Moved to MS at 14, started out an OM fan....
My 2nd year in MS (10th grade) my brother started at OM, and I was definitely an OM fan. Even waved a rebel flag in the State section of the Egg Bowl. By senior year of HS, I was a State fan because I knew I was going to State. Then was typical student rivalry hate. It was early 80's, so they were still dominating State head-to-head.
When still in the 90's I was posting friendly rivalry banter on an OM board (Rebel Rant or something like that). Both OM and State were both decent/ranked, and it was fun. Somewhere around Thanksgiving 2000, it changed. A whole bunch of new and vile OM fans started posting on the board. Mean, hateful stuff. I stopped posting regularly on that board, and started to post less on other OM boards. Then State started to suck in 2001. And around 2004 when OM also started to suck, my message board stuff became stats, etc. showing MSU was really better than OM. Pretty much "we suck less" stuff. Did that for years. Made me popular on Gene's page and occasionally made fun of here (I wasn't here yet). When I did finally migrate to SPS, I slowed and eventually stopped the stat stuff.
I think a lot of 'hate' for OM rose out of the NCAA/Sherrill stuff. Many swear to this day that there was OM institutional and booster backing of the NCAA going after Sherrill and MSU. Well, we KNOW there was booster involvement to 'assist' the NCAA investigation.
So many State fans were pissed at OM for our 2004 NCAA probation. Really for the prolonged public investigation more than the actual probation. Most schools would announce an investigation and penalties shortly thereafter, but the NCAA dragged our investigation out 2-3 years, hurting recruiting, etc. The actual NCAA proven infractions turned out to be almost nothing, and really our NCAA penalties were minor. Of course, we had Croom then.
I can't stand their elitist crap. That seemed to lessen during the mid-2000's but is worsening again. Might be worse than any time since the 60's. I wonder if OM's out-of-state students are the reason. When we both had a big percentage of students from Mississippi, we all knew that we really came from the same towns and high schools and might have been friends in HS, too.
I have always wanted them to lose every game. However, the fact that right now we are both ranked is kind of fun. Actual credible back-and-forth banter is possible. I don't smack talk with my OM coworkers. I've been nice when they've been down and vice versa, and they've never been elitist with me. But now we can talk smack a little bit.
So I'm kind of in-between. I'm over being pissed off at their helping the NCAA against Sherrill/MSU in the early 2000s. Don't hate them, but do hate their elitist crap, which seems to be getting worse.