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THE SITUATIONAL: Cross Your Heart
By Ramzy Nasrallah on January 22, 2025 at 1:15 pm @ramzy
© Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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Michigan serves a vital role in sustaining Ohio State football.
That is a very weird way to start a column about the most earned national championship ever but hang on - it is important. Let's use this euphoric moment to imbibe on a little clarity and find a peaceful high together.
Michigan football is omnipresent in Ohio. Long before anyone reading this was born, it was Ohio State's singular aspiration - the club team in Columbus desperately wanted to emulate the varsity powerhouse in Ann Arbor as America entered the 20th century.
In 1906 the university adopted Carmen Ohio as its alma mater, a song that doesn't exist without Michigan football. It was written on the train back to campus following an 86-0 loss at Regents Field after Ohio State entered that game 5-0 having outscored its opponents 86-0.
The Buckeyes discovered in intimate fashion they were not close to being who or what they aspired to. We sing the requiem from that experience after every game over a century later.
A couple decades after 86-0, the university built a magnificent stadium the current team still calls home. It features maize and blue flowers in the rotunda. That's what aspiration looks like. It’s permanent.
By the time the oldest people reading this arrived, Michigan was entrenched as Ohio State's Final Exam. The rivalry had permanently moved to the final Saturday of the schedule in an era where bowl games were rare or inaccessible.
Let's not pretend Michigan doesn't matter - it matters like your parents matter. It's how Michigan matters where we start to get a little squirrely with each other while rooting against them.
Michigan was the rival, the most important game and sometimes also the Buckeyes' de facto bowl game all packaged in one three-hour period (absurd commercial breaks aren’t possible without television contracts, makes you think). By the time several coaches including Gold Pants inventor Frances Schmidt and three-sport alumnus Wes Fesler decided dealing with Michigan made for a hostile workplace environment they wanted no part of, Wayne Woodrow Hayes arrived.
Woody downgraded Michigan from aspiration into a loathsome fixation. If his teams practiced all year to beat the Wolverines, in that pre-CFP era it meant the Buckeyes were in pretty good shape to win most if not all of their games. An odious barometer of what was necessary in order to beat the former aspiration at its own game.
It has served as that vital role for the better part of the past 73 football seasons.
Michigan spent the first couple decades of the 21st century on the receiving end of soft condescension, nostalgic remembrances of superior Michigan teams of the past while every Ohio State team, great, good or just okay was beating them. As Methuselah often said to Enoch during their famous wine benders damn what a difference 100 years makes.
Since the pandemic and heading into 2024, Michigan had abruptly transformed into something sinister: Ohio State's boogeyman. That changed on November 30, when it shapeshifted itself into a homewrecker.
losing to Michigan unlocked something in Ohio State which activated a team that just torched the hardest national championship path in college football history.
Buckeye fans turned on the coaching staff and each other, holding incompatible views of what Michigan meant to Ohio State in 2024, like does Michigan even matter anymore which is absurd. Yes, always. Michigan informs Ohio State football, forever.
If you grew up with Michigan the Final Exam, Michigan the Loathsome Fixation or Michigan the Odious Barometer - then there's no way to accept losing that game four straight times. Especially the fourth one, a coached-up junior varsity try-hard begging to be bullied.
If you were willing to accept that college football has changed dramatically over the past 10 years (CFP), 18 years (BCS title game) and 26 years (BCS) then you were probably happy to diminish the importance of that game held in the highest esteem by our dead ancestors - and a few still living among us who
THE SITUATIONAL: Cross Your Heart
Would Ohio State have won the national championship *like this* without having suffered what happened on Nov 30?
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sparcboxbuck
What happened to my ¤cash?
I’d bet large sums that there was a limo and hotboxing involved. At least there is in my story of hanging out with these guys for the night.
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Tanner
Legend
Really does seem the culture is very strong in the program. Sometimes I get a little uncomfortable with the seriously religious direction the program is going (not trying to criticize religion, I'm Catholic, but I used to make fun of Dabo when they were like having baptisms on campus etc, that kind of stuff is a little much to me.) Credit to Day and the players
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Difference to me is that Day doesn't seem to actively influence or encourage players one way or the other unless there is something behind closed doors I don't know about. Seems like a lot of veteran players chose to commit to God by their own volition and use football as a platform to spread the message. The next batch of players may not be anything like that, but I think you can build the "brotherhood" in many ways, it just so happened religion was the core theme with this year's team. Just my two cents.
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I think the endless calls to God, which suggest that God cares a lot more for you and your team as opposed to the other team, are offensive to many more people than will admit it. I think it is wonderful but preaching for a particular religion should be done in one's own time and not when on national TV or acting in an official capacity.
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Certainly give glory to God. Then you should own our own shit as a sinner and not use God as the reason you made a stupid decision.
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