Imagine a husband and wife, both college professors. One lives and teaches in East Lansing, the other in Ann Arbor.
One’s a die-hard MSU fan, the other cheers for the maize and blue. This weekend the two will get together along with family and friends and root on their respectful universities.
Carol and Bill Weissert, who have been married for 30 years, live this life.
Carol, a professor of political science and the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at MSU, said the rivalry is friendly and no one really takes it personally.
“I would describe it as a have fun kind of rivalry,” Weissert said. “We usually go to the Michigan game when it’s in Ann Arbor and throw a party when it’s here.”
Carol Weissert said they have season tickets for Michigan, but not for MSU even though she wishes they did.
This year the party will be held in Ann Arbor, with Weissert bringing her fellow Spartans with her.
The Weisserts met in Dallas while working as journalists. They both went on to graduate school and took jobs at the rival schools.
They lived together in Ann Arbor for 12 years, and last year Carol Weissert decided to move to East Lansing, giving the couple two residences.
“We lived together for 11 years, and I got tired of commuting back and forth,” she said.
Carol Weissert describes the 60-mile relationship as being very complicated, yet satisfying.
“It’s very complex, one of us comes one night and one day a week and then go back,” she said. “Then we take turns on the weekend.”
She said sometimes they have to make up detailed plans weeks in advance to accommodate each other.
Bill Weissert, a professor and department chair for Health Management and Policy for the School of Public Health at U-M, agrees the distance brings a dynamic to the relationship, but the two still have their differences.
“She’s the real sports fan,” he said. “She’s the one questioning the quarterback and cheering the wrong penalties.”
He added he has been quiet in the past, but now he has started to speak up a little more to cover himself and his team.
Weissert said the party at the Ann Arbor residence will be filled with U-M students who expect Wolverines to win by a large margin.
“At these parties we have people sitting at opposite sides of the room,” he said. “It’s usually friendly, but officiating can make a big difference - then it can get really ugly.”
The couple has two sons, Will, who graduated from U-M and is working for The Associated Press in Mexico City, and Rob, a political economy and political theory and constitutional democracy senior at MSU.
Rob grew up in Ann Arbor and said he liked both of the teams. He decided to join his mom, and balance the family ties at MSU his freshman year in high school.
“I was certainly persuaded to come here, but it was my own free decision,” he said.
Weissert said he’s a big hockey fan and follows Spartan athletics, but not as much as his mom.
He agreed his father is getting more vocal, but his mother is still the big talker in the family.
“My mother is the trash-talker of the family,” he said. “She likes to remind him that Michigan State University is the state’s university.”
Bill Weissert said he tried to convince his son to transfer to U-M, because they are the better of the two universities in the state.
He is betting on U-M all the way.
“Michigan will win of course. We have a better team and we’re better coached,” he said.
However, every time Weissert talks to his wife about U-M’s great football record this year in the Big Ten, she still likes to remind him of another sport.
“I used to go to the basketball games at U-M wearing MSU gear,” she said. “The last couple years State has been so good and U-M has been so bad.”
Marriage isn’t the only link that transcends bitter school rivalries. Good old fashioned love, commuter style, sometimes survives the Spartan versus Wolverine business.
Such is the case with Spartan Jeff Epstein and Wolverine Jamie Tashman, who met shortly before college began and have been dating ever since. Both are juniors at their respective schools.
“We met two weeks before we went off to school, and have been together ever since,” said Epstein, a political economy and finance junior. “We usually switch off visiting each other, pretty much every other week.”
Tashman, who is in the Business School at U-M, said the biggest challenge in their relationship is concentrating on the task at hand while apart.
“The biggest challenge is probably getting my work done on the weekends and wanting to be with him at the same time, balancing both of those.”
Tashman said there hasn’t been a weekend during school times when haven’t seen each other, and in their hometown they live a few minutes away.
Epstein is somewhat of a sports nut, Tashman could care less. That’s probably a good thing.
“I usually go to Michigan games and root against them,” he said. “I went last year to Ann Arbor. She doesn’t buy into that too much, she doesn’t mind.”
