Every fan of either Ohio State or Michigan has a favorite story, memory or game that is directly related to the rivalry.
The members of the Eleven Warriors staff are no different, as many of us have grown up on or covered The Game in some capacity. If you will indulge us, we would like to share some of our favorite stories and memories with you as the 114th edition of The Game is set for Saturday at high noon.
D.J. Byrnes – Associate Editor
2004 — No. 7 Michigan at Ohio State
I made my first venture into the free market as a teen by selling my ticket in C-Deck for $125 and buying one in A-Deck for $75 10 minutes before kickoff. I will go to my grave saying Ted Ginn’s punt return was the fastest I’ve ever seen a human being run. After Braylon Edwards dropped a crucial fourth down catch (a scene I’d come to see repeatedly as a Browns fan), we rushed the field and some dude named Troy Smith sat on my shoulder as we carried him around.
2009 — No. 10 Ohio State at Michigan
A Michigan fan acted like he was selling yellow cake uranium by offing two tickets to Ohio State fans steps from the Big House. Later, near the stadium latrines, a Michigan Man wearing a Block “M” cape told me Mike Hart was a better running back than Beanie Wells would ever be. Neither of them were playing in The Game. We did get to do an “O-H-I-O” chant around their stadium, though, and I will will one day tell my grandchildren I was blessed enough to see Tate Forcier throw four interceptions.
Andrew Ellis – Recruiting Analyst
One of my fondest memories of the rivalry is actually more of a local thing. I grew up on a cul-de-sac and there was this really annoying kid who lived down at the end of the road. I remember four distinct things about him: 1. He had a rat-tail. 2. He always wore those lame “No Fear” shirts. 3. He was way more obsessed with wrestling than anyone I’ve met in my life. 4. He was a Michigan fan (naturally).
I was a youth at the time and this delinquent was probably four years older than me (high-school aged). This was 1998 – the year of the tragic Sparty loss – and the kid was being especially cocky about the upcoming Ohio State/Michigan game. Even at a young age, I was still borderline depressed about the season being ruined, so I clearly wasn’t in the mood for his antics. So we ended up making a bet. I don’t remember what the amount was (probably like $5 max), but the dude kept chirping all week long while myself and the other non-weirdos were doing normal things that kids did in the late 90’s. This probably involved throwing a Nerf Vortex or trading Beanie Babies or whatever else.
Long story short: Ohio State won the game and I never got the money because this kid seemingly vanished into thin air. One day the home is occupied and then after that game it’s like they packed up and headed to some other mysterious place (likely Marion). All of the neighborhood kids were thrilled because they no longer lived in fear of getting hit with a Stone Cold Stunner at pretty much any given moment.
I later found out that they simply moved to another town that was about 20 minutes from ours. I never told any of the other kids that, though. I wanted them to think that I was solely responsible for his demise.
Johnny Ginter – Senior Editor
The first Ohio State game that I ever attended was in 2004, which astute Ohio State fans might remember as the year in which Mike Nugent's leg kicked the Buckeyes to several wins early in the season that they absolutely did not deserve. Troy Smith and Ted Ginn were nascent superstars, but overall it was a pretty crappy campaign that had amounted to a 6-4 record when the Wolverines rolled into Columbus.
As a child of the '90s and a sophomore at Ohio State, the dominance of the Jim Tressel era was anything but assured, so I spent the week before the Michigan game pre-emptively getting angry about a potential Buckeye loss and wondering if my pure rage could telekinetically make Mike Hart's brain explode. I remember walking to the stadium, seeing the looks on the faces of a jittery, anxious crowd and thinking "if these idiots aren't prepared to be as loud as I'm going to be I am going to get thrown out of this game." Imagine my relief when it turned out that roughly 105,000 other people apparently had the same thought, because I swear I saw Hart visibly flinch as he ran out into the teeth of the angriest crowd I have ever seen.
The rest was pure gravy. A significant underdog, the Buckeyes beat the crap out of a rival that clearly wasn't prepared to play in a rivalry game. Troy Smith started writing his legend, Brandon Joe was like the third best player on the team somehow, Mike Nugent kicked a 48 yard field goal, a drunk guy passed out next to me after kickoff and gave me a weak "yeeaaaahh!" when he woke up in the fourth quarter, and Michigan learned not to screw with a fanbase powered by fire and brimstone.
James Grega – Beat Writer
I have had the good fortune to be at every Michigan game since 2012 as either a spectator or media member, and have missed just one edition of The Game (2008) in Ohio Stadium since 2004.
College football games don't get much crazier than the 2016 game did. However, the reality is that game was sloppy on both sides until the fourth quarter and overtimes, which took a bit of the excitement away, in my opinion, despite the climactic finish.
My top memory comes from the 2006 game. The one that will arguably go down as the best game between the bitter rivals. As an eighth grader who had just started playing football a year earlier, I wanted nothing more than to be Troy Smith. The problem was, I was slower than a school bus in a snow storm, so watching Smith in person was the next best thing. My dad drove us down to Columbus the night before with no tickets in hand, with the hope that we could find a pair for cheap on campus the next day.
Instead of finding a pair of tickets, my dad was given one single ticket to The Game by the best man at his wedding. The ticket was in the south stands, and instead of taking the ticket for himself, he gave it to me to sit with his best friend's children who were just around my age. I got to witness perhaps the greatest football game ever to be played in Ohio Stadium because of my dad and his generosity, a moment and act I will never forget.
I fell down a row of seats when Ted Ginn broke loose on the greatest play-action fake you will ever see. I questioned the decision to sub in Beanie Wells for Antonio Pittman – with the thought of yet another fumble on my mind – only to see Wells bust through the line for a long touchdown run. I took a chunk of poorly laid sod out of the stadium after the game and reconvened with my dad for the long drive back to Brunswick, Ohio.
Kevin Harrish – Staff Writer
I’d always heard people say that covering Ohio State like this takes a lot of the magic out of Buckeye football, but I never really believed it. But now that I’ve done this for almost three years, I’ve realized that unfortunately, it’s absolutely true.
While I’ve grown in interest and am now generally much more knowledgable about the team, I’ve also grown drastically less emotionally invested. Buckeye losses don't phase me anymore, and the wins don’t exactly make me jubilant.
Much of it is due to the nature of my job, as I’m expected to be objective and professional as the site’s third-string beat writer, but some of it is simply due to just getting burnt out. But however it’s happened, I’ve just become a bit apathetic to it all.
Last season, the apathy reached an all-time high, but then that team came to town at the end of November.
That game brought back all the feelings I had watching the Buckeyes growing up. For just a few hours, I didn’t care about objectivity and I was the opposite of apathetic. I wanted to watch Ohio State – my school – beat Michigan, and I did.
I went nuts when Malik Hooker dove into the end zone after his interception, I screamed my lungs off during Michigan’s first overtime possession facing the south stands, and I didn’t hesitate a second before hopping the fence and rushing the field.
I often wish I had the same enthusiasm and passion I had when I was a kid, but when late November rolls around and I see those winged helmets lined up against the men of the scarlet and gray, I don’t have to wish. I may as well be ten years old again.
Dan Hope – Beat Writer
Whenever I think of any great sports rivalry, the memories that always seem to spring to the forefront of my mind are the moments when bad blood spilled over between the two teams. When I think of the Ohio State/Michigan rivalry, that brings me back to 2013 – the last OSU/Michigan game I've covered prior to this Saturday's game – when a skirmish on the field led to ejections from both teams and ended with an iconic moment: Ohio State right guard Marcus Hall giving the double bird to the Michigan Stadium crowd as he walked back to the locker room.
I still chuckle when I think about Hall becoming a meme, years before Michael Jordan's crying took over the Internet, as the image of Hall and his middle fingers extended high into the air became incorporated into the famous O-H-I-O. I still have to remind myself not to physically emulate Hall's action when discussing that (in)famous moment publicly.
It's probably not the moment Hall wishes his Ohio State career was remembered by, nor a moment Ohio State wants the rivalry to be defined by, but it is a moment that will tie his name with The Game – at least in my mind – for many years to come.
Chris Lauderback – Executive Editor
My favorite, or probably better described as my most important memory of The Game came when I was just a few weeks shy of my eighth birthday as Ohio State beat Michigan, 14-9, on November 21, 1981.
I won’t claim to vividly remember the game itself but I do recall watching the game from pretty much underneath the coffee table as my dad, uncle and all their buddies gathered in a small living room and got rowdy.
That crew was/is wild in general but things always got out of hand for The Game as the watch party came complete with a kegerator and who knows what else.
Anyway, like most seven-year-old kids, my dad was my hero and he of course raised me as a Buckeye fan from birth. As such, like most of you, I was always sporting OSU gear and watching the games.
My first real memory of watching games, and in particular The Game, is just one play but certainly a historical one as Art Schlichter scrambled right and finally upfield on the way to a six-yard touchdown made possible by a truly incredible block from fullback Vaughn Broadnax. The touchdown run – you might remember it as the play where Art bounded into a snow bank after entering the end zone – gave Ohio State a 14-9 lead with just about two minutes to play.
I’ll never forget the roar and euphoria felt in that living room as all these grown men around me celebrated like little kids. That singular vision of Schlichter’s run has stuck with me all these years, serving as the first real memory of me and my dad, who passed away back in 1990, watching Ohio State beat Michigan.
Andrew Lind – Recruiting Analyst/Photographer
One of my earliest and fondest childhood memories was going with my grandparents to watch Fostoria take on rival Fremont Ross. I was only four years old at the time, but I can remember clear as day my grandpa — a Fostoria alum and the biggest Ohio State fan I know — touting senior quarterback Damon Moore as the best player to ever come out of the small Northwest Ohio city.
“He's going to play for the Buckeyes, Andrew,” he said.
The magnitude of Ohio State's rivalry with Michigan was instilled upon me that day, as Fremont Ross had a star running back named Charles Woodson, who had already made it known he would play for the Wolverines at the next level.
I remember cheering my little heart out for Moore that day, and Fostoria went on to win, 22-15. Woodson didn't even play because he was dealing with bursitis in his knee, prompting everyone at the game to say he was too afraid to play against the Redmen, who went 4-0 against the Little Giants during his high school career.
I learned that day what it was like to hate everything Michigan stood for, a feeling that only intensified when Moore and Woodson went to the next level.
Of course, Woodson proceeded to then rip my little heart out when I was 7 years old, returning a punt 78 yards in a 20-14 win that helped his wrap up the Heisman Trophy. But we can leave that part out.
Jimmy Longo – Intern
For the 2006 Michigan game, I got to choose one of my parents to take me to the game. My grandfather is a graduate of Michigan’s law school, so my dad really wanted to take me (other than the obvious father-son bond reasons), but yet I decided to take my mom for some reason. She was the one with the alumni tickets, so I get it was her choice, but alas.
We sat in the south stands and it was the first experience I can recall with a heavily intoxicated individual sitting next to us. I was 11, so it was pretty funny. I mean, we were sitting in the south stands, so it was to be expected, but my mom wasn’t thrilled. By the end of the game she was ready to ground beef this guy’s face, we didn’t rush the field but it was one of the wildest nights of my life. My dad is still my best friend for some reason.
Ramzy Nasrallah – Executive Editor
Back in 2001 the idea that Ohio State could beat Michigan in Ann Arbor was a stupid, whimsical fairytale dream. It hadn't happened since 1987, which was discounted due to Earle Bruce being fired that week, like it required a historical, seismic event for the Buckeyes to even have a chance up there.
Jim Tressel gave his famous introductory speech that January where he promised Ohio State fans they would be proud of the team in the classroom, in the community and in 310 days in Ann Arbor. That's what people remember, because you can juxtapose that basketball game halftime speech with the Buckeyes winning and it's a nicely-packaged little memory.
But there is one moment in particular from the game that stays with me.
Throughout his first season we learned what Tresselball was. Ohio State would pull the guard and run the same play repeatedly, telegraphed, on first down, on third down, on any down - and we wondered why. Why. Whyyyyyyyy.
When Craig Krenzel handed the ball off to Jonathan Wells on 4th-and-1, we figured out why. Tressel had programmed his team all season to be ready to gain one yard when it mattered the most, and shortly after the 2nd quarter began with the Buckeyes already up 7-0 (the Buckeyes had a lead on Michigan! In Ann Arbor!) they needed that yard.
Wells took the handoff with the Wolverines loading all 11 guys into the box, fully-prepared for Tresselball, and Tresselball promptly knocked them on their ass. A decidedly mediocre and transitional Ohio State team was somehow up 14-0 against the #11 Wolverines on their field. National championship contenders from Columbus had tried and repeatedly failed to do what this team was doing.
We were 11 months removed John Cooper's firing, 10 months out from Tressel's halftime promise, two months beyond 9/11 and 20 full years from the last time the Buckeyes won in Ann Arbor without the benefit of an historical, seismic event to lift them in their biggest game of the season. Ohio State telegraphed its favorite play and dared Michigan to stop it. Every bit of football anxiety that had accumulated over the past two decades vaporized in the 2nd quarter of the 2001 edition of The Game. We can do this. We can always do this.
That play signaled the shift in the rivalry. It tilted the crippling fear of failure to the other side. Ohio State ended its darkest era on that play, and every great memory and season-ending victory that has come since 2001 has ridden the crest of that wave.
Vico – Senior Editor
I enrolled at Ohio State in fall 2002 from California, so I remember none of the 1990s malaise and walked into Ohio State "cold" not really knowing into what I was entering. My favorite memory of The Game is my first: 2002. I was front row in Block O – kind of lucked into that spot – for that game. When Ohio State was driving for the game-winning score, I remember Block O was dead silent, eerily silent, because the action was at the other end of the field. On the game-winning score, I remember audibly blurting out, "Option!?" on the play in particular because Ohio State might have never even shown that play the entire season. Jubilee obviously followed.
My favorite part of that game was clearly the aftermath. I was one of the first people on the field to celebrate. Several minutes into the celebration, I remember a vortex kind of forming at midfield that sucked the fans into the South end goal posts right as fans were starting to climb it to try to tear it down (which would've been a fool's errand given the construction of those goal posts). I was never going to try to climb those---I think they were greased, even---but I got to the front of that line in front of the goal posts right as the cops finally lost their patience and started spraying. My glasses fortunately took the brunt of the spray; they're basically poor man's goggles like that.
Better yet, in the jubilee of victory, and getting sprayed in the face by the stadium cops, I for some reason thought it was wise to call my mom and ask if she was watching and saw that game. She was, but she was more concerned that I was high on drugs when I called. I had to tell her I wasn't and I was simply high on life.
Good times.
David Wertheim – Intern
Being a #teen, my memories obviously revolve around recent history. I still have yet to go to an OSU-Michigan game in person. As I am a freshman, and the Buckeyes do not play the Wolverines in Columbus this year, my first experience will be next year when Ohio Stadium holds host to the iconic game.
However, I have been able to immerse myself in the rivalry in other ways. Every year, my grandfather (OSU class of '68) and I go to a sports bar to watch the game with a few of his friends and a few of my friends. We have been doing this for about 10 years so whenever the Buckeyes lose (just twice since we've been doing our little tradition), we never go back to that bar to watch the game again. Likewise, when Ohio State wins, we go to the same bar the next year.
We've been going to Buffalo Wild Wings in Montgomery, Cincinnati, Ohio for the last five years and will be back there this Saturday.
