With a new season of baseball upon us, the college basketball season just wrapping up and the NBA nearing playoffs, it’s obvious what sport is on the mind of most Ohio State fans – football.

Spring football starts today, but that really doesn’t make a difference for many followers of the scarlet and gray. Football is on the mind year-round.

This is neither unexpected or unusual, but it does bring one thing to the forefront of my attention: Ohio State football fans are among the most annoying in the world of sports.

That does not hold true for all supporters of the team, but as is the case with every group of fans, some are better than others. Unfortunately for the OSU football team, its group of fans consists more of the “others.”

Several people complimented my list of least likable Big Ten basketball players a few weeks back. Of course, several people hated it as well, but I’ll ignore that for now. As a follow-up, I’ll compose a list of the worst fans.

Here is the official list of most annoying fans in the sports world, in my humble opinion.

Michigan football fans: Maybe the ones up in Ann Arbor aren’t that bad, I really don’t know. But one thing I do know is the Wolverine fans living in Columbus are easily among the worst kind of people alive.

Their sole purpose is to enrage the regular folks in town who just root for their home team and mind their own business.

Plus, as with plenty of Wolverine players (football and basketball alike on this one), the level of arrogance in these people seems unprecedented and seemingly twice as much as any other group in the country – excluding, of course, sports journalists.

They whine, groan, talk trash and are just generally disagreeable people.

Kentucky basketball fans: If Michigan fans are the definition of arrogance, Kentucky fans are the definition of ignorance. It’s as if their good tradition in the sport makes them better than the rest of college basketball teams for all time.

A friend at UK, and die-hard Wildcat fan, told me a month ago that Kentucky had a 75 percent chance of winning the SEC tournament. I was left in a state of anger, confusion and bewilderment that stayed with me for days, until the “heavy favorite” Wildcats lost in the first round of the conference tourney to lowly South Carolina.

The rest of Kentucky fans are the same way. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of attending a UK game in Rupp Arena, and while it seem cool to see how into it the fans get, it’s really more disturbing than anything else.

Indiana basketball fans: Yep, this is the same group made up of about 20 percent that still hates Mike Davis for taking Bob Knight’s place, even after Davis’ team this season went to the final game.

Attending the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis was nearly unbearable this year – far too many annoying IU fans filled the place to the brim.

Even though Ohio State won the tournament that weekend, the best thing about the three-day trip might have been watching Iowa forward and former Hoosier Luke Recker hit a game-winning shot against Indiana and stick it to the fans that had treated him like garbage ever since he left because he couldn’t stand maniac Bob Knight’s abuse.

I was not alone in my Hoosier hate. It seemed that weekend as if every Big Ten fan of a school other than Indiana hated the Hoosiers and their faithful.

“I don’t care if we lose, as long as (expletive) Indiana doesn’t win the thing,” mumbled one fan dressed in the orange and blue of Illinois.

His sentiments spoke for a vast majority of Big Ten fans I know.

Race car fans: This one is almost too mean. Most fans of race car driving are at a distinct disadvantage from the start – it’s called lack of intelligence.

What other explanation could there be for watching two hours (or however long it takes; Lord knows I’ve never watched an entire race) of nothing but wasting gas and going in circles? Oh, and I can’t forget about the accidents that always happen, occasionally killing racers. Sounds like a great sport, doesn’t it?

But this isn’t an attack on the sport, rather on the fans, who seem to embody the hick persona to a tee. Not all race car fans are the same, of course, but several of the ones I know possess three things – a beer belly, a tin of chewing tobacco and an unbearable stench.

New York Yankees fans: Success does indeed go to one’s head, and while most of the Bronx Bombers remain humble and classy for the most part, their fans do not.

“Yankee mystique” is a phrase I hope to never hear again, but undoubtedly will. It refers to the Yankees winning just because they’re the Yankees. Sort of like my Cubs losing just because they’re the Cubs – it makes me sick.

I know last November nearly every non-Yankee fan watching the World Series was celebrating like crazy when Luis Gonzalez poked that game-winning hit through the infield.

It’s bad enough to have to watch the Yankees spend a gazillion dollars and win every year – it’s horrid having to put up with their arrogant fans at the same time.

Ohio State football fans: This one will be approached with caution, because the Buckeyes do have some loyal, intelligent fans spread all across the country. OSU has a great traveling fan base that supports the team wherever it goes, so that part is good. But there is definitely plenty of bad.

Buckeye football fans obsess over the team at an unhealthy level. Steve Bellisari, who several fans thought was playing out of position from the start of his career, was booed relentlessly parts of last season. There were times when objects were thrown at him, something that should never occur in any sport, let alone the college ranks.

And some of the fans who are so into the team, booing and yelling about how they hate a certain player or coach (John Cooper comes to mind) don’t even know that much about the team.

Sitting in the stands last season was tough at times, listening to fans behind me talk about how sweet “Jared Zwick” was going to be when he came to OSU next year and how he was ranked the best high school quarterback in the nation by every recruiting service. Justin Zwick is a touted prospect coming to OSU in the fall, but he is not ranked the No. 1 quarterback in his class by any major recruiting service. And his older brother Jared, while also a quarterback, already graduated from a college, and it was not OSU.

Other times I heard fans argue about what player No. 2 on defense was. These are the same fans that were screaming to coach Jim Tressel at the top of their lungs telling him to bench Bellisari, but they didn’t even know who Mike Doss was.

It’s idiots like this that bring down the group as a whole. So, if as an OSU fan you want to complain about being included on this list, don’t whine to me about it – whine to the idiots.

Justin Powell, a junior in journalism, is the sports editor of The Lantern. He can be reached at [email protected].