Well, it doesn’t get much better than 12-0 and a win over Michigan. Okay, it would be nice to have a bowl game in our future . . . but that wasn’t an option. 12-0 was the best we could do, and we did it.
I give a lot of credit to Urban Meyer. He took a 6-7 team and turned it around. He got it playing with passion, and he got it to believe in itself. He had a great senior class and good coaches to help him, but Urban Meyer set the tone. Obviously, we hope that he continues to recruit and coach as well as he did this year. If he does, the future for Buckeye Nation is bright.
And how about the Buckeyes’ defense? When they missed the tackle on Denard Robinson that allowed the long TD run at the end of the first half — and Robinson’s incredibly annoying spoon motion — I got a bad feeling. But the defense rose to the occasion in the second half, belting around the Michigan offense, forcing Robinson to fumble, stopping him on crucial plays, delivering crushing hits, forcing turnovers, and sucking it up as the offense muffed opportunity after opportunity. With the way the defense played in the second half, Ohio State should have won this game for two TDs or more. This big win goes to the defense — and to Carlos Hyde, for finally grinding out those tough, classic Big Ten first downs on the ground that salted away the victory.
I also need to give kudos to Michigan. One reason this game is the best rivalry in college football is that, year in and year out, the games are close and incredibly hard fought, no matter the records the teams bring to the game. This year was no exception — a nail-biter filled with bone-jarring hits and great plays. Every time the Buckeye defense forced a turnover in the second half, Michigan’s defense rose to the occasion and denied the Buckeyes the score that would have put the game away. Michigan was in the game at the end only because their defense played tough-as-nails defense. Anyone who watched the awful Michigan defenses during the Rich Rodriguez tenure has to give Brady Hoke some serious props for bringing the Michigan defense back to its roots and traditions.
For now, though, we’ll raise a glass to Urban Meyer, the Ohio State defense, and a much-cherished win in The Game. Beating Michigan never gets old.
This week comes but once a year
To be sure, this year The Game has a different feel. For one thing, it’s coming after Thanksgiving, rather than the weekend before. For another, Michigan is the favorite for the first time in years. But so what? This is a game where the records get thrown out the window. And if the Buckeyes can somehow beat the Wolverines, a dismal season will be salvaged.
On the OSU campus, 
What about the fact that Ohio State and Michigan are in different divisions? Well, what about it? The divisions are phony constructs anyway, developed just to allow the Big Ten to play a conference championship and collect the additional TV revenue that every major college seems to crave above most everything else. The important thing is that the The Game will still have prominence as The Game — the tradition-rich, bitter, end-of-the-season capstone of the Big Ten regular season.
Ohio and Michigan are divided by a state line located just a bit north of Toledo, and Ohio State fans and Michigan fans are divided by decades of hatred, bile, venom, and bitter rivalry, but we can and do agree on one thing — The Game is special and sacred, and shouldn’t be tinkered with for reasons of revenue, or ratings, or “branding,” or anything else. Michigan fans understand this, Ohio State fans understand this, and any real college football fan in the country understands this. Can it really be that the Big Ten powers-that-be don’t understand something so basic, so obvious, and so powerful?
My concern about 
Much of what makes college football the greatest sport of all is the history underlying the match-ups, the storied venues like The Horsehoe and The Big House where the games have been played for decades, the home field traditions, and the collective memories of the joys and heartbreaks that true fans have experienced in the games against their arch-rivals. Sports fans elsewhere understand the deep feelings at play in these rivalry games. They watch the Ohio State-Michigan game because they recognize the strong emotions, they appreciate that the players on both teams are playing their guts out because they so desperately want to beat their despised (yet respected) opponents, and they identify with heavenly highs experienced by the fans of the winners and the crushing despair inflicted on the fans of the losers. The Big Ten Championship Game will have none of that.
The good news is that the Big Ten is going to move from an 
As any reader of this blog knows, I would prefer to 
