[NU Sports] Ryan Field fans ...

[John Labbe]

I agree that OSU clearly has many more alumni than we do, but I think 
you've got your numbers a little out of whack here.

We have fewer than 2000 students per class.  So over 20 years, we would 
graduate a little over 35,000, not 200,000.  And OSU does have 50,000 
students, but that's undergrad and grad school.  They only have about 
35,000 undergrads, and a six-year graduation rate around 65%.  So that 
yields 35000(.65)/6=3800 graduates per year or about 75,000 over 20 
years, not a million.

But it's not just alumni in Columbus who are Ohio State fans.  
EVERYBODY in Columbus is an Ohio State fan.  Plus, most alums live in 
Ohio.  It's hard to explain if you haven't lived in a town like 
Columbus where everyone is a fan of the local college team.  The only 
exceptions, probably, are people who graduated from Michigan, and few 
of them would choose to live in Columbus.  I clerked for a federal 
judge in Columbus, for example.  Everyone I know who worked at the 
courthouse was an Ohio State fan to some degree, and most of them had 
not attended Ohio State.  One guy in the clerk's office wore Ohio State 
ties every single day, but didn't attend Ohio State.  And the OSU media 
coverage was unbelievable.  It was always the lead story on the news (I 
don't mean during the sports segment, I mean at the beginning of the 
news) on game day and often leading up to game day.

I've heard that 8 Big Ten schools have larger alumni association 
chapters in the Chicago area than NU does.  I don't find that hard to 
believe, but it brings the point home about how spread out our alumni 
are.


On Nov 6, 2005, at 9:55 AM, MHRJGScott at aol.com wrote:

> My 2 cents
> 1)  We are small 17,000 compared to tOSU 50,000 or MSU 44,000 which  
> makes
> for a lot less alumni to pack the stadium, and a lot of our alums are 
> from  grad
> schools.  Over 20 years I would think tOSU has 1,000,000 undergrad  
> alums to
> our 200,000.
> 2) Traffic and parking suck
> 3) We lose a lot
> Hopefully something can be done about 2 &  3
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