This is getting ridiculous…

Please accept my humblest apologies for not making it perfectly clear that “the last time” Celtic and Man U played meant the last time before July’s game. It should be obvious to all the readers of this site (which are all the readers of our e-mails, in which it was also made perfectly clear that you believed that Celtic and Man U played only that one time in Seattle).

Show me an e-mail where I said that I thought that Celtic and Man U have only ever played once in recorded history (in Seattle). As little as I may know about soccer, even I know that English Premier League teams do stoop to playing Scottish Premier League teams from time to time.

What can I do to make it up to you, Lee?

Admitting that you were wrong was more than enough. Thank you.

But the notion that TOSU is just as bit an urban school as Pitt is a little absurd. Columbus is a giant sprawling suburb with a small neighborhood of openly gay artistic types in the middle. Not a city in the real sense – not enough population density.

You’ve never really been to Columbus, have you? Trust me, it has a downtown with practically as much population density as Pittsburgh. But unlike Pittsburgh, Columbus is growing.

Really, anybody in Columbus who read your description of their city would be laughing their butts off right about now. Who exactly is defining “city in the real sense” here? You? Are “cities in the real sense” only those that look just like Pittsburgh? And what do cities “in the real sense” have to do with either density in and of itself or “openly gay artistic types?”

Besides, TOSU is a mammoth school, drawing the sons and daughters of insurance salesmen, small factory owners and Rotary, Lions, Kiwanas and Eagles club members from all over suburban and rural Ohio. Not exactly Temple – or even Pitt, for that matter. Pitt and Temple are true uban schools, in that they draw (tradtionally and even today) mainly from their metro area.

Let the record show that I am a dairy farmer’s son from Crawford County, you are a professor’s son from Indiana County, Shawn is a high school librarian’s son from Mercer County, John is from rural Louisiana, and Chas is from Lebanon County (I honestly forget where Harlan is from… sorry). All of us are white. We don’t exactly fit your urban profile, Pat. And only one of us was raised in Pittsburgh’s Metropolitan Statistical Area (John). According to you, we should have all gone to a Big Ten school, perhaps Penn State.

And more Ohio State students come from Franklin County, Ohio than from any other county in the U.S., just as more Pitt students come from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania than from any other county. And incidentally, the heart of rural Ohio — Cuyahoga County — is the second most popular home of OSU students. But that aside, any land grant university is going to draw statewide more than a regional school like Pitt. Does that make the land grant school any less urban?

Ohio State isn’t all that much more mammoth than Pitt either: 50,000 vs. 32,000. They’re both pretty big by national standards.

But I think the crux of the matter, again, is that you — someone who has never set foot on OSU’s campus — are assuming that Ohio State is Penn State with red uniforms. Let me, an alumnus of both Ohio State and Pitt, assure you that the two have a lot more in common with each other than either has with Penn State.

Jesus, Pat. I don’t think that I’ve kicked anybody’s ass so badly in an argument for years. Punt, already.

Hail to Rural Kids Going to Urban Schools Despite Where Pat Thinks We Should Go