This golden era of deeply unsatisfying highs has reached another precipice.
It spans 58 games, during which the Buckeyes have a 50-8 record. This version of hell comes with central air and a whirlpool. Deeply unsatisfying highs is the pinnacle of our righteous entitlement.
The era began with the pandemic season which was abbreviated, canceled and then uncanceled before culminating in a CFP title game with only 60% of the roster available and in midseason form to face Nick Saban's best team ever with 12 games under its belt.
No Gold Pants, no natty, no double-digit win season because math and viruses don't work that way. Deeply unsatisfying highs, even with Dabo eating shit in a vacant dome. If this weekend's three-touchdown spread looks steep, you might be forgetting the Buckeyes had been favored to beat Michigan by 30 during that diminished season, or 70 less than Ryan Day's best-laid plans.
Jim Harbaugh chose to save his job by tapping out and concluding what would have been a 2-5 season with a spirited practice in the place where his termination notice would have landed. This was a bigger loss for Ohio State than the canceled Oregon, Illinois and Maryland games combined.
Had the Buckeyes not entered the calendar year off of what happened against Clemson in the previous season's CFP Semifinal, a national runner-up season against all odds might be remembered with a higher degree of satisfaction. That was the first precipice, and it came and went without recourse.
Precipice Two was scuttled in Ann Arbor 11 months later, complements of a defense impaired by Jeff Hafley's misplaced career aspirations and a neophyte head coach's short bench of adequate replacements. Being a hiring manager for the first time is hard enough, let alone when you're vetting candidates over Zoom.
The flu bug which arrived from East Lansing the previous Saturday and the existence of Connor Stalions are both downstream from the 2021 Michigan loss root cause, and if you don't believe that - remind yourself the Buckeyes proceeded to win a shootout in the Rose Bowl. A shootout. That's how Ohio State would have to win until the defense was repaired.
Oregon and Michigan beat Ohio State in 2021 by telegraphing their intentions against a defense ill-equipped to stop them. Ironically, the Wolverines gave away their signals that season. This brings us to Precipice Three, the most odious of the bunch.
The rivalry flipped when Ohio State paused what had been an inexhaustible obsession with beating Michigan in every POSSIBLE way, every day of the year.
By the time Ohio State hosted Michigan to end the 2022 regular season, Harbaugh's staff had removed several necessary chores from traditional in-game execution, namely the need to read and react. That game should have been a Rose Bowl-style shootout with the Buckeye offense propping up its shaky defense.
Instead it was an ambush. The visitors won the 2nd half 28-3 in Ohio Stadium against an offense that would score 41 points against Georgia in Atlanta a month later. As for the lowercase-v victors, they went on to allow 51 points to TCU, a junior varsity football program whose playbooks they were unable to loot in advance. Odious!
Michigan cheated is the shiny object that gives too many Buckeye fans artificial comfort. That's because once Precipice Four arrived last season, the Saturday specifics and schematics were barely material.
All of the juice which had sloshed around on one side of the rivalry for the better part of two decades had leaked into the other. A grace period created by Harbaugh's decision during the pandemic created a rivalry vacuum filled with Michigan players who, for the first time since games were broadcast in high definition, had no experience being emasculated every November.
The best illustration of this vibe shift was the Buckeyes' jittery quarterback last season, who was more obsessed with not making mistakes than he was with desecrating an undefeated Michigan team in its own building. The encapsulation of Ohio State's devolution during this stretch materialized when he ended up making - pause for a 12-second fart sound - several devastating mistakes.
The home team - cloaked in scandal and coached by an interim replacement for the sixth time that season - played with confidence and joy. Every last drop of rivalry juice was on their sideline. The visitors were utterly joyless. Everything from 2001-2020 was flipped.
Three Novembers after the pandemic, no Michigan players had any firsthand memories of what normal tastes like. Ohio State beating good, bad and indifferent Michigan teams was normal. This golden era of deeply unsatisfying highs is abnormal. Ohio State is as complicit as Stallions in allowing this to become normalized.
The Wolverines combined fresh coordinators, more veteran players than had been seen on any single roster since prior to 1990 and the type of counterintelligence that isn't permissible to reanimate the moxie Jim Tressel had looted from their program upon his arrival.
The shift in Ohio State's EQ in 2024 is best demonstrated by Will Howard's steadiness and buoyancy.
This is how Harbaugh successfully responded to the final precipice of his own coaching career. After five seasons in Ann Arbor and a sixth which would have terminated his contract, he concluded he could not beat the Buckeyes on the field. So he beat them off. Didn't even buy them a drink first.
He executed an audacious and comprehensive strategy to disassemble Ohio State's dominance from its schematics and modern rivalry legacy to its emotionally volatile head coach. Harbaugh solved the puzzle. Then he got the hell out of town as quickly as possible.
The Buckeyes' record since the pandemic is that deeply unsatisfying 50-8. They went 51-7 in the 58 games prior to that turning point and this series of precipices. Recession-proof is a perk which feels like a curse - when you look at it from outer space.
The program hasn't been good enough, as obnoxious as that sounds everywhere except for Ohio. It's clear what happened, if you strip out the emotion and put the scandal in proper perspective: This rivalry flipped when the Buckeyes paused what had been an inexhaustible obsession with beating Michigan in every possible way, every day of the year.
They ceded the margins, psychological superiority, mental acuity and let their guard down - including on the sidelines of games which didn't involve the Wolverines at all - which is foolish and inexcusable. That's because everything Ohio State does involves Michigan. Always.
Ohio State figured good enough was good enough. It may have woken up from that daze in January.
Our golden era of deeply unsatisfying highs has reached Precipice Five. On Saturday it will either conclude or be extended for another year. The Game will be played. Let's get Situational.
OPENER | LOVE LIES BLEEDING
Ryan Day walks back to the sideline following a 1st half time out against Penn State. © Dan Rainville / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
One year ago this week I concluded Ohio State could never beat Michigan again with Ryan Day.
Competence and desire weren't the issue. He was too nice and normal for a job that can only be sustainably performed by a sociopath, and his malignant humanity showed up the loudest in his org chart.
Dead weight is called that for a reason, and Day appeared to possess the kind of toxic empathy which kept guys like Parker Fleming, Corey Dennis and Tony Alford underperforming and receiving W-2s while also declining to solve internal conflicts.
He allowed irreconcilable philosophical differences between Jim Knowles and Larry Johnson to fester for what ended up being two-and-a-half seasons. He took Brian Hartline's receivers - the envy of the whole goddamn sport - off the field to let Fleming's disaster unit concede 4th and short over and over and over again.
That 2023 Michigan game, like the one 26 years previously in Ann Arbor while Day was a high school senior in New Hampshire, was winnable in about seven different ways for Ohio State. The Buckeyes actively chose to giftwrap the conference and a magical season instead of wrecking both, and that landed on the head coach unnecessarily doing four jobs at once.
He haS one job, and the most promising development for this season HAS BEEN that in 2024 Ryan Day finally only haS *one* job.
It took a Cotton Bowl nobody wants to acknowledge ever took place for Day to finally understand that he can and should do whatever the fuck is necessary for Ohio State football if it results in sustainable winning without collateral program damage *condescending stare toward Ann Arbor*.
Day's congeniality with shitty coaches were actively wrecking his vocation. His micromanagement had minimal consequences 80% of the time, which gave him a false sense of security that being the head coach, offensive coordinator, QB coach and lead recruiter was sustainable.
Head coach is the biggest job in Ohio. Distracting that role with bandwidth sabotage had a material impact on softening program culture - Lou Holtz could see this taking place from his couch. Multi-tasking impaired game day operations in the most critical moments of the schedule. It was unsustainable and had to end.
So Day finally cut some of those mediocre good guys loose, weaponized James Laurinaitis, hired two good offensive coordinators he could trust and executed a targeted, aggressive and practical recruiting strategy - south of whatever Texas A&M set on fire with all that oil money a few years ago but well north of overvaluing austerity.
It wasn't perfect, but it didn't have to be. Could have done better with offensive line talent. Didn't resolve the Johnson-Knowles philosophical differences until after the defensive line's inexcusable performance in Eugene.
He's still at risk of approaching the Michigan game intent on relitigating the 2023 version, or the one from the year before - because amid all of the major changes Day made to the program following the Missouri debacle, he is still the most emotionally volatile coach since Wayne Woodrow, with apologies to Urban and his calcium channel blockers:
"(Losing to Michigan) is one of the worst things that's happened to me in my life, quite honestly,” Day said. “Other than losing my father and a few other things, like it's quite honestly, for my family, the worst thing that's happened.
So we can never have that happen again ever. And that's been the approach all season.”
It's galling to hear someone say this out loud. But it acknowledges the subtext of his job requirements.
After allowing his previous post-pandemic quarterbacks to both speak to the media and call Michigan just another game, Will Howard emerged this week with a completely different tone. Words inform actions. Soft was never a tactile or physical description of Ohio State's players.
Ryan Day celebrating Indiana's botched punt attempt in the 2nd quarter of last weekend's game.
This level of offseason urgency should be closer to the norm going forward, because college football will not stand still or permit a single autocrat to reign supreme in this era. January just seemed extreme because of how inactive Ohio State behaved previously.
Day moved some furniture around after the 2021 disappointment and made only the obvious personnel moves for 2022. He did absolutely nothing entering 2023 - even giving Kevin Wilson's vacated spot on the coaching staff to the grotesquely unqualified Fleming while granting Laurinaitis a lateral move from Notre Dame instead of a promotion.
If you're one of those fans who cannot reconcile constructive negativity, wrap your head around that response to sustaining the first two-game losing streak in the rivalry in a quarter-century. We're Ohio State, it will be okay. Empires only crumble once arrogance enters the kingdom.
Winning this game is a year-long endeavor that never begins or ends.
This season Day reupholstered himself and the program - both of which were required for his survival and its continued relevance. He has one job, and the most promising development for this season has been that in 2024 Ryan Day finally only had one job.
We'll receive formal validation of the remediation on Saturday, but what began in January and took on late but necessary mutations mid-season looks like the most sustainable version of how Ohio State is supposed to look entering the final Saturday.
In the meantime, he's finally won over Holtz, his most irreverent detractor. Our final confirmation will be if Ohio State arrives prepared to beat Michigan inside-out and on the margins, without any hint of a past grievance or grudge. Winning this game is a year-long endeavor that never begins or ends.
Unfortunately, Ohio State didn't wake up until January. Hopefully it will overcome its late start.
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.
One of the most reliable industry-agnostic formulas for success is copying something that has been proven to work - this is how we ended up with product categories. Pepsi doesn't exist without Coke. Stone Temple Pilots doesn't exist without Pearl Jam.
Ohio State football doesn't exist without Michigan football - don't get mad, it's true. And Meredith Brooks doesn't exist without Alannis Morrissette. Her single hit, a Jagged Little Pill pastiche, contains an electric guitar solo. Let's answer our two questions.
Is the musician in the video actually playing the electric guitar?
Unmysterious! Brooks does her own guitar work, how Alannis of her. VERDICT: Yes, conclusive.
does this electric guitar solo slap?
Songs designed specifically for women to scream along to have been big business ever since fictional music executive Theodore Bangers realized women buy records and concert tickets too. Yelling song lyrics in a crowd is one of humanity's greatest customs.
Brooks and her songwriter put together a score meticulously designed to build toward a shouted word which wasn't allowed on television or radio until 1980s soap operas decided to push the envelope. That's how we got here. Shouting I'M A BITCH in public was as impermissible and yelling FIRE in a crowded theater a mere 50 years ago.
Brooks' solo serves as a screaming pause. Necessity is the bitch of invention. 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.
Blue Run came seemingly out of nowhere after 2020 and dazzled bourbon enthusiasts with a Trifecta. If that sentence is triggering it's because your brain picked out a few of those words and assembled them in a harmful sequence.
Blue Run Ready & Rarin'. Sort of available.
The distillery didn't cut any corners and was worth the hype, resulting in its acquisition by Molson-Coors in 2023 - one of this year's Eleven Dubgate sponsors. If you were there, you had a shot at their bourbon and their rye.
A shelf above Trifecta holds Blue Run's 8-year collection, comprised of 10 barrels which were identified as elite during their year six checkup and moved into some sort of fancy finishing school warehouse to complete their ascendance.
These picks have names like Bark & Bite, Show & Go, Sizzle & Steak and Pomp & Circumstance. I got my hands on Ready & Rarin', which like all Blue Runs uses 75/21/4 corn/rye/barley Kentucky mash. Eight years in the barrel including those final two fancy ones proof this up into the George Stagg Jr. realm. Nose hairs on notice?
Normally, yes - except R&R does not bite hard at all, which I think is part of Blue Run's rapid appeal since its abrupt appearance on the bourbon hunting circuit. I got coffee cake and nectarines on the nose, burnt lemon sugar and oak on the palate and what reminded me of after-dinner coffee at a nice restaurant to finish. At no point did it feel like a north-of-120 proofer.
Some of the 8-years retail direct from Blue Run for $250, but R&R is not among them. You can find any of ten on the arbitrage sites in the $450ish range. How do you finish a Blue Run? One glass at a time.
CLOSER | FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
Will Howard celebrates after scoring late against Indiana last weekend in Ohio Stadium.
A sizable segment of the fan base and this readership believes Michigan's cheating is the beginning and end of the story these past four years, from slithering out of the 2020 meeting to making an offense with CJ Stroud and Marvin Harrison Jr. look like something Brian Ferentz would concoct.
Debating the merits of everything else Harbaugh orchestrated is my own wasted energy. Michigan found its own way to beat Ohio State every day of the year and executed that plan. Sure, it included what's comforting to cling to. The fact that was effective, especially in 2022, was a symptom of an overwhelmed first-time head coach.
Understanding you're under constant surveillance is required behavior at every sport's highest level. Watch Harbaugh this season with the Chargers instructing his quarterback Justin Herbert to manufacture hand motions to make it appear to the opposite sideline like they’re discussing a pass he's about to throw coming out of a timeout:
Thought this was notable. Not because of the silly Harbaugh antics. But because they called designed QB run for Justin Herbert from the 4-yard line. pic.twitter.com/Ioq7R51EhK
— Adam Levitan (@adamlevitan) November 13, 2024
Thieves rarely get robbed. That's a coach who has his hand on his wallet at all times.
Avoiding theft is an unending priority, and part of what's made the Buckeyes so efficient and heady this season is the slower and more methodical way they line up, disguise and phase in their concepts. It's simplistic to look at Ohio State's lower scoring outputs and conclude they're being limited by competition. Security has a cost.
This team has been incredibly patient all season, deploying urgency when necessary. It has not yet allowed the fog of competition to obscure elements it may be failing to recognize, like I don't know hey why the fuck is Michigan's defense guessing correctly 100% of the time? Situational awareness and pulling your head out of the play calling sheet can work wonders, especially if wonders are what you need.
Having playable seniors will always be a bonus at this level, especially at quarterback. Quick - how many senior starting Ohio State quarterbacks can you name? J.T. Barrett, program records hog. Troy Smith, Heisman winner. Craig Krenzel, national champion. That covers the past two decades. Will Howard is a rarified blessing.
The post-Oregon hangover outing with Nebraska and the one-and-done failed experiment at replacing Josh Simmons with Zen Mihalski notwithstanding, the team limiting the Buckeyes' scoring output has been the one wearing the silver helmets.
Michigan's personnel is better left to Ohio State's tacticians, who are quite capable on both sides of the ball - a single afternoon with the Indiana Hoosiers isn't enough to declare a three-year special teams depression finally over. The football part should take care of itself.
As for the non-football part, this team from the neck-up hasn't been this equipped to win this game since it still had the previous head coach's rivalry mandate ringing in its ears. It. Is. Time.
Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Beat Michigan.
