There is now even more hatred between Ohio State and Michigan, if you can believe it.

At first it was like, yeah, Michigan Men tend to be delusional, entitled cocksuckers and their fans are unbearable idiots, but now the hatred goes beyond that. The hatred actually has an origin story now.

Because let’s be real: most of the time in a rivalry, the two sides hate each other because, well, that’s just how it’s always been. We hate them because they’re our rivals. We argue with their fans online because they like the other team.

But now there is actually a very good reason to despise Michigan and their fans.

They were caught cheating, and they’re unrepentant about it. They talked all this shit about beating Ohio State the past couple of years and it turned out they were cheating the whole time. They said they won because they were tougher!

They won because they were cheating.

And getting caught cheating hasn’t humbled them a bit. Losing 17 out of 19 times and then running scared from the Game in 2020 didn’t humble them, so why should this?

The past few weeks have revealed what pieces of shit they truly are. They’re trying to play the victim card after being caught cheating. They act like they’re being persecuted. They threw every excuse in the book out there: everyone’s just jealous of us, everyone does it, it doesn’t actually help, Ryan Day is the real villain, etc.

It just exposed the degree to which they feel the ends justify the means; winning is their birthright, and so the cheating is merited because they deserve to win–they deserve to be better than Ohio State.

Think of all the shit that Michigan’s fans and even their coaches have talked over the past two years while they were cheating the whole time.

In 2021, Jim Harbaugh said Ryan Day was born on third base. Josh Gattis called Ohio State a finesse program and that got the whole “soft” narrative really going.

And yet those fuckers were cheating the whole time. The audacity–the complete lack of conscience and shame–it’s unbelievable in light of what we’ve learned the past month.

In 2022, Michigan planted their flag at midfield in the Horseshoe. And they were fucking cheating. They cheated to win the game and then planted a fucking flag. And those players knew they were cheating, too. We’ve all seen that video of them pointing up to tell their defense Ohio State was about to pass. They all knew what Stalions was up to, they were all in on it. They all knew that when Connor says the other team is about to pass, they’re about to pass–Connor knows his shit. Maybe not all the players were fully aware of how Connor Stalions was so accurate at predicting the other team’s plays, but they knew what his role was.

And they still planted the flag. The absolute audacity of those motherfuckers to cheat and then rub your face in it. It’s a staggering level of dishonesty and shamelessness.

So this is why there’s real hatred in the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry. In fact, I’d go as far as to say most Ohio State fans didn’t know what real hatred was until the past month. Like, they thought they hated Michigan before, but now they realize, that wasn’t true hatred. What they feel now, though–the way they feel about Michigan after the cheating scandal came to light–that’s real hatred.

I’ll bet a lot of Ohio State fans had very strong disdain for Michigan fans prior to last month. They’re arrogant, delusional, entitled morons who think they’re better than everybody because they won some national championships 100 years ago and they haven’t gotten the memo that nobody else gives a fuck.

Now, though, Ohio State fans are straight up disgusted by Michigan and any Michigan fans who have tried to defend the program throughout all of this.

There’s a difference between dislike and disgust. Disgust is like, “You’re truly rotten to the core and I want nothing to do with you ever again. I never want to see your face again.”

That’s where I think a lot of Ohio State fans are right now as it pertains to Michigan and Michigan fans. I don’t think those feelings of hatred and disgust were commonplace among the Ohio State fan base prior to this past month. They are now.

The past month has caused a lot of Ohio State to think to themselves, “Oh, Michigan fans are actually bad people, aren’t they? They’re shameless and compulsive liars–the worst kind of people.”

If you cheat and get caught, and then fess up, you’re still a piece of shit, but at least you’re redeemable.

But they cheated and then even after being caught red-handed, they were unrepentant about it. Played the victim card. Gaslit the entire country about it. Jim Harbaugh called Michigan “America’s team.”

I understand trying to motivate your team and borderline brainwashing them. Kirby Smart did it all last year–he had his players believing the whole media thought Georgia wouldn’t even be bowl-eligible last year. All coaches do it.

But this is something way, way beyond that. For Jim Harbaugh to act like his team is being victimized and oppressed here–the plucky little underdogs that everyone is just hating on for no reason, it’s insanity. It’s a borderline psychotic break from reality.

Buddy, this is not just “outside noise” and “haters hating.” You fucking cheated. Rampantly, pervasively, and on an industrial scale for nearly three years. And you got caught in the act of it, too.

And you’re playing the victim? You’re trying to cultivate a circle-the-wagons, bunker mentality?

You think that you’re the aggrieved party here?

You think you’re the ones who have been done wrong here?

I can think of any team in any sport in my lifetime that deserves an ass-kicking more than Michigan. Maybe the Houston Astros, but I don’t think they were as rotten as Michigan has been after getting caught.

Ohio State has to win this game. Somebody has to punish Michigan this season. The NCAA is going to punish Michigan but who knows when that will be? It could be 5-6 months from now. Ohio State is the last team on Michigan’s schedule–there’s nobody else that can give them the beating they deserve. And they absolutely cannot be allowed to make it to the playoff and take a playoff spot from somebody who didn’t cheat.

Ohio State has to do it. They have to. Ohio State is the only way that justice can be delivered. They have to win this game.

Ryan Day has to win this game. He has to. He cannot lose it. Lost two straight–yes, Michigan cheated. But this is the opportunity to prove the last two years were a result of that cheating. If Ohio State wins, then yes, you can put asterisks on the lsat two games and write them off because Michigan cheated.

But if you lose to Michigan, you have no excuses. They’ll say, “Cheating or no cheating, they still have your number.”

Harbaugh won’t be there on the sidelines. Stalions won’t be there whispering into Minter’s ear. Ohio State has to win. Ryan Day will get the John Cooper label if they lose this game. Or worse, the James Franklin label.

The cheating has been exposed now. They don’t have that edge over you anymore. If Ryan Day loses this game, it’ll mean he’s a choker. Or maybe not a choker, but a mental midget who simply cannot win The Game. It’s too much for him–the moment is too big, he shrinks from the moment, Michigan is deep in his head, they own real estate up there; they own him.

He absolutely cannot lose the biggest game of the year to this blubbering fool:

It just can’t happen.

We’ve seen Ryan Day come up big in big games before, so he absolutely can do it. But if he loses this game it will mean Michigan is just in his head and he can’t handle the pressure of the rivalry.

And so that’s why I think Ohio State will win. Because I don’t think Ryan Day is a mental midget who can’t handle the pressure of the rivalry. I think he’s a great coach who got fucked over by cheaters the past two years. All that shit we thought about Ryan Day after the past two seasons–soft, doesn’t get the rivalry, melts down when he sees the maize and blue–it was all unfairly heaped on his head because Michigan cheated.

So Day gets a pass for the last two years. Fine. But that doesn’t make it any less imperative for him to get the win this season, because the standard at Ohio State is that you don’t lose to Michigan.

If Urban Meyer was coaching Ohio State, would anybody have any doubt that they’d win this game? Would anybody think there’s even a 1% chance Urban Meyer loses to Sherrone Moore? Of course not.

But there’s some doubt and trepidation in Buckeye nation about Ryan Day, and it’s entirely because of the last two years against Michigan–even though every Ohio State fan will shout about how Michigan cheated from the top of their lungs!

Ryan Day is 56-6 as head coach of Ohio State, but Ohio State fans still don’t trust him because of what happened against Michigan the past two seasons.

I get it. You came into the last two matchups against Michigan extremely confident and wound up getting blindsided. You felt like you were coming into the game with the better team each of the past two years, and somehow that better team managed to not only lose, but get embarrassed.

So a lot of Ohio State fans, in response, have started to overestimate Michigan, because in their minds, the main thing they did wrong in 2021 and 2022 was underestimate Michigan.

I’m here to tell you that you did not underestimate Michigan in either of those years. You had them fairly valued, but they cheated, so it created a lot of cognitive dissonance. You looked at Michigan in 2021 and 2022 and said, “We’ve got far better talent on our side, there’s no reason for us to lose this game.” But you were right. You just couldn’t have known that Michigan was cheating.

You were right to think your team was better. Michigan just won because they cheated.

And every Ohio State fan knows they cheated.

Yet they still have some trepidation about Ryan Day’s ability to beat Michigan.

I’m here to tell you: you’re holding two contradictory thoughts in your head if you say Michigan cheated but also that you don’t trust Ryan Day to beat Michigan. Those are mutually exclusive positions.

You know Ryan Day is a great coach. He proved it against Georgia last year. He proved it against Clemson in 2020. He proved it when he went up to Ann Arbor in 2019 and beat Michigan by 30–before the cheating began. Ryan Day has proven it every year he’s been at Ohio State, in my view.

And now we know why the only games in his career where he didn’t look like a great head coach were the last two against Michigan.

You know the reason Michigan won is because they cheated. So all these assumptions and narratives that have built up in your mind about the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry the past two years–get rid of them. Flush them down the toilet. They’re all invalid after we learned Michigan cheated.

The real Ryan Day is the guy that went up to Ann Arbor in 2019 and won 56-27. The real Ryan Day is the guy you saw against Georgia last year, who was a missed field goal away from winning a National Championship. The real Ryan Day was the guy you saw deliver the kill shot to the Clemson program in the 2020 playoff semifinal in New Orleans.

Maybe you’re still concerned about Ryan Day because he’s not from Ohio and doesn’t “get” the rivalry. But I don’t buy that line of thinking, either.

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t from Ohio when they won in Ann Arbor in 2019. It only mattered once Michigan started cheating.

More to the point, it’s certainly true that guys like Urban Meyer and Jim Tressel, who were born and raised in Ohio and were indoctrinated into this rivalry from an early age, understand it much better than any non-Ohioan ever could. I myself was born in Ohio, and though I moved away pretty young, my whole extended family is from Ohio and still lives there, so I understand it. I was raised to view Michigan as my mortal enemy. If you’re not from Ohio, you don’t have that.

But I think Ryan Day has made up a lot of lost ground just in the past 7 years of being at Ohio State. For one thing, the rivalry is ingrained in the culture at Ohio State. They put block-Ms in the urinals so everybody pisses on Michigan. There’s a clock running 365 days a year counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the The Game. Everyone in Columbus will make sure you understand the rivalry if you come to Ohio State from someplace else. You either come to Ohio State already hating Michigan, or you’re quickly brainwashed into hating Michigan once you get there.

It’s not even just the brainwashing around campus, though. Players and coaches from out of state that come to Ohio State learn very quickly why we hate Michigan. You quickly learn what arrogant, entitled cocksuckers they are. They shoot their mouths off so much it makes them easy to hate.

But for Ryan Day specifically, it’s personal to him. Jim Harbaugh tried to snitch on him during the Covid year. Jim Harbaugh called him “third base,” other Michigan coaches called him soft, their insane fans have been trying to pin this whole scandal on him and his family–Ryan Day, if he didn’t truly hate Michigan before, definitely hates them now.

And the biggest reason of all is the cheating. After the 2021 game, Ryan Day and the whole program got the “soft” label. After last year’s game, Buckeye nation wanted Ryan Day fired. Michigan’s cheating almost cost him his job. Same goes for every coach on that staff.

So I think that even though Ryan Day wasn’t born in Ohio, and wasn’t raised to hate Michigan, the past few years have made up a lot of lost ground. There’s no question in my mind Ryan Day hates Michigan on a personal level.

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In last week’s column I went over the ways I thought the 2021 game was affected by Michigan’s cheating, but this time I want to go over why last year’s game was tilted by cheating. And to me, last year was more egregious because last year’s Ohio State team was better than 2021’s, but then again after a couple years of doing it, Michigan’s cheating operation was even more effective last year than it was in 2021.

Last year’s Ohio State Michigan game was so baffling that it only makes sense now that we know Michigan was cheating. Outside of 5 plays, Michigan was getting dominated. They won the game 45-23 and it was purely because of 5 plays. That’s it. Without those 5 plays, they get blown out. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life–a team wins in a blowout even though they were kind of getting dominated. You can narrowly win a game where you’re being dominated–it’s pretty uncommon but it happens. But to win by three scores in a game where you are getting dominated? It doesn’t happen.

And I can quantify this, too. Parker Fleming, who puts out a nice little handy chart “Did we really get beat that bad?” after every week, showed it:

If you’re on the right, it means you were dominant in a win. If you’re on the left, it means you dominated the other team in net success rate but you somehow lost the game.

Success rate, by the way, is defined as follows:

“A play is successful when it gains at least 40 percent of yards-to-go on first down, 60 percent of yards-to-go on second down, and 100 percent of yards-to-go on third or fourth down.”

It’s not some overly-complex advanced statistic that nobody can understand. And it’s not any sort of new era stat–it actually goes back quite a ways. Bill Walsh, legendary head coach of the 49ers in the 80s, was the one who pioneered this idea–basically it was that you want to gain 4 yards on first down to get to 2nd and 6, then you want to gain 3.5 yards (on average) on second down to get to 3rd and 2 or 3rd and 3, and then from there you like your odds to convert. The idea is that you want to remain on schedule and avoid third and long situations. Pretty basic, obvious stuff, but what Bill Walsh did was really get it down to a science. If we do what we’re supposed to do on each down–and, on defense, prevent the other team from doing what they’re supposed to do–then we’re putting ourselves in position to win. Net success rate just tracks that. 

Anyway, as you can see from the chart, only 9 of the games from last year’s week 13 saw teams lose with a positive net success rate. Ohio State was one of just 9 teams to lose that week with a positive net success rate. And there were only three other teams that had a better net success rate in a loss.

So it was a pretty unusual game just from that perspective. But let’s actually take a look at the three other games where the losing team had a higher net success rate than Ohio State did to see if we can get a sort of profile for what it looks like when you dominate the net success rate but lose the game.

The three other games were:

• Western Michigan over Toledo: WMU won the game 20-14 despite being outgained by Toledo 334 to 188. WMU was held to 2 for 20 on third down. The difference? Toledo turned the ball over 4 times to WMU’s once, plus Toledo was 0-3 on fourth down conversion attempts. WMU didn’t attempt a 4th down conversion. That’s essentially 7 turnovers for Toledo. 
• UNLV over Nevada: UNLV won the game 27-22 despite being outgained 460 to 278. However, Nevada had three turnovers to UNLV’s one (UNLV took a fumble back for a touchdown), and Nevada was also 1 for 3 on 4th down. 
• Duke over Wake Forest: Duke won 34-31. This game was actually pretty close in terms of total yardage. Duke outgained Wake forest 507 to 453, both teams had 26 first downs, both teams had one turnover apiece, penalty numbers weren’t very lopsided. Wake averaged 6.1 yards a play, Duke averaged 7.1. The only thing I can see is that Duke had some long touchdowns: three touchdown passes of 30 or more yards (2 for 30 yards each, one for 46). If you look at the scoring drives, Wake had more long, sustained, methodical drives while Duke was more reliant on the big play. I guess that’s where the gap in success rate comes in.

Okay, so in two of them, the common theme that emerged was a heavily lopsided turnover battle and the losing team failing on fourth down multiple times. In the Duke/WF game it was likely a result of Duke getting some long scoring plays, which you might consider fluky.

None of those three games were blowouts on the scoreboard like the Ohio State-Michigan game was, though. WMU gets dominated by Toledo and wins 20-14. UNLV gets dominated by Nevada and wins 27-22. Duke kind of gets dominated but wins 34-31.

Yet Ohio State lost 45-23. It’s a complete outlier. Ohio State did have 2 turnovers to Michigan’s zero and was 0-1 on 4th down in the game, so maybe that’s a factor. But Ohio State’s one failed 4th down attempt was early in the game, and their two interceptions were late in the game when it was basically out of hand. The first INT came with just over 4 minutes left in the game and Ohio State was down 15, the second INT was with 1:48 left in the game already down 45-23. So it was not the turnovers that caused the game to have as lopsided a score as it had. It just wasn’t.

I’m telling you, in the moment while watching that game and afterwards, I was absolutely baffled by it. I thought to myself, you could replay that game 100 more times and not one of them would turn out the way it did. Somehow, everything just went Michigan’s way. Everything. It was such a bizarre outcome I just couldn’t understand it. The final score was so far off from how the game actually went, it just made no sense. Literally 5 plays were the difference between Michigan getting blown out and winning in a blowout. I’ve never seen any game like that.

I didn’t think Michigan was cheating at the time. That thought never crossed my mind. I thought it was the luckiest game I’d ever seen in my life, and maybe from now on if a game ever plays out like that again, I’ll suspect cheating. But in the moment, the idea of Michigan cheating and knowing all of Ohio State’s plays never crossed my mind. Not at all.

If you take away those 5 long scoring plays for Michigan, on every other play they ran in that game, they averaged 3.67 yards per play. 349 of their 527 yards of offense came from just 5 plays. On their other 54 plays, they gained 198 yards.

This is what I mean when I say that outside of 5 plays, Michigan was getting completely dominated. If you average 3.67 yards per play, you are the worst offense in the FBS. The worst offense in the FBS this year, East Carolina, averages 4.1 yards per play. Michigan this year held Indiana to 3.7 yards per play and won the game 52-7, if that gives you a better idea of just how impotent Michigan was against Ohio State outside of 5 plays.

Yet they won 45-23.

It made absolutely no sense. But nobody in the moment was like, ‘Michigan’s gotta be cheating.”

The narratives that emerged from that game were that Ohio State is still soft, Ryan Day doesn’t understand the rivalry, Ryan Day sucks as a head coach, etc.

The Ohio State fan base turned on both Ryan Day and CJ Stroud with a vengeance. Remember, this was before they kinda redeemed themselves in the Georgia game. It was like, you’ve now lost in embarrassing fashion to Michigan twice in a row, you’re failures, you suck, we went 17-2 against these guys before you got here, you’ve ruined everything, you’ve turned Ohio State into a joke, you’ve lost control of this rivalry, and worst of all, you proved those entitled, arrogant bastards in Ann Arbor right about everything.

It was bad.

Now, in my view, the moment it was revealed that Michigan had been cheating since 2021, it exonerated Ryan Day and CJ Stroud and everyone else of all the charges. All of Buckeye nation should, if they haven’t already, apologize to Day, Stroud and the rest of the team for all the nasty and horrible stuff that was said after last year’s game.

Okay, that’s all well and good and everything, but it doesn’t have a lot of bearing on this year’s game. It’s two different teams now. Even if Michigan only won that game because they were cheating, it doesn’t mean Ohio State is guaranteed to win this year..

The reason Ohio State is going to win this year is because they’re a better football team. Just like every year, they outclass Michigan in talent.

The difference this year is that Michigan isn’t able to erase the gap with Connor Stalions.

I could do a deep dive into the numbers and all that, and at the end I’d conclude “They’re both really good teams, it should be a close game.”

But the real reason Ohio State is going to win this game is because they can’t lose it. They absolutely have to win. Ryan Day has to win this game. Losing simply is not an option.

If you must have some concrete football reasons why I think Ohio State will win, so be it:

1. JJ MidCarthy: I’ve never bought into the hype with him. I’ve always said Harbaugh doesn’t develop quarterbacks, and I don’t think McCarthy’s been developed. He makes bad decisions, he stares down receivers, he doesn’t see defenders, and oftentimes he just makes bad throws. Was part of that because they used Stalions as a crutch? I’m sure it’s part of the equation, but Jim Harbaugh has never really developed quarterbacks while he’s been at Michigan. McCarthy only looks good when he has Stalions, and when they keep the training wheels on him–in other words, designed rollout passes to his first read who is guaranteed to be open. The second he has to be a real quarterback–stand back there in the pocket, go through progressions, process information and make split second decisions–he starts throwing picks. He can’t help it.
2. Ohio State’s defensive front is built to beat JJ McCarthy. Ohio State fans have been frustrated by their defense’s lack of sack numbers and TFLs, but there’s a few very good reasons their defense isn’t producing a ton of sacks. For one thing, they don’t blitz a ton–they’d rather drop the linebackers into coverage and just try to generate pressure with the front four. Second, the defensive front’s job is to contain and encircle the quarterback. I think they play that way with this game in mind, because keeping McCarthy in the pocket and preventing him from scrambling is paramount. He cannot beat you with his arm. When he’s forced to throw, it’s just interception after interception. But he can beat you with his legs. Ohio State knows that and is built to prevent it from happening.
3. This Michigan team reminds me a lot of the 2018 team: solid but susceptible defense, quarterback who can really run (Shea Patterson), but just not a true A-level team. Not elite at anything. Difference with 2018 is they had two NFL-caliber receivers in Nico Collins and DPJ. Michigan traditionally has pretty good receivers. Back in the 2000s, they had Braylon Edwards, Mario Manningham, Adrian Arrington, Steve Breaston. They don’t have those guys nowadays. Their best receiver, Roman Wilson, will probably end up in the NFL in some capacity, but he’s not some stud talent. He ranks 104th in the country in receiving yards. This is not a very dynamic Michigan passing attack.
4. Michigan’s secondary ain’t all that. Maryland was the first team Michigan faced all season that had even a remotely competent passing attack, and the Michigan secondary got exposed. Michigan’s first 10 opponents of the year averaged 6.46 yards per pass attempt, and on average ranked 102nd in the nation in yards per pass attempt. Maryland isn’t even a great passing team, either, because Taulia makes so many bone-headed plays. They’re just not the typical Big Ten team that’s built like it’s 1981–Maryland is just one of the only teams in the conference that likes to throw the ball, and Michigan struggled mightily with them. Ohio State has better athletes than Maryland, and I don’t think Michigan’s DBs have seen anything like them.
5. Michigan’s run defense ain’t all that, either. Penn State was having some success on the ground even though they couldn’t do anything through the air. That means Michigan was able to key on the run because they didn’t fear the pass–and Penn State was still able to move the ball decently well on the ground in that game.
6. The Michigan run game is the worst it’s been since the pre-cheating days. They averaged 5.6 yards a carry last year, good for 3rd in the nation. This year they average 4.5 YPC, 48th nationally. This is a significant drop-off and I don’t think people are talking about it enough. Blake Corum is averaging under 5 yards per carry this season–4.9 YPC, while Donovan Edwards averages 3.4. Last year they averaged 5.9 YPC and 7.1 respectively. Massive drop-off. Corum has always been a volume merchant but it’s very apparent now. Michigan has only been over 4 yards a carry in one game out of their past 5: Penn State, where they broke a few big runs that skewed the numbers but were otherwise getting stuffed. Michigan will struggle to run the ball, and when you combine that with their vastly overrated MID quarterback, they’re in trouble offensively.
7. There’s a lot of talk about whether Ohio State will be able to stop Michigan’s run game when they bring in extra offensive linemen and go jumbo. But the follow up question to that is, if running out of a jumbo package is unstoppable, then why doesn’t everyone do it all the time? Because it’s not unstoppable; the defense can bring in a heavy package themselves 
8. So Michigan isn’t great at running the ball, isn’t great at throwing the ball, and their defense has looked vulnerable against both the run and the pass the last couple weeks. It sounds like they’re a pretty mid team, right? Well, they’re still a good football team. They still beat a pretty good Penn State team and an above-average Maryland team. But Michigan’s defense won’t be able to hang with truly elite teams–teams that can both run and pass competently. Offenses that are multiple, like Ohio State is, will give them lots of trouble. Penn State’s issue is they couldn’t throw the ball, they could only run it. Maryland’s issue is they couldn’t run the ball, they could only throw it. Ohio State can do both. 
9. And Ohio State is elite on defense as well–in my opinion, even better than Penn State, and Penn State is pretty great on defense. Other than two drives, Penn State had Michigan’s offense shut down. I think Ohio State’s defense will fare very well against Michigan’s offense. Maryland’s defense even held up well against Michigan–Maryland held Michigan’s offense to 20 points. The other 11 points for Michigan were from a scoop and score and two safeties. Maryland’s offense outscored Michigan’s offense. 
10. When you couple that with the fact that Ohio State is going to be by far the best offense Michigan has faced all season, it’s clear that Ohio State is by far the most complete team Michigan has faced this season. I just don’t think Michigan is as good a football team as Ohio State.
11. Ohio State has better players and athletes. Look at the talent composite. It’s been this way for a while now, and it’s the reason Ohio State went 17-2 against Michigan from 2001-2021. Ohio State has way more elite-level players than Michigan does. Michigan doesn’t have a Marvin Harrison, or a Treyveon Henderson, or a Denzel Burke, or defensive ends like JTT and Jack Sawyer. The best players on Michigan’s defense are their defensive tackles, but Ohio State’s defensive tackle Tyleik Williams will probably be drafted before all of them. Ohio State just has better players.
12. No more Stalions. The reason Michigan was able to flip the script and beat Ohio State despite having inferior talent was because of Stalions. Now he’s gone and Michigan will have to face Ohio State without him for the first time since 2019. In 2019, Ohio State went up to Ann Arbor and won 56-27. Michigan has to face Ohio State straight up and stand on their own, and I don’t think they can. I don’t think they have the talent, I don’t think they have the athletes, I don’t think they have the coaching–especially with Harbaugh out.
13. I genuinely have no idea how Michigan is favored in this game. I’m assuming it’s mostly because they beat Ohio State the past few years and it’s just not really connecting in people’s minds that that was because of cheating. But even if you just go by this season–yes, Michigan was a statistically incredible team to start this season out, but they have not looked like a great team at all since they started playing real teams and since they lost Stalions. It’s night and day. There’s nothing Michigan does that’s elite. Nothing at all. The second their pass defense got tested, we all realized their pass defense isn’t great. There’s simply nothing elite about this Michigan team.
14. Sherrone Moore: People are trying to say it doesn’t really make that much of a difference that Harbaugh isn’t able to be there on the sidelines on Saturday–the coordinators call all the plays anyway! I just don’t buy that. They’re an army without a general. Coaching matters a ton in college football, and this is an area where Ohio State will have a major advantage.

This Saturday is the end of the line for the Michigan football program. This cheating-fueled run they were on the past 2.5 years or so, it’s done. It’s been exposed, the program is currently in the process of collapsing.

It reminds me of the Enron scandal: they’re blowing out quarterly earnings reports, the stock is skyrocketing, everyone affiliated with the company is getting rich–yet it was all fraudulent. And after the curtain got pulled back and the fraud was exposed for the whole country to see, people lost everything. Guys went to jail. Everyone associated with Enron got burned.

That’s Michigan. Michigan is Enron. And the party’s over.

Harbaugh is done as head coach. Maybe he coaches the bowl game, I’m not even sure about that. But either way, he’s not going to be the coach at Michigan next year.

Michigan will be a program under sanctions which means recruiting will suffer, and all their good players will transfer out. Michigan football is headed for a dark age very soon. They are so fucked. They’re about to turn into Michigan State.

I brought up earlier that the fundamental tone or mentality of the rivalry has changed over the past month. Ohio State fans are now full-blown disgusted with Michigan and their fans. Done with them. Completely lost any and all respect they might have had.

I don’t think it will start to dissipate until Michigan’s football program really pays the price. Once the NCAA drops the hammer on them, and they basically turn that entire football program over, then the “healing process” of getting this rivalry out of a state of mutual disgust and back to a state of mutual disdain can begin.

But Michigan really went over the line badly with this one. It’d be one thing if they got caught for a slew of recruiting violations, like Jeremy Pruitt putting cash in McDonald’s bags for players. If that was what Michigan got busted for, then we could just point and laugh while at the same time knowing it’s not some completely unprecedented, beyond the pale outrage. Everybody does that kinda thing.

This is different, though. This was a systematic, widespread, long-running, organization-wide cheating scheme. This was unprecedented–at least in terms of programs who get caught doing it. If Michigan can provide evidence that “everyone else does it,” I’m all ears and willing to change my tune on this. But unless and until that happens, I’m operating under the assumption that they are in a class of their own when it comes to cheating and duplicity.

At this point we know the Big Ten feels the same way, as does the NCAA. So I fully expect Michigan to pay a heavy, heavy price for this. Jim Harbaugh will never coach another game for Michigan.

And that’s why The Game this Saturday is more than just The Game–it’s a reckoning.

The chickens are coming back home to roost for Michigan.

That whole fake little era the past three years where they thought they owned the Big Ten, owned Ohio State, and became an elite program–it’s over. It ends on Saturday, November 25th.

Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes are going up to Ann Arbor and bringing the whole corrupt, diseased temple down on Michigan’s heads. And Jim Harbaugh will just have to sit there and watch from his home.

Ohio State is not only going to win this game, but they’re going to prove the past three years of Michigan football were fake, fraudulent, ill-gotten. 

And most importantly: all for naught. They’ll have nothing to show for the Stalions era. The Big Ten Champions banners will come down, the 36 wins they amassed while cheating will be vacated. “Victory 1,000” will be erased. All the smug idiots on social media with the M emoji all over the place will head for the hills.

When Michigan loses this game, they’re done. This was the last, best hope they had to cheat their way to a National Championship before anybody caught on to what they were doing.

The Buckeyes will slam the door in their faces, then the NCAA will take care of the rest.

Order will be restored: Michigan is going back to being the B-tier program they were before they started cheating. 

If they’re lucky.

I don’t even know what the score will be. It’s going to be a crazy game full of emotion and probably a few scuffles. My guess would be something like Ohio State 31-16. Or 31-20 Ohio State. but I don’t know. I really don’t. Michigan right now is a cornered animal, and that means they’re still dangerous and unpredictable.

All I know is Ohio State is going to win–it could be by one point, it could be by 30. I wouldn’t put it past Ryan Day to run up the score if the opportunity presents itself. He despises Michigan.

I know a lot of Ohio State fans are afraid of the Big Bad Wolf and think Michigan has their number, or Ryan Day can’t beat Michigan, but the fact of the matter is Michigan was only able to beat Ohio State these past two years because of cheating. Ohio State completely outclasses Michigan in roster talent, and the only way I see Ohio State losing is if they’re -2 or -3 in the turnover margin. But I don’t think that’ll happen.

Ohio State is going to win, and then the nuke drops on Michigan.

Ann Arbormaggedon is coming.