Demetrius Brown is left-handed. I cannot remember when I didn't know this.
His southpaw nature dominated the chatter around Hastings Middle School in August 1987. Tricky ol' Bo Schembechler had something up his sleeve this season - maybe even his left one.
The word on the mean streets of Upper Arlington that summer was Bo was hatching a dizzying two-headed, two-handed ambidextrous passing attack which rotated Michael Taylor (a righty) and Brown (a faceless, left-handed demon) to take over for the finally-matriculated Jim Harbaugh with a shock and awe strategy the world had never seen.
Ohio State-Michigan was governed exclusively by fear back then. Taylor lost the QB derby in camp. But the first time I saw Brown throw a pass, it was indeed left-handed. Holy shit.
These days every Ohio KID who chooses Michigan becomes Kyle Kalis. Every single cursed one.
My smooth seventh grade brain only needed that single data point to unlock the rest of the UA middle school conspiracy. Sure, Brown looked flustered as Michigan was trampled by Notre Dame in the opener, and there was no dizzying two-headed, two-handed platoon. But he was left-handed!
That had to mean by the time we reached the only game that matters on the schedule, the back-to-school chatter from the halls of Hastings would be materializing. Brown was to be feared. Taylor required surveillance. Bo was never to be trusted. Losing to Notre Dame was a calculated effort to lull Ohio State into a false sense of security.
If you're under 40 this line of thinking probably seems a bit - what's the word - unhinged. But this is exactly what Cold War paranoia looked like in Central Ohio every fall. This poisonous mindset was the unwanted gift Boomers forced on latchkey Gen X children like me and every other teenager who didn't remember Woody but was forced to act like he was still in charge.
Brown is 54 now, and I assume he's still left-handed. I was thinking about him last week when I realized I had little idea what Michigan's QB room looks like in 2021. I know the Wolverines have a highly-regarded 5-star QB coming in, and Cade Something is probably still there from last season.
Jim Harbaugh ran off the McCaffrey brother. And Joe Milton is currently -- oh wait, hold on:
Joe Milton > Justin Fields
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) October 25, 2020
Okay, where was I...ah right, Milton is now a Tennessee Volunteer. I have no idea who is going to start for Michigan this fall. I know it's a google search away, or a quick visit to any Michigan fan forum; just wade through all the basketball posts and find out. But I just don't care.
This is a jarring feeling because I've never not cared about Michigan football. Every time I've howled along to We Don't Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan with a hundred thousand of my closest friends I've been pitch-perfect, but also brazenly lying.
That song is an absolute banger; I just have never subscribed to the lyrics other than the part about being from Ohio. I'm sure it's not just me - I wouldn't be surprised to learn there aren't any nefarious, left-handed Michigan football conspiracies being cooked up at Hastings anymore.
You've been lying while singing that song too, because the opposite of love isn't hate - it's indifference. You cannot simultaneously hate Michigan while not giving a damn about Michigan.
I've lost count of the number of columns I've written about Ohio State's nemesis but I can assure you as someone who has been manufacturing touchy-feely football content weekly for 25 years - you have to care about your subjects because readers are lie detectors. You would know immediately if I was mailing it in, and that's why I'm getting ahead of it.
Now, I haven't completely run out of fucks to give about Michigan, but there are definitely only fumes in that tank currently. Fume fucks, if you will. I am a weathered Gen Xer as haunted by fading Cold War paranoia as I am relishing everything that's transpired ever since some genius handed Jim Tressel a microphone at the Schott 20 Januarys ago.
Michigan has beaten Ohio State just four times since Charles Woodson was a U-M student. © Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press
And I'm not yet sure if my Michigan malaise is rooted in Ohio State being robbed of the opportunity to hang 100 on them last season, or if we've reached the 10-year anniversary of the last time the Buckeyes manufactured a way to not earn Gold Pants (they should have won, and yeah I'm still pissed about it) and The Game just feels too routine. Or both.
Ohio State has averaged 39 points against Michigan since 2018. It's a lot. Yeah, I included 2020.
For context, I used to know every player in Ann Arbor, at every position, if they were legitimately good or just Michigan Good (that's when they're only good against Ohio State; the most evil kind of good) as well as each of their backups. You see, the only way to beat Michigan was for non-players like me to master their depth chart. I did my part. I am a patriot.
I also tracked the Wolverines from Ohio as some sort of bizarre traitor surveillance, just to make myself feel worse about all of it. Usually the defectors ended up being Elvis Grbac or John Kolesar, just a complete kick in the groin turncoat affair.
But sometimes the worst-case scenario happened and they became Desmond Howard or Charles Woodson. Here, take our children and make them gods at our expense. You're welcome.
These days every Ohioan who chooses Michigan becomes Kyle Kalis. Every single cursed one.
The Wolverines have beaten the Buckeyes four times since Woodson's Heisman statement game in 1997. Today, the whiskey that Woodson puts his name on is aged as long as Ohio State's current winning streak over his alma mater. That's flavor we can all appreciate.
Yeah yeah yeah everything is cyclical, don't allow the dead to rise, etc etc I know this, I've written at least two dozen versions of that script. I was standing in the room when Urban shared his feelings to the team on the subject. It's still the most important thing in college football. I just don't care about them like I used to.
If we can get back to the fume fucks metaphor - a tank can always be refilled. Michigan could do its part and rip off 10 straight regular season wins, flex its cartoonishly-entitled DNA and waltz right into another gratifying 60-point beatdown.
Ohio State could also do its part and decide to treat its last regular season game like any other one, the same way the program did four coaches ago. The monster who spent decades under our beds could push through the floorboards and re-syndicate our old November nightmares. How much worse than Purdue or Iowa could that be?
I just don't think the Ohio State football program is interested in allowing that to ever happen again, or that it's facing the same kind of waning interest a Cold War veteran like me is dealing with.
CHARLES Woodson's WHISKEY is aged as long as Ohio State's current winning streak over his alma mater. That's flavor BOTH SIDES OF THE RIVALRY can appreciate.
Harbaugh returned to campus at a time when the Wolverines were at rock-bottom while the Buckeyes were riding a 3rd string QB to the CFP title. Ohio State has been back to the CFP three other times. They have CFP-embroidered leather couches for recruits to sit in at the Woody.
Michigan hasn't won a conference title in 17 years and hasn't beaten Ohio State with Harbaugh since Demetrious Brown was on the sideline. Maybe they should invite him back this November, in lieu of "retiring" Howard's number before The Game for what's got to be like the fifth time.
One thing I did know about Michigan's current roster was the interior of its defensive line has been, how to say this politely, dicey for a few years now? Last week it picked up a 25-year old grad transfer DT from Oregon State who has one career start.
In my Hastings days, the word on the street would be that this new DT just needed a change of scenery and at 6'1" 358 lbs he's a beast right out of Hades capable of swallowing Master Teague whole.
We didn't have the internet or a fading appreciation of how horrible it feels to lose to Michigan back then. This paranoia would have had legs. Him getting run over by a WMU left guard in the season opener would be a calculated effort to lull Ohio State into a false sense of security.
The last time the Buckeyes were dominating Michigan like this was a decade ago and that momentum came to a screeching halt. But there was no fulcrum, no shift and no reversal of the fortune that began with Jimmy's mic drop at the Schott. It was a one-game glitch.
New normalcy returned a year later, and now it's just normalcy. The natural order we always craved.
This should be Michigan's place in the rivalry now and forever, and as the olds matriculate and the latch key kids like me become the new olds, the program will manufacture, rekindle and reconstruct how competitive this all used to be.
We saw how quickly things can flip a decade ago when Tressel forged his exit from coaching. But we also witnessed how swiftly things can unflip. I'll be a basket case the entire week leading into this year's Michigan game because psychological wiring works like that.
By then I'll definitely know who Michigan's quarterback is. Hey, maybe he'll be left-handed.
