When I was thinking about this article after The Game, I wasn't really sure what Threat Level would be able to offer on Monday night that hadn't already been hashed and rehashed a thousand times in the previous 60 hours or so. Honestly, as I sit here writing this on Sunday night, I'm still not really sure what that could be. Threat Level is by far the most popular ongoing thing I've ever written, so I feel a not-insignificant amount of pressure to add something unique to the discourse.
The problem is that I'm not quite sure that a guy who was too angry to shower this morning is up to the task. But I'll give it a shot:
I grew up in the 90's, when figuring out new ways to be angry about losing to Michigan was de rigueur for the fashionable Ohio State fan. The end of every season was a roulette wheel made out of pointing fingers; the coaching or the talent or the lack of focus or whatever, each loss was some fresh new hell to deal with that made it seem like the Buckeyes were just never going to get over the hump.
And, I suppose that's probably how Michigan fans felt for the better of two decades as Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer shoved their faces in the dog poo.
Anyway, one thing that I keep thinking about is that in the immediate aftermath of a(n incredibly embarrassing) Ohio State loss, there's no One Cool Trick that's going to magically fix everything.
You want to fire Ryan Day? It's not the worst idea in the world, and depending on how Ohio State plays in the playoff he probably deserves it. But does it beat Michigan? Does it get Ohio State another national championship?
SO NOW WHAT?
I'm hearing a lot of "the current status quo isn't acceptable, and you've got to take that risk" which is fair; this Ohio State team getting beat by that Michigan team in the way that they did is more than just a bad loss, it's a symptom of something much worse within the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. There's an almost endemic desire to do the easy thing in the most difficult way possible, to rack up style points that at this moment in time only exist in the head of one extremely shook head football coach.
Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Which is a problem, because ever since Teddy Roosevelt made filed rugby players stop gouging each others' eyes out with rusty spoons on college campuses, Michigan football has been an accurate measuring stick for what constitutes a good football program. No matter what, the Buckeyes could always point to the last game of the season and say "well, okay, if we beat this team, that's a sign that we're in a good spot as a program." Iron sharpens iron, or whatever idiom of your choice.
Tressel and Meyer immediately beat Michigan and then won national titles, whereas John Cooper couldn't and didn't. That's going back nearly 40 years, which is long enough to entrench the idea that one follows the other.
But I don't think that applies anymore. This iteration of the Wolverines is kind of ass! And will probably continue to be kind of ass! Which tells us nothing about the program if the Buckeyes win and just brings up further questions if they lose.
LIMBO
Where that leaves us is that whatever decisions are made about the football team going forward, it has to be acknowledged that getting rid of Ryan Day means trading in a guy who will reliably win you 10-11 games a season in favor of the equivalent of reaching your hand into a wet bucket filled with eels and eel-shaped generational football coaches. Ross Bjork might reach into the bucket and pull out another Urban Meyer, or he might pull out a Bo Pelini.
Maybe at this point you're okay with that risk, which is fine (hell, I might be too at this point)! Just keep in mind that Ohio State, despite a long, long, long-ass history of never being anything less than "good-to-great" for any appreciable stretch of time, is one bad coaching hire away from... well, damn: being Michigan in 2024.
If the Buckeyes want to avoid that fate, the only real solution here is to get better.
Which sounds exactly as nebulous as I mean it to.
