Imagine Ohio State spending a couple decades in football purgatory.
It sounds like a nightmare because it is - we've had more than our fair share of triumphs and have gotten used to our peasant-resistant lifestyle. But play football long enough and squalor comes for us all.
This scenario is too dark for jokes. Our beloved team would be merely participating in the world's greatest sport without any relevance beyond infamy by way of historic, embarrassing losses and sustained mediocrity. Consider losing in Ohio Stadium to Appalachian State or Toledo. It's that dark.
Conference titles are a distant rumor in purgatory. Ranked opponent? Buddy, that's just fancy term for Quality Loss. We're talking about the soul of Ohio experiencing an extinction event in our lifetimes. Our own fault for failing to be born and live in happier times. Leprosy doesn't seem so bad all of a sudden.
That's because rivalry futility is much worse. Every season in purgatory ends the same disastrous, and yet merciful way in that it's finally over. Saturdays are for humiliation and sadness, but the losses aren't just confined to the games. Recruiting losses, coaching losses, pride losses, season losses. It rains losses in purgatory.
A lost decade. Two lost decades. We still love tailgating and adore the band but hate everything else - including ourselves. We would handle this imagined purgatory poorly, comrades. Our great derangement begins with denial. We have no idea how long this will last, but forever seems a little too possible.
there's no quit in our tribe. We can beat the cheaters. The good guys always win.
It is but a glitch we assure ourselves, using awkward Saxon phrasing for no particular reason. The Buckeyes willst be their normal selves again next year. Over time our optimism slides further out of reach until it's no longer in sight, and the pre-2016 Chicago Cubsification of a once-proud blueblood brand is complete with one glaring exception.
Ohio State is not a lovable losers brand. Oh, our team sucks. But hey, everyone hates us too.
Administration initiates a radical transformation to escape purgatory with the acquisition of a bold, innovative interloper - let's call him Rod Richriguez - a man never tethered to Ohio State traditions tapped to lead the program not into iterative change. No one has patience for that. This is a revolution.
Three years later that's all scrapped for a variety of reasons - mostly, all of the losing. Culture fit. It's not us, it's him. Well, maybe it's us. But it's mostly him. But is it us? No, we're fine. It's him. He's fired.
It was either Lousy Fit or Bad Timing, both of which need to be good for anything this audacious to work. Perhaps it was C, all of the above. Josh Groban sings, however involuntarily, at his funeral. It's an open casket. No one cries except for the corpse.
The next phase of our purgatory derangement delivers a pathetic brand of coping; a collective metaphysical detachment from college football itself. We cannot compete in an immoral world where everyone except us is cheating. Martyrdom has arrived, but there's no quit in our tribe. We can beat the cheaters. The good guys always win.
A prominent alumnus ascends to lead the athletic department out of purgatory, only to embark on a gruesome and clownish self-immolation. We need One of Us to get this right, but maybe not him. Definitely not him. Ugh, and he's the caricature of everything everyone says Ohio State-types embody. Are they right about us? This is hurtful!
He leaves behind nothing but wreckage and red numbers. You know what's worse than a disastrous coaching hire? Two disastrous coaching hires. Welcome to Ohio State Football in Purgatory, Population: Us.
It's so bad they're giving away football tickets with the purchase of a Coke. At that Coke Game, an obviously concussed quarterback is sent onto the field to keep playing. Bottom? No, there's no bottom in purgatory.
But then, the precious two variables required to intersect for our rightful destiny to materialize smash into each other. Ideal Fit and Perfect Timing finally collide, and Ohio State gets a cherished son to return home to lead the same program he once took to great heights while wearing pads to even loftier aspirations from the sideline.
He's a proven coach who has done nothing but adulate his alma mater since ascending into the working class. Cherished son gets us. He loves us. He is us. He's back!
Sure, he was also a Judas and dead to us for publicly betraying the university, but no one wins a grudge match. Bygones, man. We just want a football team that doesn't make us hate ourselves. All 85 guys can have the same major. Ohio State is still better than digging ditches.
Cherished Son comes out hot and upgrades the foundation of the program, restoring the traditions and principles which had grown stale, taken for granted to simply trademarked for retail purposes. He's eccentric and goofy, but character isn't optional in a revival this important. We are officially out of purgatory.
He sets up satellite camps in the South, thumbing his nose at God's Conference and announces that the brand which owned the sport in the era of six-game seasons and Ivy League domination was back, baby.
...but not yet. Saturdays are still for losing, but so are all of the other days - recruiting losses, coaching losses, pride losses, season losses. The beating continue, though they're more competent beatings. Mostly. Purgatory is largely a late November event.
And then, the greatest thing to happen to the state since the industrial revolution strikes - a global pandemic which resets the new equilibrium and acts as a bloodletting for a program that had too much loser DNA flowing through its vessels. Praise be, communicable diseases.
Our football program emerges from global purgatory, program purgatory and late November purgatory simultaneously. Three conference titles later, a national title is secured. Imagine us emerging from all of that into this. A national title and a 15-0 season.
Okay, enough - let's pivot away from this imaginary scenario. Reader, what you've just read is actually Michigan's journey from basically the current century right into early January. You've been bamboozled! Don't feel bad. Bruce Willis' character was dead the whole time.
Copium was readily available in the Midwest long before the US military took control of Afghan poppy fields, and the good news for Michigan fans is that it has no color, allegiance or stigma.
We went on this journey so that we could reach right now, the month which has elapsed since Michigan took the college football crown. Cherished Son, who had been trying to leave for years finally left, taking vital chunks of infrastructure with him. Michigan is transforming at a moment which would normally be reserved for afterglow.
The NCAA has at least a couple of open investigations into a program which fired an offensive coordinator for computer access crimes and was separated from a low-level staffer who was always, always right next to Michigan's play callers after...you know. It was in all the papers.
And that journey created two distinct realities. One of them lives here, but also inside your head. It's where Michigan's shiny national title is covered in feces, deception and illegitimacy and every sleep brings you one morning closer to the inevitable news that what you've known all along is going to get redlined by the governing body you've always loved to hate. Until then.
The other reality lives on the other side of the rivalry. Michigan went 15-0. Beat Ohio State three times, mitigating CJ Stroud and generational receivers in consecutive 2nd halves - totally unsuspicious - and escaping a third time after...you know. It was also in all the papers.
Three sides to every story, and the third one is the truth: No one can take away Michigan's national title. Not you, not the NCAA and definitely not public opinion. If America's bullshittiest governing body chooses to flex its imaginary muscles and place Michigan in purgatory for crimes you believe in your heart of hearts it committed and mattered, the Wolverines still went 15-0 and won it all. They already printed the shirts.
And that's why we had to go through their 20 years in the hole. It's impossible to ruin this for them. You were going to diminish Michigan's run anyway, with or without any funky aroma accompanying it.
Twenty-five years ago Connor Stalions wore pull-up diapers and I was writing about how Charles Woodson's mother - a humble forklift driver in Freemont, OH - was gifted a fur coat. He went on opulent spring break trips which were clearly agent-funded and accepted other perks no student-athlete ever should have been able to access. In my most authentic fake Cajun accent: Invalidation!
Copium was readily available in the Midwest long before the US military took control of Afghan poppy fields, and the good news for Michigan fans is that it has no color, allegiance or stigma. They're not there yet. The championship shirts haven't yet begun to fade.
If everything you believe will happen to those cheating bastards actually happens to those cheating bastards, they'll be smoking the exact same shit you've been rolling ever since Ryan Day decided he could do four full-time jobs by himself without consequences. Doesn't matter, won a natty. Potency is unmatched.
As for what does come next, the Wolverines justifiably believe they've experienced a far worse fate already than whatever might happen. Meanwhile, you're justifiably happy with how the past month has gone, both for your team and with Michigan's diminished afterglow.
That means as of right now, everyone is happy. If you don't like that, just wait a few months.
