Ohio State Fanbase Collective Cognitive Dissonance

was listening to sports talk radio while doing some paneling at camp two weeks ago...   an ohio state fan called in saying "the punishment should fit the crime"  ohio vacated a season, held themselves out of a bowl game and fired LORD tressell because a couple players traded their own personal belongings for tattoos....  a crime that did not affect the game at all.    Michigan clearly cheated, giving themselves a huge illegal advantage, so the punishment should be at least twice what ohio state was given.

The host said, dude, you can't compare the ncaa from 20 years ago to the ncaa now.  norms have changed, rules have changed, what is acceptable and isn't has changed.   

What caught me is how revisionist their history is.  they were punished because tressell was made aware of the gold pants for tats and weed violations and instead of reporting them, he called pryor's agent (a player having an agent wasn't OK, and the coach having the agents email and cell number probably weren't ok either) and told him to warn the players.  tressell knowingly covered up violations and neglected to report them, and then lied about it when questioned....   but at least lord sweatervest didn't fire gordon gee before he left.  

bottom line, ohio state's fanbase are a bunch of nut jobs.  If Michigan dominates the rest of the decade, the ohio state fan base will be about 75% of the size it is now, there are a ton of bandwagon goons that never knew losing to Michigan and they won't stand by their team when they're getting it handed to them every year.

GO BLUE

I support the OSU fan bases line of thinking. Yes, they lost 3 straight, but none of it was their fault - all 3 losses were due to outside factors they could not control. They are purely victims of circumstances.

What I like most about this thinking is that the conclusion one then draws: OSU can't do anything to change it. There is no fix from OSU's side, so no changes are needed.

Keep doing what you're doing OSU. Please.

I mean, we've seen that this country has a dangerously strong predisposition toward cult behavior.

Anyway the glorious thing about winning is we don't have to pay attention to them anymore.  The media has mostly moved on from the mess they created.

Not to mention, we know a PR firm is involved, and that means astroturfing.

They've had OUR signs since at least 2018!!! In what world is that 'okay' to them but it's utterly innappropriate if we have THEIR signs for a change?

Honestly, I'm so fed up with this whole sign stealing nonsense...words cannot express

Water is wet. Stay off their fan boards as you know it will lower your IQ. I say this in the interest of reducing competitive advantage and fostering fairness and the health and safety of all involved. I do this also with summary judgment to follow recent trends.

Good luck.

Given the transfer portal and our depth, there are some fan bases that are going to be upset that we are still good next year.

There exists, since the first win in ‘21 this “well, they won but they’re not the better team and if we played ten games…” point of view.

I’m not sure if it is based on recruiting rankings or a sense of entitlement based on recency bias but at some point you have to accept what your record is, right?

College football fandom is never rational. So when your 10 five stars and 63 four stars lose three in a row to a rival with 2 five stars and 45 four stars, it is pretty easy to grasp for any explanatory straw you can find. 

I'm guilty of grasping at nefarious straws when I ponder how it is that they are loading up on top tier recruits again (many head to head wins vs M) when, clearly those players should be able to see that Michigan is doing a better job of team and player development. 

This site helps keep things grounded in reality - just look at the Rich Rod and Brady Hoke years and the postings.

There is still - even now - a pervasive belief that the sign-stealing scandal is THE reason for three straight losses -- including this past Saturday. There is zero ability from the bulk of this fan base to even process the notion that they were outplayed, outmuscled, and in the case of Saturday -- outcoached, despite an accumulation of data analysis which creates absolute clarity on the reasons for each loss

I'm not sure if it's cognitive dissonance or that most OSU fans just don't know ball. They don't understand that the sign stealing didn't actually give us that much advantage and/or haven't been following the scandal close enough to know that Stalions is gone and we no longer even have a legal sign stealer

Since we’re getting into psychology in this thread, there are many angles to consider.  The talent is there on both sides, so that leaves the coaching/scheming as a point of major differences.  Many here have touched on multiple pieces of this issue. For example, how osu’s culture is that of preNFL individuals vs The Team (and character development, bonding, facing adversity as a group, etc.). The cringe-worthy pre-game “dance” that Day did with his players revealing how he relates to his players: one of them instead of their leader/coach. Brian Kelly is guilty of this too.  How both of these coaches scream at their players - I’ve never seen Harbaugh do this.  Someone else brought up the differences in locker room temperament; another symptom of coaching.  This is how 5 stars don’t necessarily live up to the hype and 3 stars turn into stars.  I love watching the sidelines because it reveals so much. What a complex sport this is.

The one problem OSU was always eventually going to have to contend with, after having won so god-dang much with Tressel and Meyer, is that when they eventually started losing again, they would have no idea how to handle it. To them, particularly the millennial/Gen-Z generation that grew up in the 2000's/2010's, the concept of losing to Michigan didn't exist because they'd almost never seen it before. 

Because it didn't exist, when it all of a sudden started happening, there had to be some explanation for it. It couldn't be that the ever-so-dominant team that they'd grew up and loved for decades was all of a sudden losing its grip, that maybe Michigan was just a better team. That didn't make sense because again, they'd never ever known that to be the case outside of one fluke transition year in 2011. There had to be an excuse.

Michigan had to be cheating. Yep! That's it! That's the only way!

OSU needed this game so badly to affirm its belief that the last two years were just a fluke. A mirage, and that their glory days had not ended. The golden age was not over, and Michigan was still just a has-been. That didn't happen, but it doesn't mean they're going to let it go, because its what allows them to not have to face the truth: that Michigan might just be a better program right now. 

Its a mindset that we unfortunately see on much more serious, life-changing topics in this country. Its easier to bury your head in the sand, tell yourself what you want to hear and surround yourself with like-minded people than to just accept what is, move on, and put together a gameplan for how to make sure it doesn't happen again next time. 

Yeah, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance.  I mean UM provided the documents that showed OSU knew UMs signs as well.  Yet they just ignore this.

Delusional OSU message board fans be like

They just need to accept the beating their teams have endured for 3 straight years. Granted, this year was more of a slugfest. 

A lot of them are still in denial, some I've talked to have made it to acceptance.

The whole email/tip line is just priceless. The constant linking of anyone on twitter who has "inside" info, even though said twitter has 6 followers. They truly live up to their reputations..

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

-HP Lovecraft 

This is 100% true BTW.  As mentioned in other threads I had the pleasure of watching the game at a VFW hall with about 150 buckeye fans and me.  And EVERY time something good happened for Michigan somebody would yell out "Cheaters" as if that explained the failure on the field.

I dont think all of them actually believe it but all of them seem to say it as a coping mechanism to explain the unexplainable (OSU getting beat repeatidly by TTUN) which to that fanbase is as bewildering as it would be to us if we lost to Indiana three straight years.

Speaking of cognitive dissonance, the book When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger (who coined the idea of cognitive dissonance), Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter is a fascinating look into the subject. In summary, back in the 1950's these psych researchers infiltrated a real-life UFO doomsday cult and chronicled the varying explanations & rationalizations given before and after the prophecy failed to materialize as predicted.

Gee, I wonder what leader taught them to cry cheating when the tally clearly shows you lost. Fucking cult. 

Too much of their identity is wrapped up in them winning. The 2006-2019 years are who they think Ohio State is. They don't get that things change, for better or for worse. That's just the natural order of life. They're having a hard time adjusting to that. 

For close to two decades they won almost every year. They expected and felt entitled to winning, and claiming superiority, in football at least. They will do whatever they can to try to explain away the turning of the tables before accepting anything close to reality.

The thing is that their dissonance isn't just limited to the beatings UM has given them the past 3 seasons. They have a laundry list of reasons for every loss Ryan Day has had since he started as head coach and none of them involve the other team being better.

Clemson cheated and terrible officiating.

They then had the greatest program win of all time against Clemson the following season and subsequently lost to Alabama by 30 points in the national championship. (Which doesn't count because it was the COVID year. Except the Clemson win counts. Just the embarrassing loss to Alabama doesn't.)

UM cheated.

UM cheated.

GA was injuries and terrible officiating. (Pay no mind to your S&C program despite nagging injuries being common in your program the last number of years).***

UM cheated and Big Ten reffing conspiracy to make UM the winners.

***I also love the idea that had they made that field goal to win that game the NCAA might as well have just handed them the national championship trophy right then. I'm not even talking about an inflated sense of confidence that they'd have beaten TCU, I'm talking a full blown belief that if they'd have beaten GA then that game might as well just not even be played.

The whole way they talk about football is nuts in a way that I've never seen from any other fanbase. There's a lot of discussion about the past and how cool it could've been and the future and how great it's going to be, but just never much substantial about the present. And I'm unsure what that means.

They lost by less than a score and were driving for the winning touchdown in the last minute of the game and had moved the ball into Michigan territory. It's not like it was preordained that McCord throws a pick there. He made a mistake. OSU had two open options underneath on that play that would have gotten them 5-10 yards easy before quite probably going out of bounds to stop the clock. The game was in the balance, and let's be real here, most Michigan fans were bricking it at that point, especially after that pass-fumble completion.

OSU was in a position to win that game in the cruelest of ways for us because Michigan took the FG on 4th and 4 at their 20 yards line there rather than go for the game-killing first down. And in a broader sense because Michigan chose to take OSU's 3 timeouts over that 1st down and a potential TD. Moore played the odds. It worked because Michigan won. But if Michigan lost on an OSU TD with 2 seconds left, he'd be catching a ton of heat for it. "Same old Michigan, playing it safe rather than going for the throat". Remember, Harbaugh lost a game against Iowa in 2016 in a similar (not identical) setup.

What I'm trying to say is that the margins in a game like that are very thin. It really didn't need much for the national story to be Ryan Day's redemption and Michigan coming up short which of course Michigan fans would pin on Harbaugh not being there. And there'd probably be a thread on 11W talking about Michigan fans' cognitive dissonance.

People like black/white outcomes, you win you do everything right, you lose you do all wrong. Of course it's never like that, and anyone capable of critical thinking understands that. But for OSU fans the difficulty is to understand that they simply came up short, and there's no massive failure on anyone's part to blame it on, no bad referee call, no terrible coaching, certainly no 'sign stealing'. It just wasn't their day. And Day's record is far too good for them to fire him, and heck there's even a small chance that Day could redeem himself in a month from now. So they can't even rationally go after him too much (and their more balanced fans won't). Dealing with a close L where all you can do is say "oh well, it was tough luck but it is what it is, moving on to the next one" in the game that means the most to you is real hard for fans because scapegoating provides you with an emotional crutch. A lot of OSU fans are desperately looking for that crutch right now.

Very important to us that they believe all their crap. I HOPE the coaches believe it too...The last thing we want is for the coaches to take a long, hard, painful look at what they are doing and really try to fix it--they may succeed.

Harbaugh did that a few years ago...worked pretty well :)

They've lost their minds. I find it highly entertaining. Go Blue!

I hope Michigan beats them next year on a bad call that isn't reviewable.

Reading the stuff on elevenwarriors leaves little doubt in your mind how people join cults. The fanbase on that site is literally a cult. They are all brainwashed and believe that Michigan is going to be banned for life. It is so delusional it is at times both sad and comical. A couple of the posters have risen to David Koresh and Jim Jones level. You wonder if Michigan beats them next year if they will all line up to drink the Kool-aid.

Keep up that belief = keep losing. Fine with me.

Not a stupid degree. Cognitive dissonance is so prevalent in the world. But as I understood it, it means ones behavior inevitably has to match the belief, that they cannot be at odds. See, you were taught the right way. And I'm confused. 

I am just amused that OSU of all teams is hanging on this so much. OSU had laminated cards of Don Brown's defense in 2018 and/or 2019...do they really think failed vacuum salesman Stallions was somehow delivering better goods than that? That's as good as it gets.

It makes no sense which is why it is obviously coping from a fanbase very unaccustomed to ever facing adversity

Wait... what....?  We stole the election...?  No you dumbasses.  It wasn't an election.  It was a beat down.  Again.

The most pathetic/absurd part about their behavior the last few years is that most absolutely believe it is their birthright to beat Michigan every year. Tressell/Meyer really ruined their expectations which is just now being brought to light. Funny how we owned them in the 90s, yet I never expected to beat them every year. so to watch this fanbase implode is delicious.

My biggest issues with that fanbase is there is not a more spoiled group of people this century. Even Alabama had bad years before Saban. OSU has has 70 years of Hayes, Bruce, Cooper, Tressel, Meyer and Day. Of those seasons, only 15 times have they finished outside the top 3 of the conference. And it's only happened twice since Tressel was hired. They talk about the Fickell season as if it were 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. They do not know what actual hardship means as a fanbase. McCord is their worst Qb since Joe Bauserman and he's probably going to be second team all conference.