Ohio State and Michigan about to play unique edition of The Game
COLUMBUS, Ohio — On quality of wins alone, the College Football Playoff selection committee could have justified jumping Washington over both Ohio State and Michigan on Tuesday.
Washington did move up, though it only jumped Florida State to No. 4. Ohio State and Michigan remain at Nos. 2-3, respectively, ahead of Saturday’s edition of The Game.
Saturday’s game may be the most emotionally incendiary edition of this game ever played. Third-year cornerback Denzel Burke said thinking of The Game has his “blood boiling.” Safe to assume he’s not alone.
Which means Day’s example, and that of the rest of his staff, means more than ever before.
“We have to keep our emotions in check, starting from the head down,” Day said. “It has to start from me. We have to go in there and execute at a high level and handle the environment.”
Emotions would have been elevated for this season’s game, anyway. Michigan has won the last two meetings as the lower-ranked team and betting underdog. Safety Mike Sainristil planted a Michigan flag at midfield of Ohio Stadium after last season’s victory — the program’s first there since 2000
After winning at Oregon State last week, the Huskies own three top-16 victories in the updated rankings. (The lowest one being the one over the Beavers, who oddly fell five spots.) Ohio State owns two, and Michigan still has only one.
Both deprived OSU of a chance to play for the Big Ten championship. Both would also have knocked the Buckeyes out of the playoffs, if upsets elsewhere had not provided a back-door route back in last season.
The Big Ten is eliminating divisions when Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington join next year. The College Football Playoff is also expanding to 12 teams. Going forward, it will be possible for the rivals to rematch either one week later in the Big Ten championship game, or at some round of the playoff, or both. This edition of The Game will be the final one with true finality of outcome.
Tensions between Day and Harbaugh have always been high. In the postgame press conference after Michigan won The Game in 2021, Harbaugh cracked “Sometimes people that are standing on third base think they hit a triple — and they didn’t.” That was an apparent reference to Day inheriting the OSU machine from Urban Meyer.
Harbaugh later said the jab was a “counterpunch” to Day allegedly telling his players OSU would “hang a hundred” on the Wolverines. That supposedly followed what was reported to be a terse verbal exchanged between the two coaches on a Big Ten conference call in the summer of 2020.
The 2020 edition of The Game was canceled due to a COVID-19 outbreak at Michigan. Ohio State has not won in the rivalry since.
Senior linebacker Cody Simon said ignoring the noise is a difficult yet essential part of preparing for this game.
“If I see something, I scroll past it or just don’t even focus on it — because I know what really matters is what we talk about here in the Woody,” Simon said. “Anything else I see out there just doesn’t mean much to me. I know what the truth is here and I’m just getting ready for The Game.”
Harbaugh was asked Monday whether he respected Day and his staff. He paused before conjuring a non-answer which, essentially, acknowledged the premise.
“It’s all about our preparation for Ohio,” Harbaugh said. “Anything else is irrelevant when we get into this kind of big game.”
Day took a pass on a similar question Tuesday, pivoting instead to talking about respecting the rivalry by working hard toward it year-round.
Fair to speculate he has much more he would say that isn’t for public consumption. Another example of harnessing emotions, rather than being victim to them.
“You have to play with emotion, you can’t let emotion play with you,” Day said. “I think that’s important. You have to have your emotions in check — which isn’t easy in a game like this. Because as we all know the magnitude of it all. But it’s something that we identified in the offseason, so we’ll talk about this week.”
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