This has been a dreadful season for the Buckeye Nation. We’ve seen our coach, Jim Tressel, resign under fire. We’ve dealt with an embarrassing NCAA scandal that cut out the heart of our offense. We’ve watched the Buckeyes give up big leads, fritter away games, and play like pretenders rather than contenders.
But all of that means nothing this week, because Ohio State is playing Michigan.
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.
The Wolverines are playing The Game at home, and everyone expects them to win. They crushed Nebraska last week, their offense is clicking, and their defense is dramatically improved. The Buckeyes, in contrast, have lost two in a row. Yet . . . how will Michigan react to the high expectations? They’ve lost to the Buckeyes six games in a row, and every Wolverine fan thinks this is the year for the Maize and Blue to get some serious payback. If Ohio State can score some points and keep the game close, the pressure may work to the Buckeyes’ advantage.
We’ll find out come Saturday — and until then we’ll enjoy the excitement and taunting that make Michigan Week so special.
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 
What I find most interesting about the linked article — and the only reason I can see why the Big Ten would be interested in a school like Texas, or why Texas would be interested in jumping ship to the Big Ten — is the money angle. If the Big Ten added a 12th team and had a conference championship, it clearly would mean more money for the Big Ten and its member schools. The financial incentive for Texas is even more obvious. Consider this eye-popping statistic: TV revenue for each Big Ten school is $22 million per school, whereas TV revenue in the Big 12 is a mere $6.5 million per school. I had no idea that the difference was so dramatic. The presidents of Big Ten schools like Indiana must thank their lucky stars every day of the year that they are a member of the Big Ten where they cash that TV revenue check regardless of whether their season was good, bad, or indifferent.
Schadenfreude is an emotion that is well known to any fan of a sports team that has a bitter rival. When you beat your most important foe, when your arch-rival experiences a bad season or a tough loss, you remember the bitter defeats to that rival and you feel a bit of guilty pleasure at their current failure.
