Any pretension from OM fans is overcompensation
What makes me 'hate' UM, aside from the sports rivalry, is the pretentiousness, elitist culture and mentality that is fostered there. It is a clear air of "we are better than you" including the dressing to the nines for a football game, the ridiculous sight of china and chandeliers in a tailgate tent to the general attitude displayed by a large percentage of their alumni and supporters even beyond athletics. I know that far from everybody from either school fits a stereotype, or perhaps even prototype, but UM folks tend more to be from historically well-to-do families. Children of privilege that live by who you know and who you associate with. Social connections, appearance, and the right behavior are extremely important. MSU folks tend to be 'self-made'. More likely to come from middle class families that value hard work and achievement over being well connected. Less concerned with who you know or what you look like versus what you know and what you can do.
Now I know one could find those types in both groups but each one is clearly predominant and/or more valued in each culture.
It all goes back to the very reason MSU was founded as a separate institution in 1878. This divergent cultural paradigm is very distinct to this day and fosters this 'hatred' we speak of.
You nailed it. This deserves the slow-clap gif.
I had this typed up yesterday, but my browser crashed before I got to post it. I'll attempt to summarize.
Any pretension from OM fans, the claim of "elitism," is classic overcompensation for identity deficiencies, not qualities based on measurable criteria that can be quantified.
1. Are admission standards not the same between MSU and OM, due to some IHL rule? (I'm too lazy to investigate.) But any claim of superior academic environment or output was abandoned years--decades--ago. Literally any State grad could've applied and attended OM.
2. Is tuition/attendance cost not also roughly equivalent? So why would anybody attempt to claim that attendance at OM is some statement of wealth? As somebody previously noted, wouldn't an extravagant private tuition better match the gaudy spectacle of chandeliers, tents, and cold chicken? And what are those trappings other than affectation? Yet that's very much a part of the pretension--that everybody at the Grove pretends to be "from money," in some form.
3. Of the two schools, OM attracts the sidewalk fans. Case in point: one of the dumbest people with whom I'm forced to associate, extended family by marriage, is a rabid OM fan. She never attended college, probably didn't finish high school, and has never so much as set foot in Oxford.
That's a cold realization that the actual OM graduate-fan ignores, though: for every actual OM graduate wearing red pants and pretending to be nouveau riche, there's probably three or four dumbass sidewalk fans who are all HAWWWDY TAWWDY!!1 and waving rebel flags.
These factors all contribute to a general dickishness in their fanbase, no doubt: in psychiatric terms, it's simple overcompensation. Those who attend Om do so because they attribute importance to pretending to be aristocracy.
By comparison, those who attend State generally do for more pragmatic qualifications. As State rises in terms of academic or athletic achievement, those OM sympathizers whose identity depends on an assumed, albeit illegitimate, claimed superiority over State lash out. 90% of the negative anecdotes about their fans in this thread describe that lashing out behavior.