<p>It would seem that some Spartan faithful are actually contacting sporting shops in Brookings, SD to buy Jackrabbit clothing to support their team against Michigan when they play each other later today! </p>
<p>If the Sparties were rooting for SDSU last night it wasn’t noticeable. There was a section of SDSU fans but the rest of crowd appeared to be mostly Michigan fans. With Sparty playing in the afternoon session and Michigan in the evening session (the sessions had different tickets), I don’t think there was a lot of overlap in the fan base although there were Sparties in attendance last night.</p>
<p>We will see if Saturday is different because there is only one ticket for both games. I won’t be there so if you can’t tell from the TV, someone will have to report.</p>
<p>Trust me there are plenty of Sparties who live for Michigan to lose.</p>
<p>i dont understand why you put quotes around little brother as if it’s not an established thing.</p>
<p>I also agree with the poster above and want to ask you what the point of posting this is. It’s not like it’s breaking news that 99% of sparties have a serious case of inferiority complex when it comes to Michigan.</p>
<p>Well today it certainly didn’t seem that fans of these teams were rooting for each other. At best they sit there politely. Why they are appropriately ‘little brother’ has nothing to do with sports, but because very many of us have little bros at state. I try to avoid using this cause it makes my brother so angry.</p>
<p>" Why they are appropriately ‘little brother’ has nothing to do with sports, but because very many of us have little bros at state. I try to avoid using this cause it makes my brother so angry."</p>
<p>I live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. One of our local sports-talk radio stations interviewed the manager of the South Dakota State University bookstore shortly before the Michigan-SDSU game. He said they had record sales of SDSU Jackrabbits paraphernalia this week, with a large fraction of the sales being overnight deliveries sent to the state of Michigan, for which people were paying $50 in shipping costs on top of the cost of the merchandise. I sure don’t think those were Michigan fans plunking down $50 to get a SDSU Jackrabbits T-shirt delivered to them. Made Spartan fans the laughingstock of Twin Cities sports-talk radio for a few hours leading up to the game.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as a Michigan man and a Michigan fan, I find myself in the uncharacteristic position of rooting for the Spartans and Buckeyes along with all the other Big Ten teams to do well in this tournament, to prove our conference’s basketball superiority. Which so far they have done. And I was gratified to see Tom Izzo say that he, too, is rooting for all the Big Ten teams. Class act. Also a bit of self-interest, because as Izzo said, recruiting top talent is easier if the perception is that the conference is strong. We can have fierce, even bitter rivalries amongst ourselves, but we should stand shoulder to shoulder against the rest of the world. I believe romanigypsyeyes when she says most Spartan fans are right there with Izzo. It’s just a few Jack****s who make the rest look bad.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Big 10 fans will surport each other against non-conference teams. But there is no denying that you have some who cannot get over the rivalry. Anyway, MSU and Michigan are off the the round of 16, hopefully Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and OSU will join us.</p>
<h1>9 If you mean the Mike Hart quote, i’m well aware of it, but i never cared for it in that context. Four years of losing right after he left should have proven that incorrect. The one thing that makes it fit to me, at least for those in-state, is that we can’t hate on them like a legit rival cause our relatives who attend state are sitting right next to us.</h1>
<p>I doubt it. There probably aren’t more than a couple of dozen SDSU alums in the state of Michigan, and any who traveled there would almost certainly have brought Jackrabbits paraphernalia with them if they wanted to wear it. And my impression from listening to the sports talkers was that a lot of the stuff was going to East Lansing-area addresses, though they certainly didn’t have hard statistics on any of that. </p>
<p>The marketing director for SDSU’s bookstore certainly believed it was Michigan State fans who were generating the unusual run of out-of-state sales:</p>
<p>LOL. You obviously don’t know many South Dakotans. They’re a thrifty lot, more likely to get up early and drive the 900 miles in one day before pulling into a Motel 6 somewhere around Jackson, figuring that gives them enough time to make it to Auburn Hills in the morning before the game. People who travel like that are not likely to spend more on overnight shipping than they’re spending on their motel room, or even to be there long enough to get an overnight delivery. And they’d just bring their Jackrabbits paraphernalia from home.</p>
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<p>Well, not likely any Spartan fans will be seen in it now that the Jackrabbits got crushed by the Wolverines. Anyway, I doubt many of the purchases were made by current students; a bit rich for their pocketbooks. More likely alums, don’t you think? The rabid types who hold midcourt season tickets?</p>
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