How to Beat Ohio State

Justin Fields is right. The rivalry means more to OSU than it does to Michigan. I think we all know it's true.

But let's be clear: Its not about willingness to work hard. I am certain that our coaches and our players work as many hours and work every bit as hard as their guys. 

But their entire program, athletic department, and university is built to grind out every possible advantage for their football team. 

At every level, there is a willingness to do things that we simply are not willing to do, whether due to pride, ego, or the belief that there are things simply more important than football. 

Here's a list of thing we COULD do to beat Ohio State, but probably won't:

(1) Hire Urban Meyer. Yes, we all throw up in our collective mouths to even consider the thought. But would it work? Probably, yes.

Most of us are too proud to "admit defeat" by turning around and hiring Urban Meyer, but would OSU do it if the tables were turned? Almost certainly, the answer is yes.

This is not going to happen, but lets at least acknowledge that there are obvious things like this that we simply refuse to do out of pride, and that's inevitably a big part of the reason why OSU is better than us at football.

 

(2) Ignore academics

We work just as hard at chasing 4-5 star recruits, but OSU and most other elite programs are also willing to do things that we do not, like:

(a) Taking JUCOs

(b) Bringing in players who are not academically prepared for college and letting them skip class or take online classes.

(c) Aggresively pursuing non-grad transfers and challenging the NCAA to deny them immediate ineligiblity

(d) Keeping the kind of players that Michigan has dismissed for academic or behavior reasons (Brian Cole, Kareem Walker, etc.)

I'm not talking about paying players or cheating (we'll get to that), but OSU gets the best football players it can get period - not the best players who also happen to be good students.

Michigan's academic reputation is an advantage with some recruits, but the lack of flexibility definitely hurts us.

 

(3) Build the team around offense

We've been slow to adapt to the reality that the NCAA is now an offensive league.

This isn't the era when you can score 21 points against good teams and 40 against bad teams. OSU puts up 50+ on over half of the teams that it plays. It puts up 60-70+ points a couple times a year. Ryan Day is probably trying to figure out how to get that number to over 80.

Bringing in Gattis is starting to show some promise, but we are still behind in offensive mindset. The way we squander two minute drills at the end of a half, or the way we try to nurse small leads for 30 minutes, still feels like Harbaugh expects to win games 28-10 rather than 52-35.

OSU runs up the score even when they don't have to. This is smart because:

(a) The "eye test" matters when it comes to the playoffs. Beating a team by 45 looks better than cruising to an easy 10 point win.

(b) You get better at offense by running your offense, not by turtling up and running out the clock. Fields is confident in his ability to run to his left and make an off balance pass for a TD 30 yards down the field because he's had chances to take those kinds of shots all year.

(c) 5 star QBs and receivers want to come put up big yards and big points and pile up the kind of stats that win Heismans, not punt the ball for the entire second half.

People will complain about Don Brown and that's fine, but there is a much smaller gap between OSU's #1 ranked defense and our current defense, than their offensive capacity and ours.

 

(4) Fix Scheduling

We consistently shoot ourselves in the foot with scheduling.

We play 3 rivalry games a year. OSU plays one.

We waste off season practices prepping to play Air Force/Army or some other triple option team just so we can turn around and get run over by Wisconsin a week later.

We get stuck preparing for trap-game Indiana every year the week before the Game.

There was a recent thread about moving The Game to earlier in the season. That would probably better for us because, frankly, OSU has a better record of improving throughout the course of the season and seems to spend more time throughout the year preparing for The Game.

But again, we'll refuse to do something that might level the playing field even a little bit since that would mean "admitting defeat." Pride comes both before and after the fall I guess.

At the very least get rid of Army/Air Force/triple option teams, schedule a low P5 tomato can to replace ND, move Indiana to earlier in the year, and insert Maryland or Rutgers to the week before the Game.

 

(5) Sell out everything for The Game

Tressel built the entire identity of his program around beating Michigan. Not winning the Big Ten or a national championship - beating Michigan.

In the 2007 edition of The Game, Tressel broke every tendency of his Tressel-ball offense by adding spread elements to his offense (after our defense was exposed against the spread by App State and Oregon). MSU always empties their playbook against us with all manner of trick plays every year.

We always talk about Harbaugh "saving plays" for OSU, but I dont think we've ever shown up with anything remotely surprising (please dont count the "swinging gate" for a failed extra point play, or the ridiculous Pepcat stuff).

One thing I thought Hoke did well was always his teams always showed up against OSU even in the bad years. We always seemed to keep something in the tank for OSU no matter what, and I haven't see that under Harb(augh. We try to play them "straight up" every year and I'm not sure how you can win that way given the talent gap.

Get rid of everything that doesn't help you beat OSU. No more 3 "rivals" - OSU is the only rival that matters. Start practicing for The Game on first day of practice. Don't schedule service acadamies or anything else that takes away preparation for OSU. Dedicate both bye weeks to exclusively to OSU prep. Install an entire secret OSU playbook with plays exclusively dedicated to the Game. Install a secret triple option offense or some other quirk that catches them by surprise. You get the picture.

It may cost us a game or two to someone else, but the tradeoff is worth it to steal even an occassional win against OSU.

 

(6) Lie, cheat, steal.

Cheating happens in big time sports. The Houston Astros were recently caught stealing opposing teams' signals. Belicheck was fined $500,000 after he was caught filming opposing teams. Yes, this is probably a bridge too far, but I bet you Urban Meyer and Ryan Day think about this stuff when they lie awake at night.

I'm not going to get into paying players or PEDs. I have no insight into who get paid for what. Maybe we do it too, but if either team has an advantage here, its certainly not in our favor. Im also sure that every team including Michigan has players that dabble with PEDs, but I have seen enough players fail to gain weight (Drake Harris comes to mind) to feel confident that there's no instututional push toward PEDs that you might find at other progams.

There are also a bunch of things we could do that might not technically be illegal, but would probably be distateful. I'm thinking like sending someone undercover to give cash to an OSU player while secretly getting evidence on camera. Or hiring someone to follow players and try to catch them smoking weed, etc. Again we're not going to do any of this stuff, but you don't think this doesn't happen in the SEC all the time? You don't think that OSU has fans or boosters trying to do this stuff to our players?

 

(7) Being Realistic

As a said in the beginning, I don't expect that we'll do any of this stuff. We're not going to start paying players or taking JUCOs. We're not going to hire Urban Meyer.

However, I would like to see at a minimum:

(a) Go after transfers aggresively. I dont undersand why we would settle for having obvious holes in our roster while OSU can make a mockery of the NCAA's undergrad transfer rules. We should have had a transfer DT this year. We have a lot of holes to fill at CB going forward. There's absolutely no reason why we should not go after 3-4 transfers a year. Otherwise we're simply going to get beat by OSU on recruiting AND on transfers.

(b) Push for name and likeness rights for players. This is by far the best thing we can do reduce the advantage for teams who pay their players under the table.

(c) No more service academies. Have i mentioned this a few times already? Lets find some other way to support the troops, but no more triple option teams.

(d) Stop expecting to win games 28-10. Its not the 90s anymore. 55-35 is the new normal.

(e) Maybe run ONE thing that you save for OSU or that breaks tendency ffs.