Ohio State runs the Big Ten — or does it?
The Buckeyes want to be heard on this point: They’re defending nothing. They’re chasing everything. And everything better mean Michigan.
Ohio State players line up opposite Michigan players on Nov. 30, 2024, at Ohio Stadium. (Photo by Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
It’s a sentiment that most competitors would embrace. Enter the silo. Silence the outside. Secure and protect. Focus on what’s to come, not what has come to pass.
However, that’s not what we do with defending national champions, especially when they’ve not beaten their arch nemesis since 2019 and haven’t won the league championship in a conference they claim to rule since 2020.
Not only has Michigan — Ohio State’s enemy now and forever — won three of the last four Big Ten titles and claimed the 2023 national title, but the Wolverines have watched an entire class of Buckeyes go winless against a program they refer to as “That Team Up North.”
The best tact, the best take, in any conversation where points must be made, is sharpening the truth into an iron point, especially when sliced at a rival. And that is what Michigan defensive end Derrick Moore did on Thursday when asked what he thought about Ohio State winning its most recent national title.
“First, I’d like to congratulate them on the win,” Moore said. “But you know it’s not a real win if y’all [Ohio State] ain’t beat us.”
Moore went on to elaborate on his assertion, noting the first-year 12-team School Soccer Playoff and the place the Buckeyes would have ended up had it not been for the expanded area.
“If the playoff enlargement wasn’t round, they wouldn’t have gained the nationwide championship. So we just about have a look at it like, y’all had a pleasant, little, straightforward run. However we helped y’all alongside the best way. We just about helped y’all construct again up. However after that, they dominated everyone that got here in entrance of them, so, I’ve bought to provide all of the credit score to them.”
Ahem: The place’s the lie? Ohio State, being the No. 8 seed, would doubtless have been not noted of a four-team playoff. And that loss to an unranked seven-win Michigan workforce would’ve slammed the door on a dialog to get the Buckeyes in amongst most rational followers and, extra importantly, a rational choice committee.
Derrick Moore #8 of the Michigan Wolverines runs a play in the course of the fourth quarter of a recreation towards Ohio State. (Photograph by Ben Jackson/Getty Photos)
Keep in mind this: Michigan ran the desk in 2023. The Wolverines ran by means of Ohio State with out their head coach on the sideline, proper by means of their competitors within the Massive Ten title recreation and over Nick Saban’s Alabama workforce and Kalen DeBoer’s Washington workforce to win the title. If not all nationwide champions are alike, 2023 Michigan appears to be like lots like 2018 Clemson and 2024 Ohio State appears to be like lots like 2007 LSU.
It’s one factor to win the nationwide title. It’s one other for Ohio State or Michigan to beat the opposite, and that’s by design. For therefore lengthy, we’ve lived for rivalry video games as a result of it wasn’t that way back that we counted votes to resolve who the nationwide champion was. Nobody was actually taking part in for one as a lot as they have been taking part in for the correct to level at another person in a recreation that mattered greater than it ought to and say, “I beat you.”
That’s what Ohio State-Michigan is all about.
It’s about eight consecutive losses from 2012 to 2021. It’s about City Meyer by no means realizing what it is prefer to lose to Michigan, and it’s about Ryan Day realizing these 4 losses to the Wolverines may imply extra to OSU followers than his one nationwide title.
It’s about crimson X’s on all phrases that start with the letter “M” in the course of the week of The Recreation. It’s about 62-39 (2018), 56-27 (2019) for Ohio State, adopted by 42-27 (2021) and 45-23 (2022) for Michigan. It’s about Michigan closing the hole from laughable in 2020 to “We Personal You” in 2024.
It’s affordable that evaluating the way you win is as necessary as successful, particularly given the Midwest penchant for honest play and taking the tough street, as a result of it’s the correct means. And that brings us to the apparent rebuttal, the place Ohio State may have a look at Michigan and ask, sincerely, “did not they cheat?”
Michigan defensive again Rod Moore (9) holds up a Michigan flag at midfield after the Wolverines defeated the Buckeyes. (Photograph by Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photos)
This is what we all know: The NCAA launched an investigation early within the 2023 season amid allegations that Michigan used a sturdy in-person scouting and sign-stealing operation. The Wolverines served a penalty for this in the identical season for which they gained the nationwide title, because the Massive Ten suspended Jim Harbaugh for the ultimate three regular-season video games of the yr after its investigation concluded Michigan had violated convention sportsmanship guidelines by way of an impermissible in‑individual scouting operation.
Simply two months in the past, according to reports, Michigan proposed suspending present coach Sherrone Moore for the third and fourth video games of the 2025 season for deleting a thread of textual content messages because the scandal broke. Then, this previous week, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti reportedly sent a letter to the NCAA Committee on Infractions suggesting that Michigan‘s soccer program shouldn’t face extra sanctions stemming from the sign-stealing scheme.
I feel what galls most folk isn’t that Michigan wasn’t punished, however that this system was not punished harshly sufficient for its transgression. In spite of everything, Ohio State doubtless misplaced an opportunity to play for the 2012 nationwide title as a result of, after a 12-0 season, it was compelled to serve a bowl ban as a result of gamers bought memorabilia. Immediately, that feels quaint.
Had a few of these occasions not occurred, the query would stay: Who runs the Massive Ten? In a season the place the convention might win a 3rd nationwide title in as a few years for the primary time within the CFP period and in a league that Michigan helped present in 1896, which now options 4 applications of their second yr as members, the constant excellence of Penn State and the awakening of Indiana, now’s the second for the convention’s two finest applications during the last 5 many years to throw down a gauntlet.
Come Nov. 29 on the Massive Home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the final two nationwide champs will meet, and we’ll have a look at the scoreboard to see who actually runs this league, and, maybe, the game.
RJ Younger is a nationwide school soccer author and analyst for FOX Sports activities and the host of the podcast “The Quantity One School Soccer Present.” Comply with him at @RJ_Young.
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