dantonio. The Catch. The Interception. The chronically cheating first boyfriend of my little sister’s who I never got to beat the self-righteous snot out of and who also just so happens to root for the Patriots and MSU. The crowd of student-section-invading assclowns who tried to get me and my roommate (our average height: 5’2”) to fight them. Losing in overtime. We know any memories beyond the past two years are a scary place for you, but at least try to appreciate everything that has led to this Saturday.

Oh, and don’t let this get to your head now, Sparty, I still hate Penn State, ND, and OSU so much more than you :]

*Direct quote from a Spartan fan on a Facebook event with the “He Didn’t Know Charles Woodson Could Jump 15 Feet in The Air” picture

** Direct quote from the brain of almost every Sparty jackass in Ann Arbor for the game... not really but still.

***…yea, really.

One of the most common things I read about the comments fields of A2.com or mlive.com is complaints that "I don't bother reading the comments anymore because it is full of trolls and idiots." I have posted on both sites for about three years now, and most UM articles are ruined by one troll with a lot of names. So, of course, I have fought back.

At first, I sunk to their level, combatting "scUM" with scuMSUcker, and "DickRod" with "Bag-Tonio." After reading mgoblog enough, I decided to show more class than they have, and now routinely respond to negative comments about Michigan with "Misdemeanor State" and 'Saint Dantonio."

My main problem with what happens at both sites was cited by Jonathan Chait last week: the headlines, articles, and comments are read not only by the general public, but by recruits and their parents, too. I remember during RR's first year when a national article cited "fan unrest" after sampling the comments in a couple of UM articles. Most of the negative ones were written by one person under about five names that day, and totalled about two thirds of the comments. The main point here is that the volume of negative posts in the comment fields of UM articles shed the University in a bad light to much of the public.

So, I have tried, with help from a couple of posters, to balance the misinformation of the trolls with information that is more advantageous to the University. Also, I have tried to balance it by posting in the MSU stories, figuring that if they get to ruin ours, someone needs to retaliate so that they don't feel that they can pollute UM stories with utter impugnity.

This weekend, I recieved an email from Tony Dearing, who runs A2.com. He told me that I had "lost perspective" and wanted me to not only refrain from using the phrase "Misdemeanor State," but refrain from "attacking MSU" altogether. I immediately posted the email and my two-part response to my private Yahoo community, The Maize Page, and asked them to voice their displeasure to his email addy.

Dearing, to his credit, actually changed his tune a little bit, and decided to allow everything that he had told me not to do, and encouraged me to flag any post that contained the phrases "DickRod" or "scUM." What does this mean to UM fans? I will explore that in the next post.