The Game, 2022: Michigan 45, Ohio State 23

Retribution. There is no other way to start this game column than with that word.

Ohio State has dominated this rivalry for the better part of two decades - in some ways largely explainable, in other ways by just getting the luckiest breaks of all time - and it had you believing, quite understandably, that Michigan was probably going to lose this game.

The Buckeyes have gotten used to seeing this series play out a certain way because they have capitalized on Michigan's bad coaching hires but even during some of that the streak had been kept up by the thinnest of margins, and Buckeye fans had gotten blind to it. And of course when Michigan started to get tough again, it sometimes felt like Ohio State's wins came from magic or divine intervention.

Recall the last two times Michigan had played Ohio State in Columbus:

• 2016: Harbaugh's second year, the game goes to double overtime; the controversial J.T. Barrett spot on 4th down, Buckeyes score on the next play to win
• 2018: Michigan walks into the Shoe ranked No. 4 with the top defense in the country, after winning 10 straight by double digits, their only loss in the opener at Notre Dame, by 1 score; M is favored; No. 10 ranked OSU, a very flawed team that lost to Purdue 49-20, defies all expectations and obliterates Michigan 62-39

It boggles the mind even today. I'm still scarred by it. But there is an important lesson I think we can take from this. Ohio State had racked up win after win and started to think that this sort of streak would invariably go on forever, with only the occasional upset in Ann Arbor once a decade or two.

But when you really think about it, this was always a house of cards on which the Buckeyes were standing. The prospect of Ohio State losing to Michigan in Ann Arbor was inevitable, and equally - if not more so - was the prospect of them losing to Michigan in Columbus.

Rivalries don't stay one-sided forever. They can't. Such is the unpredictable mistress of college football, she who giveth and she who taketh away. And this is the greatest rivalry in sports. It was bound to happen, and in hindsight it seems almost ridiculous to look at how the match was set (i.e. 11-0 Michigan at 11-0 OSU, Armageddon 2.0, the highest pitch since 2006) and think that the visiting 11-0 team has no chance. You just can't count either team out. Not in this game. Not in this rivalry.

After the game I was practically overdosing on Buckeye schadenfreude and I was surprised, at least somewhat, to see such a different reaction from the other side. This wasn't like last year, where Ohio State fans said, "Okay, have your fun. There's your only win against us for the next decade." No, the whole crop of people who pull for the Scarlet and Gray suddenly and collectively morphed into Tasmanian devils. I struggled to find a reasonable take anywhere. The tenor was jarring.

Here's the quintessential overreaction from Buckeye writer Bill Landis, making some wild statements in a post-game video:

I do think it's a microcosm of a larger issue, which is that Ryan Day does not have a feel for the game, especially these big games. And I don't know why that is. I felt like in his first year that's what he did the best, kind of call a dynamite game and light defenses on fire. And now he's lost that touch, if he ever had it.

Yes, apparently Ryan Day has no feel for the game. The guy is 45-5, has taken Ohio State to the national championship and won 2 Big Ten titles. OSU came into this game 11-0. But the minute he loses to Michigan, it's like, "WTF WHY AREN'T YOU AWESOME ALL THE TIME!?"

There are similar sentiments from some media guys at Lettermen Row. A second straight loss to the Wolverines, even when they are very good, is inconceivable.

Ohio State fans had gotten so used to seeing their team beat Michigan every year - sometimes through improbable means if the Wolverines were matched evenly or found themselves with the edge - that they lulled themselves into a false sense of security. The result of The Game, they told themselves, is a foregone conclusion: OSU rarely loses, and never at home.

And given the recent history, why should they think any different? You remember 2018, don't you?! It doesn't matter how high Michigan is ranked or how many statistical categories they lead on defense, Ohio State coaches will somehow pull a rabbit out of their hat. Somehow, even with everything against them, Ohio State keeps the winning streak going. That's how this is supposed to go. That's what they believed.

The scars of the past decade were so bad they had most of us believing it too. Maybe you were that one fan who disregarded all recent history in this series and said, "I don't care, Michigan's winning this!" If so, you're a better fan than most. Certainly better than I am.

I have watched far too much Buckeye football over the past decade to ever fully feel secure going into this game. The improbability with which they found success was like the NCAA Football dynasty on an Ohio teen's PS3 set to easy mode.

I watched as Urban Meyer's 2014 team, despite losing at Virginia Tech in September and prompting a full-on meltdown in certain fan circles, somehow back-doored their way into the first ever College Football Playoff, where they then crushed Nick Saban, and did it with Cardale Jones, the 3rd-string "I ain't come to play school" quarterback. He then beat Oregon and Marcus Mariota in the final. The season had gone from being over in September to Ohio State fans witnessing their first national championship since 2002.

While this was happening I was busy writing angry and confused posts on Facebook that Urban Meyer might be a wizard but more than likely he just sacrificed a goat in a satanic ritual every year on the Monday of Michigan week.

Gradually we started to accept this new reality, this long, seemingly-improbable string of Ohio State giving the middle finger to historical sports trends, justice, and the laws of physics. They'd win even in those increasingly-rarer times when the odds were against them.

Maybe they'd be caught off-guard by a non-conference foe like Oregon or in a sloppy contest against Penn State or MSU, but certainly never against Michigan, who'd cash in their lucky tokens in close nail-biting bouts against Northwestern, Indiana, and Rutgers. If you were hoping to see Ohio State go down it would probably have to come in the post-season.

Meanwhile Michigan was a flailing mess because of bad luck and bad coaching decisions while the Buckeyes just sat there "calmly whittling a stick into a cruise missile." It started to feel like Michigan was never going to catch up. People on this blog believed that and talked about it. I did, too. I thought it might never happen.

It just seemed like Ohio State was never going to get poetic justice served up to them. Bo Schembechler died the day before the 2006 game and you'd think Michigan would get the win for him and have a storybook ending to a fairy tale season. Nope. Ohio State instead wins that game, and Michigan's football program spends the next decade-plus in a death spiral. Because that's college football. It is cruel and unpredictable.

So, with all that said, I don't think we fully realized just how much OSU was skating by in this rivalry until this particular game. Or at least I didn't.

Yes, the Buckeyes have been consistently one of the better teams in the nation. Yes, in more of the recent matches they were - or at least seemed to be - vastly better prepared than Michigan. But they had also built up a rather dubious win streak in hindsight that incidentally created a narrative around Michigan and Jim Harbaugh, which appears to have been based at times, we can now admit, on dumb luck.

Go back to 2016 and say J.T. Barrett is ruled short. Michigan wins, Harbaugh gets his first victory in the series, and goes to the Big Ten championship. He likely wins that and goes to the playoff. Sure, Columbus probably burns itself down afterwards in abject fury but at least we arrive at that point a lot quicker than eight years into Harbaugh's tenure.

The narrative that he can't beat OSU never even materializes, and every year both sides of this rivalry approach it with the level of unease and uncertainty and excitement that you would expect for one of its caliber.

That's how this rivalry is supposed to be. No matter what side you're on, you go in genuinely hopeful and full of anticipation that anything can happen. Even for OSU fans during the John Cooper years, that's how it always was.

Michigan got away from that because of reasons that don't need to be rehashed but even occasionally in those years we were still in it and Ohio State found itself winning because of stupid stuff where they could have just as easily been on the losing end.

The result is a fan base on one side of this rivalry coasting on the laurels of insanely good fortune and getting the benefit of things bouncing their way, which after a while created a mirage of absolute dominance where Ohio State is obviously going to win every game against Michigan until the end of time.

There is no question the Buckeyes have been convincingly better than Michigan in some, or even many, of the games played between them in the past 2 decades. But when Michigan loses a game by a point because its quarterback has broken foot and fails to perform a miracle, it ain't like we're witnessing OSU lay down legit butt-whuppins every single year. Buckeye fans have easily forgotten just how close some of these games have been.

Michigan's recent record in this series would be a lot more even solely by these little things making enough of a difference to balance it out, and without such a stretch where Ohio State wins virtually every time, when Buckeye fans do find themselves staring at a butt-whuppin by the Wolverines then maybe they can wrap their minds around it and their faces don't melt off like they're the bad guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

You might think it's dumb to spend time ruminating on the feelings of rival fans and you would not be entirely wrong. The point I'm trying to make is that neither side should have allowed itself to believe that Michigan had no chance in Columbus. Records and winning streaks be damned. At the same time I can take immense pleasure in seeing Buckeye fans receive their comeuppance after having it so good against us for so many years.

Michigan has so thoroughly kicked Ohio State's ass in back to back years that it finally feels the universe is starting to course correct. This was an outcome 22 years in the making.

So as I am watching Donovan Edwards break that second run for something like 85 yards with 3:30 left, and the camera cuts to Ryan Day on the sideline, I am unable to control myself and burst out of my chair shouting, "How does it feel?!? How does it feel, asshole!?!"

Day was so crushed by the loss to Michigan in Ann Arbor a year ago that he called the entire season a failure and fired a bunch of his staff. He brought in Jim Knowles for one purpose and one purpose only. He obsessed about this game and talked about how the players walk by a countdown clock every day - hey, where have we heard that before? Day can't bring himself to say anything nice about Michigan because he knows the fans will crucify him if he does even in good sport. He apparently spent the whole off-season reminding his team and his staff about November 26, 2022, and still lost. What's more, he didn't lose on some fluky 4th-down spot in double overtime. He got his ass kicked. He planned and worked and spent weeks (if not months) getting ready and he still got spanked.

Maybe now he and the players and the entire Ohio State fan base knows how it feels.

Retribution. The Buckeyes had it coming.

"The North Remembers." Yeah, yeah, I know, it's lame and Game of Thrones memes ran their course a long time ago, but man, this was the title I had stored in the back of my mind right after Harbaugh arrived and I wanted to save it for when when he'd get his first victory in The Game. I thought about using it for my lightly-read 2021 game column but it just didn't feel as appropriate or jive with the emotions I was feeling at the time. So I went with something that more closely reflected what was I thinking, a shout-out to the optimists like Seth who believed when I didn't.

One crux from that article - I still didn't fully know how to process the win - was that I just really, really wanted the players to have something good happen, even if it was a Rose Bowl trip after an Ohio State loss. It still drives me nuts how we had so many amazing players here who decided to peace out to the NFL without leaving behind any kind of real legacy other than that they were cool dudes and fun to watch in most of their games but never won the big ones. Rashan Gary, Devin Bush, Jabrill Peppers all had more eligibility but left without a Big Ten championship or a win over Ohio State. They could have easily stayed, and then who knows what might have happened? Maybe we win one of these things and aren't taking turns poking Harbaugh in the eye with a pitchfork like a bunch of insufferable goblins.

Those guys made their decision and we can't really fault them for that but at the same time I will continue to think about it. I'll always wonder what could have been. What is their legacy? An ephemeral piece of the foundation that eventually led to 2021? It feels like nothing, a grade of Incomplete, especially when Cade McNamara, JJ McCarthy, Blake Corum, Donovan Edwards, and a host of other guys showed up and said, despite all the negativity, "No. F**k it. We're doing this."

Before 2021 Michigan had not sniffed a Big Ten championship since 2004 and now they're headed back to Indianapolis again. Unreal. I hate to admit that I saw it as such a pipe dream that we had to hand over begrudgingly to Ohio State every year, but this team and the core pieces from last season continue to prove me wrong and make me believe again. It makes me all the more frustrated with Gary/Bush/Peppers/etc but what can you do. I guess those guys figured they'd gone far enough. I know I sound like a massively entitled prick when I say this but my position on players forgoing eligibility for the NFL has always been to say "thank you for your service" only if they actually won or did something. Jake Butt exhausted his eligibility. So did Taylor Lewan. You can't ask any more. They gave everything they had and were not rewarded. It's gut-wrenching. This Michigan team has stars with the same level of dedication and it has paid off. I couldn't be happier for them.

The "Harbaugh can't even win his division" yuk-yuk jokes died last year but this season has really put them to bed. We are finally seeing what we all envisioned when he arrived for that first press conference and was awkward and goofy and probably daydreaming about steak, and it felt endlessly entertaining because in the back of your mind you knew this psycho was going to wipe the floor with opposing teams and every other fan base in the nation would hate him for it. Harbaugh's quirks and antics were already the stuff of legend and back in December 2014 there were so many 49ers fans telling me, "You are not ready for this guy." I still have the podcast saved of Niners Nation talking about the time Harbaugh did a pants commercial with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face.

Maybe we never win a national championship with Jim Harbaugh because it bears repeating that college football is a cruel unpredictable mistress and such things do not always happen like they are supposed to. I want to win all of the things as much as anyone but this is life and sadly it's not a video game. Maybe we pull it off this year and shut up everybody who says we haven't been relevant since 1997 and they claim even that was questionable. I try to be the Aggressively Reasonable Michigan Fan and not care so much about the pie-in-the-sky stuff because in my mind it's always fleeting. I try not to overreact when things don't go well. I also try not to overreact when things seem to be going our way a little too smoothly.

At this point I am back in gravytown; only this time I'm going to Lucas Oil Stadium. I didn't last year because I was in complete shock after the win vs OSU and wasn't quite willing to burn half my bank account to snag a ticket before it sold out. This go-round I saved up and was ready. Honestly I don't know if I'll go nuts and try to get tickets to SoFi because all I care about presently is getting a chance at seeing my beloved alma mater win a Big Ten championship. Last week I was fully prepared to accept a Rose Bowl bid as a consolation prize but any way you cut it this season has been a massive success.

So yeah, Michigan just beat Ohio State for the second straight year, and they did it in Columbus to finish 12-0, and I don't care that I'm using an old meme from a show that's no longer current. I have wanted to write this post or something approximating it for a long time and a few years back it would have been more timely but I still think it fits.

The North Remembers. Our dynastic enemy slaughtered much of our household and the few of us who remained held up our fists, crying out in solidarity, "The Naw-th Remem-buhs!" We kept saying it through the cold, hard months of despair, as the years went on, waiting to exact our revenge. That day finally came last Saturday and I'm here for whatever's next. I'm living it up. It was absolutely glorious and there is no other way it can be described.

We live for this rivalry, because it means everything. And now we've taken it back.

Go Blue.