The importance of the Ohio State vs. Michigan game always falls somewhere within a defined and elevated range of magnitude in comparison to other college football rivalries: In 2006, it was preceded by six agonizing weeks of hype and speculation over being an unprecedented one-versus-two showdown serving as a national semifinal, and Bo Schembechler’s unexpected funeral arrangements were still being made at kickoff. This put the 2006 game’s impact at “intergalactically significant” which is at the top of the range. Conversely, last year The Game only decided the outright Big Ten championship, which merely gave it “worldwide significance” placing it squarely in the middle of the range.
This Saturday the worst Michigan team since the advent of college football comes down I-75 into Ohio, getting past Toledo for the first time all season (the second will be on their way home). Consider that the Wolverines claim about a dozen glorious national championships that occurred before most other universities even had teams, back when they’d play with themselves – they would also play football – and then crown themselves Leaders and Best, a nickname that has stuck with all of the same validity and credibility as it does when your own mother gives it you. So in the spirit of their irrational optimism, we’ll just say this: No Michigan team has ever taken as lofty a leadership position in the area of losing football games with as much command as the 2008 version. This historic team will march into Ohio Stadium and still have an impact on the Big Ten championship, which Ohio State is playing to earn at least a piece of for the fourth straight year. Therefore, this game has “national significance” which is the very bottom of the range. Even when it isn’t important, it is the most important.
This has been an exceptional and historic season for these Michigan Wolverines. Those college kids in Ann Arbor began playing football in 1879 and not coincidentally – as bright ideas tend to come in multiples – the light bulb was perfected just a few months later. The ice rink was also born that fateful year, no doubt leading to the first of many Michigan hockey championships that occurred in a one-team conference. In that great span of time the world narrative has grown deeper and broader and in impossibly complex ways that the citizens of the late 19th century couldn’t have possibly even imagined, back when the only wings appearing on the Michigan football uniform grew out of the backs of its angelic, pioneering players. In all of that time, there has never been a more prolific Michigan team in accumulating losses as the one we will witness on Saturday.
Consider for a moment the slate that gave the Wolverines their unprecedented volume of losses: Michigan’s home games this year were Utah, Miami of Ohio, Wisconsin, Toledo, Sparty, Zook and Northwestern. They only won two of those games. Michigan played at Notre Dame, Penn State, Purdue and Minnesota. They won one of those. Michigan’s freshmen have already lost more games than Ohio State’s seniors will lose in their college careers. If you bother doing that math, then you’re daring enough to consider what you’re afraid to say aloud because you’re too superstitious: This Michigan team has no chance of winning Saturday. None. If every Ohio State player says this into every media microphone this week and it is printed and posted in every Michigan Wolverine’s locker it still won’t matter. If Ohio State executes another boring puckered sphincter offensive game plan it still won’t matter. If Ohio State rushes three on third and long and drops the other eight into passive zone coverage it still won’t matter. Throw out the records if you’d like. Start Todd Boeckman. Start Todd Boeckman’s aunt. It still won’t matter. When Michigan runs out onto the field to an undeserved chorus of boos (laughter would be more appropriate) they will have to spend about three hours staring across the field at one of the reasons that they find themselves with eight losses for the first time in the history of the Edison light switch: Lebron in Cleats.
Terrelle Pryor hasn’t even faced the Wolverines yet and his decision to come to Ohio State instead of Michigan has already set the Rich Rodriguez era back three years at minimum. Pryor at quarterback would prevent Michigan from ever being a 24-point underdog to anybody, let alone to an Ohio State team that has failed to even score 24 points in over a third of its games. Michigan has lost six of its last seven while trying to find the optimal platooning balance between bad quarterback and worse quarterback. The offense is handcuffed by two guys who, in the rich, illustrious tapestry of Michigan football, somehow both find themselves not only on the roster at the same time but are apparently the only two options on the table for this year. Neither would start for any Michigan team over the past 40 years. Neither could find a way to beat Toledo. Neither could lead the team to a single win in the month of October. Meanwhile, Terrelle Pryor as a true freshman is leading the conference in quarterback efficiency with a gaudy 152.2 efficiency rating, which is the highest the conference has seen since that Troy Smith guy was tearing the Wolverines apart annually. So among the many faces of Michigan’s head coach that you’ll see on Saturday is the one that wonders what the first phase of his life in Ann Arbor would have been like had that guy, the face of the Big Ten for at least the next two seasons, would have joined him in at his new employer. His face will look something like this, which is barely more entertaining than this.
It will be the last games ever for several of the confident protagonists that have led Ohio State for all of the past two seasons. Malcolm Jenkins and James Laurinaitis could both be millionaires right now had they not had so much fun their first three years in school and felt like taking a victory lap. Boeckman probably didn’t think his six years in Columbus would end like this, but six years ago when Pryor was barely 13, in junior high and in Pennsylvania, nobody did. This is a group that has played for national championships, won national awards, won or shared all of the Big Ten titles, set Notre Dame school records, played in all of the last four 1 vs. 2 games in college football, and never lost a single game in the state of Michigan. This senior class lost one conference road game, total, and none since their freshman year. They’ve seen the national media pick on them for some high profile failures, but try and think of another school in the country where winning like they’ve won happens more often. This senior class has only lost seven games to teams, all of whom (likely) are BCS bound. They also beat three BCS teams along the way. They lost to nobody else. You actually think they could lose to the worst Michigan team ever in their last game? Not SEC, not BCS, not good, not possible.
While Notre Dame hasn’t won a bowl game in 15 years, Michigan’s decade-long streak of missed NCAA basketball tournaments is impressive on a level that’s difficult to truly appreciate. Statistically, with 65 spots available every year and multiple at-large and automatic births up for grabs every season, to miss ten in a row just means you suck all of the time, every year, no matter who’s coaching. Somehow the football team decided that kind of spotlight for badness was big enough to share and shine that championship invention of filament and incandescent glory of 1879 even brighter. Michigan football will most definitely be back, and better, and worthy, and formidable, but not this Saturday. It’s not their time to be significant.
Ramzy
Michigan Highlight Film
