Woodson : Michigan Not Emphasizing OSU Game Enough

True enough and that brings me to the point of their obsession and hate with Michigan. Mr. Woodson would like more emphasis on the bucsputs. I don't think that's a healthy thing to do. Those two fan bases are so mentally beat up it's not even right.

It seemed like we took it pretty seriously last year when our mediocre team outplayed them for the most part. The only thing that kept our inferior team from winning last year was dreadful play from our third best QB.

Woodson has well earned his right to say what he wants about OSU. I won't speculate on the effort of the coaches and players who are never aspiring to lose.

However, our fans could be more engaged. I get that it's discouraging to lose so many over such a long stretch but the number of season ticket holders who see tickets like this only as an opportunity to make a profit are ridiculous. I know tickets are expensive, but they managed to do their dumb chant throughout the Big House last year. That shouldn't happen. 

We don't need to sink to their level with the childish blocking out of letters and refusing to use the name of the school, but their fans are scrambling to buy tickets to these games, not sell them. Diminishing home field advantages when we have so few advantages over them would be a good start.

It's also pretty much the only thing fans have in their control, which are really the only healthy things to focus on.

Ohio State has clearly had a better team than Michigan for, what, 10 of the last 12 years (I'd say 2006 and 2016 were about dead even. Michigan was better in 2011 but that season was an aberration)? I suspect Michigan will start winning The Game when they start fielding a team that is just as good or better than OSU. Unfortunately that has been really rare for over a decade now. 

How OSU has had more talent. My question to you guys, especially ones who think stars don’t matter, with last years class and now the start of this class how do you think the gap is closing??

Didn't Harbaugh say last fall that they were going to spend part of every week practicing the game plan for OSU? I vaguely remember him saying that. That seems to be taking it more seriously than other games. I assumed that was why the OSU playcalling was the best of the season.

for this series to be more balanced - with OSU having been as good as they've been - we'd have to frequently enter this game as a legit top 5 team which just hasn't really been the case.

The reality is that both OSU and MSU built pretty mighty fortresses during our years in the wilderness and that's a tough hole to dig out from. No matter who coaches Michigan.

Disturbing for me to know that they haven’t been practicing this way all along.

I am 38 so I grew up with the Woodson era. Those teams had a Kill or Be Killed attitude.

I remember they focused on OSU every week! This needs to happen ASAP.

Woodson hit the nail on the head with this one.

I disagree with people who say OSU has been dominating lately because they've simply had more talent. This use to be a rivalry where you threw out the records and the talent difference hardly ever mattered. We used to beat OSU plenty of times when they had more superior talent.

I'd like to know why former players over the years find it necessary to call out the focus and, honestly, intensity of the current teams regarding certain games.  You'd think the one group of people who would be sick of lazy hot taeks needlessly and erroneously questioning the commitment of college athletes would be the same people who used to occupy those spots.  And yet, every year, former players at every school say the same things, and it leads to the same reactions.

Woodson probably knows more about the inner-workings of Michigan football than the vast majority of people on this earth, but I'd be amazed if the actual players and the actual coaches didn't care about that game just as much as he did during his time at UM.  Maybe they don't talk about it as publicly because, as we've seen in the intervening 20 years since Woodson played at Michigan, sports media has become a ravenous producer of horrible takes and love nothing more than to stir up shit to get page views, Nielsen ratings, and retweets.

I mean, this is a dumb issue that comes up during every offseason because when you put a microphone in front of someone they'll likely talk, but I don't see any real value in Woodson assuming, frankly, anyone currently with the program needs to be cajoled by a former great to care about beating OSU.

I don't recall this happening recently but I think it's high time Harbaugh invited Woodson to speak to the team before The Game.

Charles is correct.  Despite having a good game plan offensively, vs. OSU, the Amazon series showed Harbaugh as being disconnected and ill prepared last year.  For example, breaking in a new OL to play center just before the bowl game.  Why was that not done earlier in training camp?  The fumble which lead to USC coming back and winning the bowl game...he saw the improper personel in there but decided not to call a TO.  Harbaugh needs to step up his attention to detail in 2018.

Love Woodson. Don't find this helpful.

“The Game” for some of these teams just hasn’t been emphasized enough. I have seen pictures of OSU having practice and their scout team is wearing make-shift Michigan uniforms, their whole fan base lives for this game and the players place X’s over M’s during game week. They have the mindset to hate us. We seem like just because we have two other rivals it doesn’t matter as much and we are better cause we are Michigan. I wanna see these players talking shit and borderline fighting OSU’s players on/off the field. There is a video of the two in the tunnel pregame doing this and that is what the attitude must be. We seem too passive and have to reciprocate their hatred back. They always gr more intense, more ready, and want it more. We on the other hand act as if we are turning our cheek and playing it off. What if in 2016 this type of fire was in our players, JT being short might never of happened, last year we might have won too had o’korn had the fire and played like he did at Purdue. It just seems like we have no killer attitude and are soft, one thing MSU does that I have respect for is that even though they might seem inferior, they come wanting blood, dantonio lights a fire in them and they wanna kill us, we just need that. By making this game and other rivalry games more prioritized we might actually win them because the players will understand the level they need to be at and the intensity the they should have. Even coach Harbaugh had it, he declared a win before they played and they won, because he was fired up and wanted to beat them that much more.

Seem to be more of team confidence factor. When we were up during the last two seasons, we did not make the big play to put OSU away. Then the team seem to lose confidence and momentum swugn back to OSU late in both games. Hopefully, this will change this year or for sure by '19. I'm getting sick of losing to OSU and MSU most of the time.

I think the emphasizing and focus on osu has been there for the most part besides 2015 and a few other years they were beat. To me, I think way more focus and emphasizing needs to be shown against msu!! We MUST beat them and the bitcheyes this season!! It's time,

Lets Go Blue!!!!

We have yet to find exactly the right chemistry (and confidence) to win The Game. May 2018 be the year!!