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The pain of being unrivaled

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Hetuck said:
Notre Dame is a rival but it's a cold rivalry. They rarely play each other but there's a lot of hatred between the fanbases and, when they do play, it's HUGE.

Every team in the conference is a rival. Michigan is OSU's biggest rival, of course. PSU is #2. Over the course of your lifetime, outside of the Michigan game, you'll suffer more from losing to them than anyone else, you'll enjoy beating them more than anyone else. You will fear and hate them (the two go hand-in-hand) more than anyone else. That's what defines a rivalry.

If Michigan doesn't get their shit together before too long we'll risk PSU becoming our #1 rival.
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DaddyBigBucks said:
"Rival" is a subjective term in a language full of subjective terms.

If we go by the dictionary definitions of "rival: n", there are three, and every team in the B1G (at least) meets those definitions.

But we are not just talking about dictionary definitions here. When someone says, TSUN is Ohio State's Rival, the meaning that is conveyed goes a LONG way beyond any of the dictionary definitions that you will find. When someone at BP talks about who Ohio State's rival is, the word is used to convey The Buckeye Planet meaning of the term, not the Webster.com meaning of the term, which is useless in this context.

We go by the BP definition of "rival" here, which means that who we say is our rival is not only relevant, it is dispositive.

TSUN is Ohio State's rival.

Class dismissed.
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jwinslow said:
I missed this gem :slappy:
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I missed it the first time around too, but I think it gives a clue as to what the major malfunction is.

As I tried to explain before, the dictionary definitions do, in fact, allow for every opponent, and most especially every conference member to be called a rival. It is extremely common for the truly pedantic to mistake dictionary definitions for being the ONLY repositories for the meaning of words. This is utter foolishness, but if a person has the right combination of arrogance and ignorance, it’s not a difficult belief to hang on to.

The trouble is, very few other people agree with this, and NO ONE goes by this in practice. Every profession is replete with terms that you will not find in the dictionary. And is it only in the professional world that we find words used in ways that are not found in the dictionary? Of course not.

I need not search far to find an example. The best example in the entire English language is the word “rival”. Look up the word, and ask yourself which of the definitions fits what Urban Meyer means when he avoids saying the “M” word by saying “our rival”. The obvious answer is, none of them.

So I’ll say it again; “rival” as we use it is one of many words used in English in special contexts that are not covered by the dictionary. Therefore it is entirely our choice how we use it. The definition is entirely up to us. And if some fool wants to prove to us that he is not one of us by pedantically, arrogantly, and ignorantly insisting on imposing an ill-fitting dictionary definition on us, then we should admit that which he is trying to prove: he is not one of us. He is beneath us; intellectually beneath us, socially beneath us and, in this case, morally beneath us as well. Let him have his way, preferably somewhere else.
 
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Love the various thread names so far. I am also not sure why everyone is so upset at Hetuck and talking about blocking him. This is top notch shit posting in my IMO.

What is everyone's thoughts on Youngstown State as a rival? I don't know how a team with our NC head coach as president and an alumni as head coach can't be considered one of our top rivals. Hell, they are an in-state school for Christ's sake.
 
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