I'm always thinking about Michigan's rivalry with Ohio State, especially this week. Having grown up in the rivalry it's perfectly natural. But because I was so obsessed with the NFL as a kid, Michigan-Ohio State and the Rose Bowl were really the only college games I watched. I usually would root for Michigan in the first game ... and then go on and root for Michigan in the next.
The rivalry really took hold for me when I started undergrad life at Michigan. And man, were times good. I'm pretty sure we lost to stupid Northwestern more than we lost to the former Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. I remember being proud to graduate in December and have my final game as a student be this one. My mom, who received her doctorate 30 years prior, had Bo Schembechler's debut against Woody Hayes _ a 24-12 win for Michigan _ as her final student game. Also, this just happened to be my first game as an alum. It capped what might have been one of the best, most debauched weeks of my life. But where was I? Oh yes.
My dealings with Ohio State fans during that time were, as you might imagine from reading this site, rather extensive. But I relished it. I started to feel bad for some of my more frustrated friends, but then I remembered _ they didn't actually go to Ohio State. So I've indulged them and pretended the stakes were just as high for them, when they clearly weren't.
Even when one of our more, shall we say, bling-encrusted readers espouses a newfound desire to limit trash talk to only a couple recent on-field results, I've played along. Because, well, it's very easy to find bad things to say about Ohio State. For starters, Ann Arbor is much more fun. We have prettier girls. It's only cloudy and overcast 245 days a year, not 325. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know where this goes ... just like Mgoblog's comparisons, it's a rout. (Incidentally, those have been hilarious this week; I can totally see Jim Tressel making sure he's deleted enough files from his hard drive.)
I could also go further compare the Buckeyes to Republicans. After all, we do know how much they love exploiting the threat of terrorism, no matter how imagined. (Last year's stunt got big ups from this Buckeyes message board.) But I feel as if we've been down this road too.
So where does that leave us? With the game itself.
If Mike Hart makes like a certain Zaire-born Quebecois running back and goes all Biakabutukan on the Buckeyes, well, I'll probably feel like some special sacrament has been bestowed upon me, too. And if Michigan somehow loses ... well, I'll probably head down to South Jersey and trash Crimenotes' hotel room. But more likely, win or lose, I'll spend the rest of the day soaking up college football and basking in the glory of the best sports rivalry ever.
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3 comments:
Instead of hurling the smack right back at Flop (Biakabutuka? Really? That's the best you got?), I'll grant the point that the rivalry doesn't mean nearly as much to me as it does to Flop (let's say, it means half as much to me...making Flop and I even in our experience of national championships...). And, in the spirit of honoring the rivalry, I will relate my favorite OSU-Michigan story, which actually involves a year the hated team from up north won.
Anyway, I watched the 1997 OSU-Michigan game (the Charles Woodson game) at the house of a girl I had started dating not long before, which was located not at my own school (in a more fun city and with prettier girls than Ann Arbor) or at either of the schools in question, but at another midwestern university which shall remain nameless (it should be pointed out that said school is also more fun and also has prettier girls).
After the game, which I watched in utter horror and spent most of yelling "For God sake, Boston, stop antagonizing him!" at the screen, the phone rang, and the girl who answered it, who I had just met the day before, and who didn't know the caller, rather confusedly told me the phone was for me.
It was Flop, who drunkenly tracked down the number while in a phone booth in Ann Arbor, and called me there just to tell me he was holding a rose.
That's some good rivalrying...
It's too bad Michigan then came so close to the national championship after that game. Who won it that year? Oh, yeah...Nebraska.
This is what's hilarious about Ohio State fans ... any one else's success just burns them up good.
I'm glad for Crunk's sake he wouldn't have actually gone to Ohio State if they paid him (no, really). Beucause he would have been a sputtering mess in college and therefore I would have actually felt a little bad about all the trash-talking I did. As it was, he was just punchy enough at Thanksgiving break that I could talk it up and know he'd be OK.
The only other point I'll refute is that the Midwestern college town he speaks of was, in point of fact, kind of dull. But he lies not about the girls there. Or at his school (he did go to school in the South, after all).
Um, shouln't I be saying bad things right now? Oh yeah, Ohio State sucks donkey balls.
not to suggest anything amusing about yesterday's result, but i think mighigan helped its own bowl chances by losing.
osu is now probably a bcs team, and the ensuing chain reaction pulls michigan up into the outback or the capital one, right?
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