Rivals: Legendary Matchups That Made Sports History

11. Three Yards and a Pool of Blood: Ohio State versus Michigan

eleven Three Yards and a Pool of Blood Ohio State versus Michigan B R A D A U S T I N Regardless of what you might think personally of football at Ohio State remember that on October 21, your football team was in the spotlight. I do not know how many hundreds of college football games there were that day. I do know that your team, my team, the team representing the Ohio State University was good enough to participate in a game that dimmed every other college game in the country.We were all crushed by the Michigan defeat.We were stunned. We thought we would win because we wanted to win. It meant so much to us. Football does that to you. —Ohio State University Monthly, 1933 Woody would get you ready [for Michigan] all year.We used to say that Michigan was a separate season, a season in itself. He prepared for Michigan all year. Spring practice we’d be getting ready for Michigan defense. It was constant preparation for that game— the whole season every Monday. —Archie Griffin A book on sports rivalries would seem tragically incomplete to most readerswithoutachapterontheUniversityof Michigan–OhioState University football rivalry. Certainly, intrastate games such as Oregon–Oregon State, Auburn-Alabama, and California-Stanford have rich and distinguished histories , just as interconference rivalries such as Tennessee-Alabama, TexasOklahoma , and USC-UCLA do. Intersectional rivalries, most often 1WIGGINS_pages:Layout 1 2/11/10 3:26 PM Page 239 featuring Notre Dame, have long inspired interest and deep passions on a national scale. Nonetheless, looking at the span of college football history from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, the Ohio State– Michigan rivalry easily distinguishes itself as the most interesting and significant of them all. While other traditional college football games make claims to being “the Big Game,” Ohio State–Michigan has been the most consistently meaningful game for the longest span. This meaning both includes and transcends the importance of the game to title races. Pitting two of the nation’s largest universities against each other (along with two of the largest alumni bases) in season-ending games that usually have Big Ten conference and often national championship implications, this November game seems tailor-made for drama, intrigue, and, above all, passion. Just as importantly, the outcome of the game helps much of the population of both states define themselves, marking them as “winners” or “losers” just as much as the actual participants of the game. The participants, however, are those that do win or lose the game. Many of the men involved in this rivalry helped to create and personify the nation’s college football landscape: Fritz Crisler, Bo, Woody, Paul Brown, Archie Griffin, Charles Woodson, Hopalong Cassady, Desmond Howard, and Eddie George. Together, these universities have claimed eighteen national championships and have won outright or shared seventy-three Big Ten titles. Moreover, the individual talent on display in this rivalry has been astounding: ten Heisman Trophy winners, 322 All-American players, and 112 first-round draft picks. While it took some athletes years to establish their reputations, others gained notoriety almost solely because of their brilliant performances on college football’s biggest stage, in a game where even the stadia have personalities and nicknames: the “Big House” and the “Horseshoe.” Ohio State fans still have nightmares about Tim Biakiabuta’s 313-yard explosion against the Buckeyes in 1995, and Wolverine fans cannot yet believe that Troy Smith produced almost 400 total yards against them in 2004. The use of a possessive pronoun in the preceding sentence was no accident. This game’s meaning stems in large part from the ways it has personalized and crystallized a larger statewide rivalry over the past 110 years. The emergence of the most storied and heated rivalry in college athletics has its roots in the economics and politics of the ninteenth and 240 BRAD AUSTIN 1WIGGINS_pages:Layout 1 2/11/10 3:26 PM Page 240 early twentieth century. With Michigan producing automobiles in the early 1900s at an even greater rate than Ohio produced presidents in the late 1800s, these states were among the most important and exciting places to be during the formative years of modern American and college football history. It shouldn’t be a surprise that their universities also craved and created a similar place in the athletic spotlight. The intensity of the Ohio...