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 were raised right feel the same way.
After Nov 30, Buckeye Nation was a house divided. It lasted three whole weeks.
Michigan's Homewrecker phase got a little fuzzy once Tennessee visited Columbus, renamed it Volumbus and planted its Google Maps flag in Ohio Stadium while renaming it Neyland North. The Volunteers were thoroughly humiliated. A house divided paused to acknowledge that losing to Michigan as a three-touchdown favorite was bad, but humiliating the South in Ohio was a welcome chore which would have otherwise been inaccessible.
And winning that game sent the Buckeyes to Pasadena, where they were up 34-0 against the only undefeated team in the country before halftime. Oregon now has the unique privilege of finishing the season as the nation's only 1-loss team, and sucks for them - it's the only game the Ducks will be remembered by.
Which means losing to Michigan unlocked two blowout, memorable, significant postseason wins. This sent the Buckeyes to another bowl game - this is taking some getting used to - down in Texas, where Ohio State took down Texas and a narrative it had not been able to shake without having a James Franklin asterisk attached to it.
They finally won a close game in the 4th quarter against an elite team. Scored the last 14 points of the game - we're now talking about an Ohio State team, a house divided that lost at home to a pedestrian Michigan team earning its way into the national title game by winning three in a row carrying a degree of sequential difficulty you'll have trouble finding anywhere going back to when that club team in Columbus was clinging to its aspirations.
That gave them a fourth post-Michigan game, for the national title - which they controlled and won. It completed the season and ended the two-month Homewrecker phase of Michigan's influence on the Ohio State football program.
Michigan serves a vital role in sustaining Ohio State football. It started over 100 years ago as Aspiration. Then, Final Exam. De facto bowl game. Loathsome fixation. Odious barometer. Nostalgic remembrance. Boogeyman, and then on Nov. 30, Homewrecker.
Now that the season has ended with the same national champion as it did a decade ago, we can confidently say Michigan in 2024 was Ohio State's Virginia Tech. A mediocre, annoying opponent which stole a win in Ohio Stadium that inadvertently sent the 2024 Buckeyes tumbling into immortality.
Tip your cap. Nice win, Blue. Send Sherrone Moore a replica ring for his service - not sure if the ReliaQuest Bowl champion gets those because Ohio State hasn't participated in a peasant postseason since Brady Hoke's first season. It looked quaint on TV, though.
We've reached the season finale of a national championship journey. Let's get Situational one more time.
OPENER | A MOST EFFICIENT MURDER
Jeremiah Smith makes a catch against Notre Dame cornerback Christian Gray in the 4th quarter of the College Football Playoff National Championship. © Samantha Madar/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
If you've been a regular during this season of The Situational you've picked up on three trends I've been harping on since the season debut. For anyone new here who's just mainlining whatever CFP content they can click on - here’s what you missed:
- Sustainability, preserving wear and tear on critical players for a 16-game slog culminating in talent-equated bangers
- Sustainability adjacency, i.e. Ohio State's two-headed running back QuinVeyon Henderkins
- The ongoing identity crisis/battle between Ryan Day and Evil Ryan Day (ERD)
Ryan Day is the coach who got Paris Johnson Jr. to come to Ohio State. Justin Fields. Jack Sawyer. Whole bunch of guys-now-legends, he's an elite recruiter and a capable program steward even without having had the chance to figure out what kind of that he'd be somewhere smaller and less important first.
He is an empathetic, emotional gentleman who has gotten in his own way during critical moments of games. A very nice, affable and respectable man who called and coached some mystifying football games during his Ohio State head coaching tenure.
ERD got Ryan Day his current job. He put Michigan's defense in a blender, said he was going to hang 100 on them, buried Dabo Swinney in a pine box in the Sugar Bowl, decided Utah didn't deserve to enjoy the Rose Bowl - and most recently, he commandeered the Tennessee and Oregon CFP games.
He is ruthless. No idea what ERD is like as a person but I love him on game day.
The moment I realized Ohio State had a cheat code that would make every one of us forget about Marvin Harrison Jr. forfeiting his final season of eligibility was on this YAC during the Western Michigan game, GIFfed below.
It felt like a warm blanket. They can design the simplest plays to just get this kid the ball whenever they want - and he can do this. Jeremiah Smith in ERD's hands is a national title threat. It just required the unbothered, ruthless alter ego of Ryan Day to materialize.
Jeremiah Smith running away from Western Michigan's entire defense back in early September.
ERD went to Smith in Eugene late in the game, and officials called a very iffy OPI on him for doing so. He coached both Oregon games, actually - the first one included the losses of Josh Simmons and Will Kacmarek which put blocking what he wanted to run in conflict.
But then for stretches, Ryan Day showed up and Smith went unused, most notably on Nov 30. He was a useful decoy in the Cotton Bowl, but the production he enabled there was obvious. There was none of that on Senior Day.
It began to appear as though ERD’s disappearance was happening again in the final half of the season with a sizable lead slipping away and Smith getting no targets or looks after halftime. The game got tense as the Irish began picking on Ohio State's extremely grabby secondary, and suddenly a blowout was a one-score game.
Back in July I predicted Smith would be the B1G Freshman of the Year by emulating the way Maurice Clarett had effectively replaced graduated senior Jonathan Well's production. My belief was he wasn't better than MHJ, he was just ahead of his development. You don’t have to debate if that’s true. It’s true enough.
In the same timeline, ERD only started directing traffic toward MHJ's location during his freshman postseason. That takes us to the 2nd half in Atlanta, where Smith had no touches while Ohio State was running QB powers to nowhere, desperately trying to shed the clock of its remaining minutes.
Georgia knocked MHJ out of the previous game they played there. Smith was on the field and available. He was just unused. It felt desperate and familiar. But then, ERD showed up and called game.
In Jeremiah Smith, we trust
— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) January 21, 2025
Take another look at the game-sealing 3rd down catch made by the @OhioStateFB star freshman #B1GFootball x #CFBPlayoff pic.twitter.com/6LAE34Emlz
They can design the simplest plays to just get this kid the ball whenever they want.
The audacity of trusting your aliens to win the biggest games in their biggest moments - and allowing them to do so. Between 2021 and 2023, Day regularly put Ohio State's fortunes on its punt and field goal teams, taking guys like Chris Olave, JSN, Emeka Egbuka and MHJ off the field on 4th down in favor of the program's weakest unit. That’s not cautionary, it’s a reckless misuse of resources.
On Monday night with Notre Dame sucking the momentum out of what had been a lopsided affair - it's sports, this happens - the Buckeyes could have done the same thing. One more QB power for a yard and then try to flip the field with a punt. That's what Day had been doing coming into this season.
He changed his behavior in the loudest way possible. This is what those 5-star aliens are here to do.
Ryan Day should run the football program and aid in play design. ERD should keep him away from in-game strategy. As it turns out, the two can coexist. They just won a national title together.
INTERMISSION
The Solo
The last time we had to tolerate the unforgivable phrase Defending National Champion Michigan Wolverines it was following the 1997 season. This year, intermissions will pay homage to that cursed year's Billboard Hot 100.
We have reached the end of our cursed 1997 homage which was always intended to exorcise the demons from the 2023 season. Thank you Chumbawumba, Spice Girls, Celine Dion, Biggie, Sheryl Crow and all the others for your service.
Ohio State has won the national title. That calls for a final song psychologically impossible to resist enjoying. Here's the list of candidates. The clear winner for our final intermission is Let Me Clear My Throat, featuring a Call and Response. Let's answer our two questions.
are the musician and crowd in this video actually performing the Call and Response?
This is a live cut, reader - we saved the easiest for last. John Bowman Jr. better known as DJ Kool is on the callout while the denizens of Bahama Bay in Philly are our responders. It was all captured on film. VERDICT: Yes, conclusive.
does this Call and Response slap?
How fitting that the butt-shakiest banger of 1997 features a Call and Response reflective of the Buckeyes' performance through a grueling 16-game season that included four straight elimination games against the best the sport has to offer:
Y'all tired yet?
HELL NO
And y'all ready to quit?
HELL NO
If fatigue set in for the 2024 Buckeyes, it didn't show - getting tuckered out was not why they dropped those two of their 16 games. Slowing down the pace of play in September and November paid dividends in December and January.
They're still not tired yet. Alas, there's no one left to play. VERDICT: Slaps.
The Bourbon
There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.
Ohio State football: Run by New England's finest.
Ryan Day was born in Manchester. Chip Kelly was born in Dover. They both played for the same high school and the same college before coaching at their alma mater, the University of New Hampshire.
Jim Knowles graduated from and coached at Cornell. Ithaca, NY is not in New England, but it's right next door. These guys ran your 2024 Ohio State Buckeyes. Made in Ohio with significant help from...New England. Yes, reader. Of course there's a bourbon for that.
The New England Barrel Company is five minutes from the hospital where Kelly was born. If you're worried about New England failing to mesh with Ohio, NEBC's promise is that they're just like you. They’ve dabbled in other spirits but figured out their calling is whiskey.
Their Small Batch Select runs 70/21/9 corn/rye/malted barley and was distilled in Owensboro, KY - so if you had concerns about New England not being worldly enough for your high standards, here's a reason to believe. The result is something worth savoring.
This is basically Apple Pie bourbon without the apple pie preparation, which seems appropriate for something with New England on the label, and that's from nose to finish. The heat from all of that rye hits on the palate but it doesn't overwhelm any part of the experience.
You can find it online, possibly in Ohio - and definitely in New England.
CLOSER | EVERY MOMENT SINCE
Ryan Day celebrates with Kenyatta Jackson Jr. after winning the CFP National Championship. © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
After Nov 30 happened I did what every healthy fan does, which is rip off 6,500 words about what makes the state of Ohio incompatible with what we just witnessed. This is less of an opinion than it is an historical fact; remember, even the guy who came up with the Gold Pants tradition decided The Game wasn't worth the paycheck.
It might sound shocking but it's actually easier to change out who Ohio State's head coach is than it is to tell a state with 11 million citizens and a fan base with millions more than they need to change who they have been for 134 years. Losing to Michigan this way created the way we still talk about John Cooper. We have seen this before.
For the first 133 years of Ohio State football, football seasons took a specific shape. Early on it was a parade of in-state opponents. The Western Conference then appeared, followed by the Big Ten, the Big Televen (no one cool called it that but math should matter) when Penn State joined, the B1G when Nebraska arrived and all the teams ever since. From local to regional to national.
Postseasons went from not existing to becoming the way we said goodbye every year. First, no bowl games, then sometimes the Rose Bowl - but not twice in row, because that wouldn't be fair to other teams. Then other bowl games arrived, and the no-repeat rule was lifted which among other things sent the Buckeyes to Arizona a whole bunch of times.
The only constant throughout the eras was The Game, a prized possession shared by two programs. There's no bowl game or any other sporting event like it in American history.
The 134th season of Ohio State football presented something we had to experience to understand. A 12-team playoff with a four-game path to a title creating what is effectively a second season of football.
After Nov 30 it felt like Ohio State would play one and pack it in - after all, the Missouri Cotton Bowl just happened. But that's not what took place. What transpired was possible; it just didn't feel likely. How the past eight (!) weeks went down changed everything in a way the permanently scarred 20th, 37th, 79th and 106th Ohio State teams couldn't have possibly dreamed.
The expanded CFP doesn't make the Michigan game matter less. It makes every single other game matter more. Ohio State is pretty good with those opponents, so the 134th team since 1890 earned the right to this opportunity. Genies don't grant wishes like this.
But second chances don't create inevitable happily-ever-after endings, teams have to manufacture those by themselves. The tepid, scared, too small-for-the-moment coaching that has created Ohio State's current Michigan problem is incompatible with happily-ever-after endings. At least it was the first 133 years of the program.
It sure seems that this latest Michigan loss was what finally broke that toxic tendency, though we'll have to wait until November to know for sure. Listen to this exchange between Pat McAfee and Will Howard, noting the danger of going to the air on 3rd and 11 while Notre Dame was scavenging precious seconds to try and come back from oblivion:
"There was no question that I was throwing that thing to four..
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) January 21, 2025
He whooped em on that route and I love having the ball in my hands with the game on the line"@whoward_ #PMSLive #GoBucks https://t.co/EclWGSVGai pic.twitter.com/LuI6ERC4Rz
Ohio State recruits players who want to play football in those moments. They can run clock anywhere. They can play for field position and field goals anywhere. Stars in the making just want to be stars with everyone watching. That's why they're here. This is the brand of football Day and Urban Meyer before him brought to Columbus, but Day wasn't coaching it like that in those games.
Howard was excited to throw it to Smith on Monday night to end Notre Dame’s season. He knew that's what he was going to do before they even got to scrimmage. Kyle McCord liked throwing to his high school teammate with the game on the line. CJ Stroud, a man with no poker face, used to pout when Ohio State brought out its punt and field goal teams with short yardage to go.
Stars are incompatible with what Ohio State was doing against Michigan, which only helped Michigan. It took something that didn't exist the first 133 years of Ohio State football for that incompatibility to finally dissipate. The 2014 and 2022 postseasons show that second chances are savored by this program. The expanded CFP is a second chance on steroids. They just need to earn the right, every year.
I closed that 6,500-word screed with a suggestion for Ohio State's beleaguered head coach:
He needs to forget who he is and remember who he was.
That's the guy who just beat the brakes off of Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame. He's a national champion. I hope he sticks around. He needs to beat Michigan again.
Thanks for getting Situational this season. Go Bucks. The 2024 team will live forever.
