Michigan Seizes The Day
Originally Published: December 1, 2024 for Last Word On Sports
Carpe Diem, boys! Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.
For the fourth year in a row, Michigan seized the Day and summarily stuffed him in a trash can.
There’s a certain kind of sports fan – a certain kind of person, really – whose greatest joy is Being Correct. They are equal but opposite to those who cannot wait to be proven wrong. Here we have an instance of the latter.
This year’s Game is squarely in ‘Not In The Face’ territory for the Wolverines. They’ll take their medicine and move on towards crucial bowl game practices in preparation for another try in 2025.
That is, of course, unless they can Shock The World.
Oh, the glory of fallibility.
Michigan Football Shocks the World
Sherrone Moore understood the assignment. He’s won this game before, as have all non-freshmen, and non-transfer members of the roster. They played far from perfect, but they didn’t play scared. They forced the Buckeyes into the muck with them rather than engage in a shootout.
Ohio State seemed all too willing to oblige. Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson are excellent running backs, especially outside the tackles. Instead, they were repeatedly hurled directly into the awaiting jaws of all-world tackles Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant. As a program, on a cultural level, the Buckeyes seemed hellbent on proving they could be the tougher team (i.e. the better rushing team), rather than simply attack any number of actual weaknesses.
This, plus a pitch-perfect defensive blueprint from Wink Martindale, gave the Wolverines windows to strike. Makari Paige shook off a season’s worth of tackling regression to plant Will Howard on a third-down attempt and added a massive red zone pick. Another clutch interception – this one from Aamir Hall – turned into a Kalel Mullings touchdown. Davis Warren threw two interceptions of his own, but OSU got zero points from them, including a missed field goal that led to a 15-play, 77-yard, nine-minute Michigan drive. They controlled the clock, created havoc on defense, got great special teams play, and planted a flag in the Shoe – metaphorically, if not physically. More on that later.
Ryan Day’s Seating Arrangements of a Certain Temperature
The Wolverines have now beaten the Buckeyes in four straight matchups for the first time since the Cold War ended. Day’s .868 career winning percentage through 76 games would make him an instant Hall of Famer anywhere else. But – and this is one of the bigger ‘buts’ you’ll ever see – he’s 1-4 against Michigan.
65-6 against Not Michigan, and yet Day’s job – if not his career – is in inexplicable jeopardy. Some of that is hubris on Day’s part. During a private team meeting in 2020, Day reportedly told his team, “Michigan better hope for a mercy rule this year because we are going to hang 100 on them.” In the four years since Ohio State has cumulatively scored 84 points in The Game.
One year after that, Michigan finally gave Jim Harbaugh his first coaching win in the rivalry, a snowy 42-27 victory. In the aftermath, the former Wolverine headman had a fairly innocuous retort. “Sometimes people are standing on third base, think they hit a triple, but they didn’t.” Since then, Day seems to have spent each iteration of this rivalry trying to prove he didn’t inherit a fully operational Death Star, rather than accept his circumstances and use them to his advantage.
All the recruiting successes, $20 million spent on roster construction, and the flattening of (most of) the rest of the Big Ten – they amount to a hill of beans (Aesculus glabra, specifically). Jim Harbaugh was afforded six years to figure it out before finally breaking through. It’s starting to seem like the OSU faithful aren’t willing to give Day the same.
The State of “The Game”
Ohio State is otherwise an unmitigated success factory. They’ve had five losing seasons since 1950, none of which were outright abject. They must plumb other depths to find reasons to feel the same miseries as the rest of college football. This is the deal Day signed – all your other successes are moot if you lose to a five-loss Michigan team. He now seemingly needs to win a National Championship to save his job.
What’s more troublesome is the postgame fracas. Michigan players went to plant a flag at midfield. Ohio State players, led by Jack Sawyer, rushed the field with more fervor than they’d shown the previous 60 minutes to rip the flag out. It led to a lot of shoving before Ohio State police began pepper spraying Michigan players. Ugly, and unacceptable.
Much will be made in the coming days about how Michigan players started it by planting the flag in the first place, but the Wolverines did the exact same thing without issue in 2022. Planting a flag in your rival’s field is nothing new, and there’s no reason it has to come under fire here. There’s clear physical instigation by the Buckeyes in this instance. As Michigan’s star running back said after the game: “They gotta learn how to lose, man.”
What Happens Next?
For Michigan, another 365 days of bragging rights as they head into the offseason with fresh energy to prepare for the Bryce Underwood era. At 7-5, they look like they’re headed for a decent bowl game – current projections are the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, the Reliaquest Bowl (formerly the Outback Bowl), or the Music City Bowl. Thereafter, some staffing changes feel both imminent and necessary. Martindale’s defense grew over the course of the season, and he now seems likely to be in Ann Arbor next fall, but Kirk Campbell’s offense remains a sticking point. Moore has decisions to make on that side of the ball.
For Ohio State, another 365 days of misery, regardless of their playoff performance. Whether their current head coach is in Columbus for all 365 is another story.
