{"id":403744,"date":"2025-11-25T14:09:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T14:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/403744\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T14:09:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T14:09:14","slug":"life-in-the-michigan-ohio-state-rivalry-borderlands-from-beatosu-to-goblu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/403744\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry borderlands, from beatosu to goblu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you want to share your predictions, analysis or thoughts on Saturday\u2019s Ohio State-Michigan game? Get involved with our coverage at live@theathletic.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n

beatosu, Ohio \u2014 There is nothing here. No plaque, no sign, nothing but cornfields and a cluster of buildings near the intersection of two highways.<\/p>\n

I arrived at this speck on the map during a recent trip through the borderlands of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry<\/a>. If you ask most people, they\u2019ll say this is a rivalry with no middle ground. The state line carves out two fiefdoms ruled by the Big Ten\u2019s two most powerful programs<\/a>, leaving little room for ambiguity.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s certainly true if you live in Ann Arbor or Columbus. Venture toward the state line, however, and you\u2019ll find a strip of land where the boundaries blur. To get a different perspective on the rivalry, I decided to leave the bubble of Ann Arbor and spend a fall Saturday exploring where fans of Michigan and Ohio State live side by side.<\/p>\n

I had three destinations in mind: The Buckeye Wolverine Shop<\/a> in Maumee, Ohio; the Appleumpkin Festival<\/a> in Tecumseh, Mich.; and the phantom town<\/a> of beatosu, located just off the Ohio Turnpike about 50 miles west of Toledo.<\/p>\n

The legend of beatosu originated with a prank carried out by Peter Fletcher, a Michigan alumnus who served as chairman of the Michigan State Highway Commission in the 1970s. Fletcher was in charge of the state highway maps, which include a tiny strip of northern Ohio. At Fletcher\u2019s direction, the highway commission\u2019s 1978 maps included a fictional town called \u201cgoblu\u201d near Toledo and another called \u201cbeatosu\u201d in a rural part of Fulton County, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Fletcher, an ardent Michigan fan who later served on the Michigan State board of trustees, received some criticism for the prank, but he insisted it was all in good fun. According to newspaper reports at the time, the highway commission even sent one of the maps to Ohio State coach Woody Hayes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing inaccurate in putting a message of great national import on the map,\u201d Fletcher, who died in 2012, told The Associated Press in 1977. \u201cNow we have three million messages cheering on the world\u2019s greatest football team.\u201d<\/p>\n

A story about Fletcher\u2019s prank ran in the Toledo Blade, accompanied by a cartoon of two gas station attendants, one saying to the other, \u201cAnother person asking about goblu!\u201d as a car drives away. But when I arrived at the coordinates for beatosu, all I found was a wind-blown patch of ground with semis and pickup trucks zooming by in the background. It seemed the prank had been long forgotten.<\/p>\n

I drove a few miles south to the small village of Archbold, looking for someone who knew the story. Inside the local diner, the waitress and the cashier looked at me in confusion when I showed them the Wikipedia page. A man on the street in an Ohio State sweatshirt was similarly stumped.<\/p>\n

I checked with the local newspaper, the Archbold Buckeye, and was told to look for a man with a name straight out of a Thomas Pynchon novel: Bummer Dominique, owner of Ickey\u2019s Bar and Grill.<\/p>\n

I discovered that Dominique also has a pregame radio show called \u201cBuckeye Breakfast\u201d on the local radio station, WMTR, and has been covering Ohio State football games since 1969. By his own calculations, that makes him the longest-standing member of the OSU media contingent. He opened Ickey\u2019s at its current location, 108 Ditto Street, in 1979, but the original establishment opened decades earlier, way back in the early days of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry.<\/p>\n

I figured if anyone in Archbold knew about beatosu, it would be Dominique. When I asked him about the story, he said it didn\u2019t ring any bells. But he wasn\u2019t surprised to hear that it happened near Archbold, incorporated in 1866, population 5,000, where rivalry pranks are part of daily life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say, without any data to back it up, that this town has got to be just about as evenly split as you can get,\u201d Dominique said. \u201cYour next-door neighbor is a Michigan person. Their kids go to school together, they go to church together \u2014 one wearing maize and blue and the other wearing scarlet and gray.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dominique hadn\u2019t heard of beatosu, but he had plenty of other stories. The 1975 game, played in the heart of the famous 10-Year War between Hayes and Bo Schembechler, was a matchup of 10-0 Ohio State and 8-0-2 Michigan. The winner would go to the Rose Bowl, the loser to the Orange Bowl. The night before the game, a group of Michigan fans snuck into Ickey\u2019s with a casket they\u2019d swiped from a local theater company. They took a picture of Ohio State Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin off the wall and placed it in the casket next to a bowl of oranges, then draped a Michigan flag over the top.<\/p>\n

Ohio State rallied in the fourth quarter to beat Michigan 21-14, ending the Wolverines\u2019 41-game unbeaten streak at home. After the game, a group of Ohio State fans took the casket with the Michigan flag inside and paraded it down Main Street.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the boys had had several before they did that,\u201d Dominique said.<\/p>\n

\"Michigan<\/p>\n

\n Ohio State and Michigan play Saturday while both ranked for a record 50th time. (Joseph Maiorana \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n

In those days, Ickey\u2019s used to host a big bash leading up to The Game with cheerleaders, a marching band and lines stretching out the door. Attendance started to dwindle in the 1980s after Earle Bruce replaced Hayes and the 10-Year War ended. In what may or may not be a commentary on Our Divided Times, Dominique said fans of Michigan and Ohio State don\u2019t like to congregate as much as they used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve found they want to be with their own if they\u2019re watching the game,\u201d Dominique said. \u201cMichigan fans don\u2019t want to sit with a bunch of Ohio State a\u2013holes. There are plenty of those, by the way. The Ohio State fans don\u2019t want to sit with Michigan people because they don\u2019t want to be nice. That\u2019s how that rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lest anyone fear that civility is dead, there are still places where fans of Michigan and Ohio State can peacefully coexist. I found one of those places in Tecumseh, Mich., a small town about 25 miles from the state line.<\/p>\n

The Tecumseh Tavern is run by Bill Leisenring, a Michigan native who went to school at Ohio State. He keeps the decor fairly neutral, but locals know the tavern is a Buckeyes-friendly bar where OSU fans gather for watch parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a Buckeye watch bar in this neck of the woods, you can\u2019t bite your nose to spite your face,\u201d Leisenring said. \u201cWe\u2019re not very forward with it. It\u2019s sort of like, \u2018Don\u2019t talk politics.\u2019 You don\u2019t walk in and (see) Buckeye stuff everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

I called Leisenring a few days before my trip to see if I could stop by during the Ohio State game that weekend. He said I was more than welcome but offered a word of caution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis weekend is the Appleumpkin Festival,\u201d he said. \u201cThere will be about 40,000 people in Tecumseh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leisenring was not exaggerating. When I arrived, the streets were jammed with cars and fall festival-goers were milling around in droves. I didn\u2019t have to walk more than a few blocks before I encountered a mixed group of fans, one wearing a Michigan jersey and two others in Ohio State attire.<\/p>\n

While roaming the festival, I met Valerie Long and Debbie Murray-Ellison, two friends who work for the Sylvania School District in northwest Ohio. Long was wearing a T-shirt commemorating Ohio State\u2019s 2024 national championship, and Murray-Ellison wore a shirt commemorating Michigan\u2019s national title from the year before.<\/p>\n

As Murray-Ellison put it, the friendship started before they \u201cfound out the devastating truth\u201d that they were on opposite sides of the rivalry. Michigan\u2019s four-game winning streak against the Buckeyes has ramped up the nastiness between the two fan bases, but it hasn\u2019t driven a wedge in this particular friendship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember you said, \u2018I still love you no matter what,\u2019\u201d Murray-Ellison said. \u201cAs mad as we want to be, we\u2019re not going to take it too seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans in the borderlands have to buy their Michigan and Ohio State gear somewhere. A store catering to both sides of the rivalry wouldn\u2019t last a minute in Ann Arbor or Columbus, but the Toledo area is one of the few places in the world where the idea can work.<\/p>\n

To see for myself, I drove from Tecumseh to Maumee, Ohio, home of the Buckeye Wolverine Shop. The store is run by brothers Chris and Mark Mason, who took over the business from its previous owners, a couple who operated several stores in the Toledo area. The brothers had a home recreation business selling pool tables and barstools, and they decided to bring the Buckeye Wolverine Shop under the same roof.<\/p>\n

An invisible line splits the store in half, with racks of Ohio State paraphernalia on one side and Michigan gear on the other. The store was mostly empty the day I visited. If I came back on Black Friday, Chris said, I\u2019d see two lines stretching out on either side of the store, never crossing in the middle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had it where one line was shorter than the other, and we\u2019d say, \u2018OK, this line is shorter,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThey won\u2019t go to that side. They will stand longer in line.\u201d<\/p>\n

The area around Toledo tilts slightly toward Ohio State, and the sales numbers reflect that, Chris said. While Chris\u2019 sons are proud Buckeyes fans, he and Mark keep their loyalties close to the vest. They\u2019re rooting for commerce, which means they need to maintain the neutral ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually sitting in somebody\u2019s car, fighting like hell to get a steering wheel cover on,\u201d Chris recalled. \u201cAll of a sudden the guy stops me and says, \u2018Whoa, whoa, whoa, you are an Ohio State fan, right?\u2019 I looked at him and said, \u2018I am right now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s possible to put a Michigan or Ohio State logo on something, the Buckeye Wolverine Shop probably sells it. They have toilet paper, cooking utensils, dog collars, Christmas decorations, a large inflatable Brutus Buckeye and anything else you can imagine.<\/p>\n

I noticed a \u201cHouse Divided\u201d flag adorned with Michigan and Ohio State logos and thought it might look good on that little patch of dirt near Archbold, just to keep the story of beatosu alive. Then I remembered what happened when Michigan players tried to plant a flag at midfield after beating Ohio State last season, sparking a brawl<\/a> that was broken up by law enforcement officers wielding pepper spray.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s better to leave the rivalry lore undisturbed. If you\u2019re looking for beatosu, you\u2019ll have to find it yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do you want to share your predictions, analysis or thoughts on Saturday\u2019s Ohio State-Michigan game? Get involved with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":403745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,392,1318,7800,1317,1315,1316,4733,62,222,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-403744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-michigan-wolverines","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-sports-business","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115610737861333406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}