Dec 03, 2025
3 min read
Ohio State beat Michigan.In the American football game.In real life!
It's been almost 72 hours since the Ohio/Michigan game ended.
During that time, I replayed the entire game, listened to an hour of the Wolverines radio broadcast and wrote this with a great enemy call, and wrote this with an hour-long broadcast of the sports game.
I do other things, eat, be a father, husband, watch movies.In the waking moments after the end of the Michigan game, I was trying to burn off every shot, which wins in my head.
And if your reaction to this is "Wow, that sounds like an undiagnosed mental health problem," my response would be: It is, and also, shut up!I'm back to write about an incredible victory and I refuse to apologize!
For the first time in a long way, Ohio State Beat Michigan!Give me a threat level on this!
Arriving in Ann Arbor in bad condition
Believe it or not, I watched everything in the north.You can take a threatening role from a dad, but you take a threatening role from a dude. No way, I've been paying attention to every Michigan game this year.
Seats has great potential and a great price, and he was good in the first option, which was almost the only option for Michigan.He was good!He was often worse and rarely better, and he played this Saturday.Hell, it's the whole team: pretty good, sometimes.But weird ass?On a 36-yard drive from the 36th quarter, he threw a pass for 26 yards, a forced attempt, and elite power.You can imagine Smashmouth football with a guy who runs it like that and thinks "damn good".
Then repeat it after the fact and you'll see a) an empty yard run, and D) yes, Michigan is dealing with some key injuries, especially in the running game.But mostly they have a hard time banging their heads against the wall looking for cracks.
Bryce Underwood could, with the right coaching, be a really great quarterback.Michigan could, with the right coaching, maintain a position as one of the five or six best teams in the United States.I can't see that happening with Sherrone Moore and company, who seem excited about building a college football program on fifty thousand variations of a game bash run.
This game will always be strange and will have unpredictable results because the image of Paint FUUS exists in fumes and boots and blades and sun-drenched opossums.I learned to accept it.
But I see a future for the Michigan Wolverines, and a CFP first-round loss to Tulane is the extent of it.
I was not happy with the appointment of Matt Patricia when it was announced.In my opinion, a guy who was involved in Detroit and failed to achieve anything in Philly was unlikely to do much in Columbus.
mistake!Always a mistake!That defense is somehow even with last year, and a big part of why he's so confident in his victory last Saturday.Each unit on the defense adopts what others do.Every stat or blitz is supported by what other people are doing, and it allows Patricia to take Smartricia to take Smartricia to take Smartricia, calculated risks when he needs to (even though he has a lot more Michigan).
It certainly helps to have five NFL players to start with, and while my personal preference for football narratives tends to lean more toward "safe no-names trying to get by in this crazy world," I think I'll take the current T-800 team instead.
There is little comparison.It's the first time since 1975 that a team has given up 16 or fewer points in the first 12 games of a season (a 9-3 Florida team that did it), but it's running deep;The Buckeyes allow just 203 yards of offense per game, while the next closest defense has more than 40 yards.
Over the last 30 years, the teams I've come across that come close to that distance from the rest of college football are the 2001 Miabama Crimson Seminoles.
College football might not see a better defense for a decade or more.It was extremely funny to watch Caleb Downs get angry because he took off his helmet after Iggy's tackle.
Men can swim
The first thought I had at the end of the Michigan party was "Xeus, nerve sweat really smells a lot worse than normal sweat."
My second thought was, "The only person I'm happier with than Ryan Day is Jayden Fielding."
Fielding got into too much trouble after the Michigan game last year.In this case, "too much" is synonymous with "anything," because there's a long list of reasons why Ohio State lost and he wasn't at the top.Let's just say he was at the top, if you want to be literal.If he makes two field goals, Ohio State wins.Good.No problem.There's no reason for crazy gamblers to threaten him because they bet their weekly quota on college sports.
Or we did doxing ryan day and yelling at his family or kids or any of the other wimps who have a parasocial fixation on ohio state football to satisfy their infidelity complexes.Those people do not force to celebrate this year.I'm sorry.Try to be a better person in the next 365 days.
Fielding hit two field goals on Saturday.They didn't affect the outcome of the game, but it was important because it started a story that started a year ago, saw him win a national championship and find redemption in AND AND.He deserves that moment, not just because of the crap he's been through, but because of the work he's put into the crap he's been through.It's taken in the field in a way that no Internet troll can inspire or validate.
Ryan's day was done after the game, but I knew those were the kinds of things he was thinking about doing.It's a dude's idea, he's looking at the state of college football to realize that Ohio State is crazy enough to have a Buckeye forward.
Want championships?Want more from Jeremiah Smith and Julian Saenz?Do you want to be one of the best 2-3 football programs in the country?Then you need him on the sidelines.
Want to continue hitting Michigan?It's weirder and more unbearable, but for his part, Ryan Day has learned some tough lessons as a coach.And he is there.You can see it.
Our real role as fans is to celebrate the players and coaches who are determined to take this whole crap to the promised land and pick them up when they fail.
That is.Because by lifting, you can make it taller.
The threat level is low.For another year, anyway.
