Another perspective slash perception moment.

If you never believe/trust/have faith in/etc. yourself, then no one else will either. Outsiders and smartasses will say you are a sunshine pumper, but there is a difference. It IS possible to have pride/optimism while still maintaining rationalization.

Pride isn't always predicting 12-0 for your team. Pride IS never backing down when outsiders and smartasses start ribbing you/your school.

While on this subject, we have way too many OM apologists in our fanbase. I understand alot of what we do, ESPECIALLY in recruiting, is directly tied to them being our biggest rival, but a large majority of our fanbase always uses the "OM Caveat" when discussing MSU. A good buddy of mine and I were talking recruiting this past January. Our class, in particular. We had no intention of discussing any other school, so I start talking about a few of our recruits. His response "Yeah, they are good, but did you see that class OM has?" Sure, it seems innocent enough, but to me, that shows that a faction of our fanbase is always worried about them and is always comparing MSU to them. I understand discussing your rival when the conversation calls for it, but sometimes its obvious that we have man fans who are self-conscious about comparing us to OM.... basically always worrying how we stack up against them. It's like we are always trying to compare to THEM. They should be comparing to us. We have the better overall athletics program, historically. Educationally, the schools are about par. Literally everything else (town, campus, student body) is STRICTLY PERSONAL PREFERENCE. That's why I never put any stock into publications ranking opinionated things.

Sorry for the rant. Hope it makes sense. And before anyone refutes me, I realize that we have to keep tabs on them because we battle for everything, but there is a not-so-fine line between being aware and being self-conscious.