Michigan Is Better Than Ohio State. They Could Be Unstoppable.
WSJ
I surrender.
If I’m going to soak up the Schadenfreude, I have to absorb the pain. As a petty Wisconsin graduate, I don’t celebrate the success of the University of Michigan football team, I root for their maize and blue doom—especially since I’m surrounded by oodles of rabid Wolverines at the Journal.
But I need to acknowledge reality, because I saw it myself Saturday, behind enemy lines:
Michigan rules.
At least it rules this cold stretch of Midwest-to-East Coast tundra, from triumphant Ann Arbor to reeling Columbus and Big Ten points beyond. For the third straight year, the Wolverines have conquered their biggest rival, Ohio State, a convincing three-peat that has reset the college football power map and injected fresh confidence into a thirsty fan base dying once more to lord their dominance over us.
Michigan’s great. It’s super annoying. It’s also the truth.
They’re doing all this amid scandal—at least everyone thinks it’s a scandal but them—a still-ongoing NCAA investigation into allegations of improper advance scouting. On a cold November afternoon they beat OSU 30-24 without their eccentric leader, head coach Jim Harbaugh, who was exiled from the stadium, serving out the finale of a three-game suspension handed down by the Big Ten for violating its sportsmanship policy.
They did it despite Ohio State getting a chance to win it in the final minute—60 terrifying seconds, ahead six, in which every Michigan fan must have seen their entire Wolverine-watching experience, the high-highs and bleakest lows, flash before their eyes.
An interception clinched it. Michigan booked another journey to the Big Ten championship, where next Saturday in Indianapolis, it will play Iowa, the winner of the conference’s “West” division, aka the Big Ten junior varsity (a West team has never won the conference title game).
Presuming 21.5-point favorite Michigan steamrolls the Hawkeyes, the Wolverines will be 13-0, in the four-team college playoff with an open shot at the national title.
Yes. It’s the worst.
Sure, questions remain, as do skeptics. Did what the Big Ten claims Michigan executed—“an impermissible, in-person scouting operation over multiple years, resulting in an unfair competitive advantage that compromised the integrity of competition”—help turn a wobbly program into a juggernaut?
Or is this alleged edge overrated, the hubbub of haters, a gray area many teams seek to exploit?
Is this all Big Ten politics? Jealousy? Revenge?
Also: How much do I need to pray for Iowa?
Michigan is happy to lean into the villainy. The banal underdog slogan was everywhere this weekend: MICHIGAN VS. EVERYBODY. Harbaugh worked the other side of the street, trying to convince a skeptical public that the Wolverines should be “America’s Team.”
“America loves a team that beats the odds, beats the adversity,” the under siege head coach said earlier this month, ducking the possibility that Michigan’s adversity may be self-inflicted. (At the same press conference, Harbaugh apologized for once calling the chicken a “nervous bird.” “I was dead wrong. I stand corrected…chickens are low maintenance and high production.”)
All this absurdity and self-reflection turned Saturday’s game with OSU into something of a Super Bowl of the Grievances. Michigan hates Ohio State, Ohio State won’t even spell Xichigan, and both of them can be insufferable, even in a normal year, but this one had more than a little extra.
As the Journal’s Rachel Bachman and Laine Higgins wrote, some Wolverine fans think their Ohio nemesis may have finked them out on the advance scouting—a conspiracy theory unsupported by the evidence to date. The Buckeyes, meanwhile, entered on a two-game skid to Michigan, an abominable blot for a program which had won the prior eight.
Had Michigan shenanigans contributed to the slide? Was Ohio State even more of an enemy than before? The week heading in, Harbaugh was asked about his “respect” for Ohio State’s head coach, Ryan Day. His answer was artful in its evasiveness:
It’s all about our preparation for Ohio. The days, the minutes, the hours, everything leading up to this game, that’s where our focus is: preparing ourselves and planning.
LOL. Imagine saying that to a spouse.
Dear, do you respect me?
It’s all about our preparation. The days, the minutes, the hours, everything…that’s where our focus is: preparing ourselves and planning.
Pack your stuff and go.
Michigan was up to the task Saturday, from the start. Sherrone Moore, the offensive coordinator pressed into service as interim head coach in Harbaugh’s absence, pressed nearly every correct button. Michigan took calibrated risks, throwing the ball, going for it on fourth-and-long and keeping OSU off-balance. It didn’t play scared, or overly careful. Harbaugh looms over everything in Ann Arbor, but it was a sublime in-game performance by the 37-year-old stand-in coach.
Ohio State played from behind, even when they weren’t behind. The Buckeyes’ toughness gets questioned, a rap that drives Coach Day crazy—ask Lou Holtz, the 86-year-old target of a bizarre Day rant after a win over Notre Dame—and while they didn’t back down in the trenches, they didn’t have enough. Turnovers (two interceptions) proved critical. They had a chance in the final minute—OSU’s brilliant wide receiver, Marvin Harrison Jr., seemed destined to catch a miracle touchdown—but the Buckeyes couldn’t make it happen.
“Crushing,” a somber Day called it afterward. It will be a cold December in Columbus. Calls for Day’s ouster have already happened—on the surface, ridiculous for a coach with a 56-7 record, but less so when you consider what this game and rivalry means, every year.
On that: The Michigan vs. Ohio State game is everything that’s delightful (and cuckoo) about college football, so of course college football is actively diminishing it, with conference and playoff tinkering that may turn this all-stakes grudge match into something significantly less than a must-win.
Think about it: Next year the Big Ten will add its Pac-12 runaways and eliminate the East and West divisions. The college football playoff bloats to 12 teams. It might not be necessary for Ohio State to beat Michigan or for Michigan to beat Ohio State to make the playoff or even play in the Big Ten championship. They could even meet three times.
I need to curl up and take a nap under a tree. Preferably with a therapy chicken, which I am told is a low maintenance, high production bird.
For Michigan, it’s all delicious leftovers now. Any self-respecting Wolverine fan will take three straight soul-crushing wins over OSU over any playoff outcome, but the playoff is the next frontier, especially since Michigan’s laid an egg there the last couple of seasons.
Georgia—the most under-discussed dynasty in college football history—almost surely will await. Could get Washington or Florida State. Could get Alabama, which won a last-second shocker over Auburn Saturday, and gets a revenge game against Georgia in the SEC title joust. Any of these schools would love to take this Michigan hype and punt it into the moon.
Might not happen. In Ann Arbor, now wearing a finger-pointing scandal like a fancy feathered hat, it’s starting to feel like destiny. Harbaugh returns, the NCAA investigation lingers, and they’ll keep framing this as Michigan vs. Everybody. America’s Team? It sounds silly and self-aggrandizing, but I know what I saw. I surrender.
