{"id":45882,"date":"2025-07-07T11:46:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T11:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/45882\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T11:46:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T11:46:11","slug":"michigan-ohio-state-diminished-no-college-footballs-no-1-rivalry-is-as-bitter-as-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/45882\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan-Ohio State, diminished? No, college football\u2019s No. 1 rivalry is as bitter as ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong> All week, The Athletic is writing about college football rivalries at a moment of change in the sport. Read our ranking of the top 100 rivalries here<\/a> and also vote for your favorites<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1835, armed militias gathered for a tense standoff along a contested piece of land known as the Toledo Strip. At stake was the city of Toledo and a stretch of the Maumee River, a crucial shipping channel claimed by Ohio and the soon-to-be state of Michigan.<\/p>\n

The buildup was worse than the war, which was resolved after a few gunshots and no fatalities. Ohio got the Toledo Strip, and the new state of Michigan got land in the Upper Peninsula. They did not live happily ever after.<\/p>\n

Almost 200 years later, the Michigan-Ohio War is still an apt origin story for the college football rivalry it inspired. The Michigan-Ohio State rivalry involves lots of shouting, shoving and posturing but little actual violence \u2014 except on the football field, where it remains the most intense 60 minutes of the regular season. The victors gloat, the losers seethe and neither side gives an inch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like two different political parties,\u201d said Quinten Johnson, a safety who played at Michigan from 2019 to 2024. \u201cThey\u2019re finding ways on both sides to make sure the other side can\u2019t operate. The fan bases on both sides are finding little ways to nitpick each other or diminish each other. It is a true, natural hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Michigan-Ohio State doesn\u2019t seem to be losing any of its intensity, the rivalry isn\u2019t immune from the broader forces of change in college football. Last season, for the first time in the history of the rivalry, the loser of The Game went on to win a national championship thanks to Ohio State\u2019s run through the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. Jack Sawyer, the Ohio State defensive end who was in the middle of the postgame fracas<\/a> after Michigan\u2019s stunning win in Columbus, said it would be \u201ccrazy\u201d to place the outcome of the rivalry game ahead of winning a national championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a perfect world, you\u2019d do both of those things,\u201d Sawyer, a fourth-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers, said on a podcast hosted by former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger. \u201cObviously, we didn\u2019t. Winning a national championship kind of erases all that. For me, it does, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michigan\u2019s upset victory<\/a>, the brawl that ensued and Ohio State\u2019s run to the national championship started a debate that\u2019s likely to keep fans of both programs occupied for years to come. In the new era of college football, which matters more: a national championship or a win against your rival?<\/p>\n

For Michigan and Ohio State, this is the first time it\u2019s ever been a choice. While it\u2019s easy to say that a national championship trumps everything, winning the rivalry game was always the crucial step that kept both sides scheming 365 days a year. Now that the pathways to a national championship have expanded, fans and players have to assess what the rivalry means and doesn\u2019t mean.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, the ultimate goal is to win the national championship,\u201d said Big Ten Network analyst Jake Butt, an All-America tight end at Michigan in 2015 and 2016. \u201cYou want to prove that you\u2019re the best program in all of college football, but this is still the greatest rivalry in college football and one of the great rivalries in all of sports. To say that game doesn\u2019t matter because you won a national championship is a lie. That\u2019s just not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Michigan beat Ohio State 20-14 en route to the 1997 national title. (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Anything that minimizes the outcome of The Game is bound to be controversial for two fan bases that devote so much of their energy to despising one another.<\/p>\n

On a summer day in Ann Arbor, you can walk past Michigan Stadium and see the words \u201cWhat are you doing to beat Ohio State today?\u201d displayed on the video board. Michigan has a sign prohibiting visitors from wearing red at Schembechler Hall, and Ohio State fans spend the week leading up to The Game crossing out the letter \u201cM\u201d on campus signage and even the parts of town surrounding campus. The two cities even go back and forth with jabs on billboards across town.<\/p>\n

Last November, hours before the game in Columbus, an electronic sign over the Columbus highways alluded to the Connor Stalions saga by saying, \u201cA signal you can\u2019t steal: Your turn signal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople still look at that game as life or death,\u201d said Tyvis Powell, a safety who played at Ohio State from 2013-15. \u201cIt has softened a little bit, but the bragging rights mean a lot. Even last year\u2019s team, you see the rings, and if you go look under all those social media posts, you see Michigan fans saying, \u2018But where are their gold pants at?\u2019 You don\u2019t want to deal with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The year-round obsession is what separates Michigan-Ohio State from rivalries in American professional sports. In pro sports, even the best rivalries play second fiddle to the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup Final. While college football\u2019s postseason format is always changing, the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry is the thread that connects the biggest moments in both programs\u2019 histories.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that history that makes the rivalry special.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have a great rivalry you have to have back and forth and there always has to have something on the line, but then when you get to a point where you know an underdog has taken something from the favorite in a year, that\u2019s when it heats up,\u201d said Bobby Carpenter, who played at Ohio State from 2002-05. \u201cYou do that over years and decades and then one day you wake up and it\u2019s been 50 or 60 years, and in this case, it\u2019s over 100 years. \u2026 That\u2019s when you throw the records out the window. It starts like that, and then eventually there\u2019s a hatred that exists between the two teams that only time can replicate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1970s produced the 10-Year War between Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes, with two programs combining to appear in 13 consecutive Rose Bowls. After the 1973 game ended in a 10-10 tie, the Big Ten athletic directors made a controversial choice to award the league\u2019s only postseason bid to Ohio State. (The Big Ten didn\u2019t allow multiple teams to play in bowl games until 1975.)<\/p>\n

At Ohio State, the words \u201cJohn Cooper\u201d are synonymous with struggles against Michigan during the 1990s. The 2000s produced the Game of the Century \u2014 No. 1 Ohio State against No. 2 Michigan in 2006 \u2014 and a decisive swing toward the Buckeyes under Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer. Jim Harbaugh\u2019s tenure at Michigan can be divided into two eras: the soul-crushing losses to Ohio State and the three consecutive victories that heralded Michigan\u2019s return as a national power.<\/p>\n

The 2022 season was the first hint of the rivalry\u2019s shifting dynamics. Ohio State lost to Michigan to end the regular season but earned a spot in the CFP and came within a last-second field goal of upsetting Georgia in the Peach Bowl. With Michigan losing to TCU in the other CFP semifinal, the possibility of a team losing The Game and going on to win a national championship nearly came to fruition.<\/p>\n

The 2023 matchup between 11-0 Michigan and 11-0 Ohio State, played with Harbaugh serving the final game of a Big Ten-imposed suspension, may have been the last true winner-take-all showdown in the history of the rivalry. Michigan prevailed 30-24 and went on to claim the CFP championship.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s game featured an underachieving Michigan team against an Ohio State team that was built to win it all. The Wolverines pulled off a 13-10 upset and, as they did two years prior, celebrated by planting their flag at midfield in the Horseshoe. The Buckeyes took exception, resulting in a brawl that was broken up by police officers wielding pepper spray.<\/p>\n

Johnson described the brawl as regrettable but also inevitable given how much hatred, pressure and pride get packed into a single game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever they come into the Big House or whenever we come over there, you gotta be ready to fight,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the whole game is, one big fight. The fight felt like a natural part of the game. Everybody knew where it was going. It\u2019s going to be that way every year unless they get, like, 100 policemen to prevent both sides from doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

No OSU-Michigan game felt bigger than No. 1 vs. 2 in 2006. (Gregory Shamus \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Ohio State\u2019s fourth consecutive loss to Michigan was a rock-bottom moment for the Buckeyes and coach Ryan Day. By almost any measure, Day is among the most successful college football coaches of his era. Yet the vitriol directed at Day by a segment of the fan base \u2014 what ESPN analyst and former Buckeye quarterback Kirk Herbstreit called the \u201clunatic fringe\u201d \u2014 forced the Day family to enlist security protection at its home<\/a> following the Michigan loss.<\/p>\n

While nobody in college football is condoning that type of reaction from fans, the emotions of losing The Game are what will keep it relevant even in an era when the stakes aren\u2019t as high, Carpenter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was worried college football would lose its fastball, but I will tell you that if you were in Columbus the week after Ohio State lost to Michigan, there was no fastball being lost,\u201d Carpenter said. \u201cEverybody was furious. It doesn\u2019t need to matter as much in the context of your schedule and like if you lose a game, now you\u2019re done for the year, but as long as it still emotionally matters, you\u2019re fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

For most of the rivalry\u2019s history, that loss to Michigan would have been a season-killer for Ohio State. Instead, the loss galvanized the Buckeyes and fueled their victories against Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame in the first year of the 12-team CFP.<\/p>\n

Ohio State\u2019s run to the national championship produced conflicted feelings on both sides. As much as Michigan fans hated it, some took solace in putting a blemish on Ohio State\u2019s otherwise triumphant season. While Ohio State fans and players acknowledged the pain of losing to Michigan, winning a national championship eased the sting, at least for some.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a sore loser, but I hate losing, and losing to that team up north was pretty crazy,\u201d Ohio State sophomore receiver Jeremiah Smith told The Athletic\u2019s Manny Navarro last week<\/a>. \u201cIn the end, I think it really helped us play the way we did in the playoffs. But I didn\u2019t want to go to Ohio State and lose to that team up north. I just hate them. Just something about them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the next two years, I promise you, I will not lose to them. I can\u2019t lose to them in the next two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

In college football\u2019s new era, both sides will have to learn to live with some nuance, Butt said. Michigan\u2019s win doesn\u2019t invalidate Ohio State\u2019s national championship, nor does Ohio State\u2019s national championship erase the disappointment for Buckeyes seniors who went winless against Michigan in their careers. Both things will always be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe loss to Michigan didn\u2019t define their season,\u201d said Butt, a native of Pickerington, Ohio. \u201cAnd yet, I know for a fact that those guys are always going to remember the fact that (they) let one slip away and got upset as three-score favorites in their stadium in a game they never should have lost. Those guys are never going to forget this. I know this, because I\u2019m a guy that never beat Ohio State.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the story of Ohio State\u2019s season, the loss to Michigan became the disappointment that fueled the Buckeyes\u2019 dominant run through the CFP. For the first time in the history of the rivalry, both sides had to deal with the kind of ambivalent compromise that reflects that spirit of the original Michigan-Ohio War.<\/p>\n

Ohio State got the national championship. Michigan got bragging rights. As for which side got the better deal, the debate might never end, but the importance of The Game has not lessened at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way it could get diminished is if they don\u2019t play anymore,\u201d Powell said. \u201cIf one team left the Big Ten, that\u2019s the only way this wouldn\u2019t be the best rivalry in sports. As long as they continue to play this game, there\u2019s nothing that will be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Illustration: Will Tullos \/ The Athletic; photos: Todd Kirkland, Joe Robbins, Scott W. Grau \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: All week, The Athletic is writing about college football rivalries at a moment of change in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,1318,7800,1317,1315,1316,4733,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-45882","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-football","10":"tag-michigan-wolverines","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114811790144183509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45882","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=45882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}