The fact that “The Game” is now over forever in its significance, and all the drama that made it the best game every year is now gone, it is just so satisfying that not only did we win the last one, we closed out a special rivalry by winning the last 3. Those wins put a definitive stamp on the whole history of the series that loudly confirms that Michigan won and they lost. In fact, it wasn’t even close, as the series finished with us having what..a 17 or 18 game lead right? We beat them decisively..game over. From now on, the rivalry will be no more significant than an NFL conference team rivalry..those aren’t close to rivalries like Michigan and OSU had for a century.

It’s over forever…and Michigan went 3 for 3 in game 7 with a walk off grand slam to finish it. Nothing will ever change that. Next year when sucknuts try to act up, just dismiss them with “What rivalry? That is over dude. You’re just another team now..like Rutgers or Northwestern. It’s over and we won everything. Accept it, you guys lost the 100 year war.”

That’s how I look at the B1G 18 now. I’ve adopted the Penn State attitude - we have no rivals..just next week’s opponent.

That’s the best way to deal with sucknuts from now on…just dismiss them.

More from a massive weekend in Ann Arbor:

Most important Michigan win over Ohio State since I have been following the program (1967). For several reasons:

1) Both teams unbeaten heading into the game. Rare. Last year, 2006, 1970 and 1973. We lost in 1970 and 2006, tied in 1973, and won last year.

2) As this is the final year of the four-team playoff, the next time both teams meet as unbeaten teams the loser will be assured s spot in the 12-team playoff. So the importance of this game will have more to do with seeding than being a do-or-die situation where the loser goes home. Plus, next year the loser could well face the winner again the following week in the Big Ten title game.

3) The 2022 game was not as consequential as the loser still managed to sneak into the playoffs. That won’t happen this year.

4) The Michigan wins in 1969 and 2021 were monumental in terms of changing program momentum and starting new eras of Michigan football, but neither team was unbeaten heading into the game and were national title long shots at best.

5) The 1997 Michigan co-national champion team beat an already once beaten Ohio State team. They then went on to beat a not so great Washington State game in the Rose Bowl. Great accomplishment and all. But let’s be honest. Their path to the national title was far easier than it would be this year. More analogous to BYU beating Bo’s worst team (6-6) in the Holiday Bowl to win the national title back in the 80s. Also, that 1997 title was a split VOTE. In other words, a mythical national title, not one won in an actual title game.

6) The surrounding circumstances of the sign-gate scandal. Losing the game would be used by Michigan detractors to claim that the first two wins were illegitimate, even if blatantly false. And the likelihood that the evidence dropped into the NCAA’s lap came from an investigation started by Ryan Day made this game all the more personal.

7) No more Ohio State excuses. No flu. No bad weather. No sign stealing. For the guy born on third base-strike three and you are out. Three straight wins is a trend. And it goes a long ways in erasing the stench of the losses incurred to those cheaters the first two decades of this century.

So here we are, the conquering heroes. And it feels great. Really great. Soak up the moment. Enjoy it. From a purely subjective this win, in snd of itself, will be more satisfying than any future win. Even if we win the national title. The Ohio State game has always been very personal. But this year, more personal than ever before. Don’t mess with Michigan.

But being the fans that we are, we want more. Which is only normal, as the team has goals it had yet to reach. So onwards we all march, to the Big Ten title and then hopefully two more wins in the playoffs.

Strangely enough, at this moment, for (mostly better or for worse, I feel a bit frozen in time. On several fronts:

1. Iowa game: This is a trap game. Make no mistake about it. Hopefully the lessons learned from TCU will empower this team to handle business on Saturday. They will need to. There is no way they will go into the game with the emotional high they had against Ohio State. The good news is that they won’t need to in order to beat Iowa. They just need to play mistake-free and take care of business.
2. Recruiting: Well, to be honest up until this past weekend recruiting seemed frozen in time since before the season. With the exception of our 2025 QB recruit. Especially with no visitors the first three weeks, Harbaugh yet to sign an extension, the 2024 class being pretty much filled, our NIL policy and finally, of course, sign-gate. The ongoing investigations, of course, created a sense of existential risk far greater for fans to worry over than the mundanities of trying to figure out where a 17-year old would attend college. A ton of prospects are hyped after the game. Now it is time to get closure in sign-gate (good that expedited) and get Jim signed so that we can start closing on recruits.
3. Cheeseburgergate, Sign-gate and Jim signing a new contract. I am lumping these together. Each one, in and of itself, may only cause collateral damage. But taken together it makes it tough to move ahead with recruiting and the portal.
4. NIL/Transfer Portal/Player Retention. All are intertwined with one another and point 3. If no NIL to high school recruits we had better be putting together great NIL packages for transfers and retaining kids with our “one more year” funds. The proof will be in the pudding the next two months. The portal opens next week. The balancing act that Michigan faces is that a lot of kids will not be making public decisions about declaring for the NFL or transferring until after our season ends, which likely not be until January. So the coaching staff will need to gave a lot of private conversations with those who move on to get a lay of the land in order to better address portal needs/strategy. And of course the biggest wildcard of all is Jim. If he was to win a national title, I would not be surprised to see him move on. The good news is that the heir apparent has been identified, so it could be a relatively seamless transition.

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IT ALL COMES FULL CIRCLE!

I and most of my family went to Michigan. I live in California but have family with season tickets and a cousin with a suite. How do CFP playoff ticket distribution work? Are they already on offer? Or do they wait until the opponent and venue is determined? Thanks!

Breaking down the X's and O's for Michigan's 30-24 victory over the Buckeyes. There are plenty of plays to break down from the Wolverines 3rd straight victory over Ohio State, so join Stephen Osentoski & Trevor McCue to walk through the first half together.

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Do you all remember when I said this is the worst the pain will be? In the moment. That winning and time is all that matters now.
Have you noticed a difference in the coverage of Michigan? Here are some headlines on ESPN:
Michigan is THE standard in the Big Ten
Five reasons Michigan can win it all
Script has flipped in Michigan/OSU rivalry
Michigan's knockout blow to OSU
Finebaum: Ryan Day should leave OSU

They weathered the storm. They got through Penn State, Maryland, and of course Ohio State. Through all the distractions. All of it, without Jim Harbaugh. The path was made as difficult as possible, and they did it.
Anyone still talking about sign stealing, rightfully looks moronic. The idea it was some massive advantage was always stupid, but now they proved it wasn't. It didn't need to go like this, but in a weird way, it might be good for Michigan. As Barrett said, "Careful who you make the villain." This team is "battle tested" as Blake Corum said. They were built to overcome adversity, and now they have the biggest chip on their shoulder right before a playoff run.
People like Finebaum will continue to say things like "Harbaugh will have a stench that follows him." Who cares?
Nooooobody!

This is from his "The Joel Klatt Show". If you want to relive the key moments calls and plays through the best analyst right now give it a listen.

Does a great job recapping the moment of Zak's injury in particular and highlighting how big that was. That we scored right after that injury/moment was indeed incredible.

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"Michigan is a tough, physical football program and it was great to see them win a physical football game."

2025 four-star OL Rowan Byrne recaps his experience in Ann Arbor for The Game and expands on what has impressed him about the Wolverines during his recruiting process:

Sherrone Moore named finalist for the Broyles Award.
Moore has led one of the nation's most efficient offenses as OC, one of the best offensive line units as OL coach, and Michigan to wins over Penn State and Ohio State as acting HC.

Just curious to get everyone's thoughts on this. If Georgia, Michigan and Florida State all win and remain undefeated and Oregon beats Washington, will it be
#3 FSU/#4 Oregon or will the committee put a one loss Oregon team ahead of FSU to make it #3 Oregon/ #4 FSU? Thoughts?

Physicality won the day, again.
Michigan wins an absolute classic over Ohio State, earning its third straight trip to the Big Ten Championship.
We talk how the game was won, the narratives that died, and what the future holds for Michigan this season and beyond.

In 2021, the satisfaction of beating Ohio State was self-evident: ending the drought after a decade of subjugation. The win was Luke Skywalker and the rebellion taking out the Death Star, puncturing the invincibility of the Empire.

After the home win in 2011, where Denard Robinson tore up a 6-6 Buckeye squad with Luke Fickell as an interim head coach, only a couple of the next eight against them were even competitive: Devin Gardner nearly singlehandedly pulling out a win in 2013, playing on a broken foot in the second half, and ”the spot” in 2016.

The Wolverines were way overdue for a win and the question was still in the air of whether the Harbaugh project was going to carry his alma mater all the way back into the national elite, or peter out at late-Carr level stability.

Mind you, approximating the Michigan of 2003-2007 would not have been an unwelcome state of affairs after the darkness of the Rodriguez/Hoke era, but it would have fallen short of the new hope Harbaugh brought with him when he came home.

The 2021 win was also satisfying because of the manner in which the Buckeyes were taken down: mercilessly steamrolling them in the second half with a surge of ground dominance, putting the ball in the end zone on four straight possessions while scarcely putting the ball in the air at all.

It is too often forgotten: C.J. Stroud and his trio of eventual first round WR's tore up the Aidan Hutchinson-led Michigan D that game to the tune of nearly 400 yards. Football fans will look back on that Buckeye team and see a QB who went on to NFL stardom and three receivers (Wilson, Olave, Smith-Njigba) who were so good that they kept Marvin Harrison Jr. on the bench. This was not a low-scoring, 3-yards-in-a-cloud-of-dust Bo & Woody affair.

To beat them by simply being an irresistible force was orgasmically satisfying.

2022’s satisfaction was derived from consolidating the 2021 win, proving it was not a one-off. And certainly winning in the Horseshoe added an extra layer of satisfaction atop that, actually running away from them - figuratively and literally - with a fusillade of big plays. Michigan had, for the first time since John Cooper led Ohio State, established a mental edge on the Buckeyes.

A mantra that almost always holds up, whatever you want to apply it to, is:

Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.

What's satisfying today, in the wake of Saturday's third straight win over Ohio State, is: for the first time this century, Michigan can firmly claim to be atop this rivalry. And the Buckeyes are shook.

Ryan Day has been the head coach in Columbus for 5 years, and the only Big Ten team to beat him is Michigan.

Day’s only other regular season defeat came against Oregon in Stroud’s second game at the helm.

At 56-7, Day's only other losses are in the Playoff to Georgia, Bama and Clemson.

What does this mean? It means Harbaugh’s Wolverines are not feasting on a weakened Ohio State. They have - repeatedly now - sent them to the canvas at their fighting weight. And that is much more satisfying than kicking them when they're down.

What’s also satisfying is: this win came at a fraught time for Harbaugh and the program thanks to the tempest of the last month. The stakes of The Game this year were much higher than even a Big Ten title and another shot at an elusive National Championship. Jim Harbaugh’s legacy and the reputation of Michigan Football were on the line.

The only way out of this sign-stealing scandal was going to be through it.

Joel Klatt aptly laid out last week what Michigan’s leaders ought to have been asserting from the beginning: that sign-stealing isn’t as consequential as all the national pearl-clutching over it would have you believe, so slap us on the wrist and let’s get back to playing football.

But had the Penn State and Ohio State results gone the other way, the national perception would have been that Michigan cheated their way to Big Ten titles and the College Football Playoff in 2021 and 2022, and Jim Harbaugh would have been viewed as a fraud, unable to win without reading his opponent’s mail, a label he may never have shaken.

All the satisfaction of the previous two seasons would have drained away.

However, to beat Penn State and Ohio State with the sign-stealer in exile, Harbaugh at home, and no possible way to claim Michigan had an unfair advantage... this was an opportunity to put the scandal to bed. And that’s what Sherrone Moore and the boys did.

Stewart Mandel’s piece in The Athletic Saturday night captured the new, hard-won national narrative. To summarize: this is over now, it was probably never the big deal everyone made it out to be, Michigan has Ryan Day’s number and may well be the best team in the nation. On to the last year of a 4-team Playoff.

Indeed, daunting challenges await. Georgia, Oregon, Washington, and Texas all have more fearsome offenses than Ohio State; getting that National Championship is going to be a tougher test this year than last year was.

And in the long term, Michigan has not parlayed its on-field dominance into success on the recruiting trail. For the coming years, Ohio State has actually significantly extended its talent edge - their 2024 roster will have fewer than 10 three-star recruits on it, while Michigan’s will have roughly 45.

What does this mean? It means the current level of satisfaction will surely fade.

But that is for another day, with New Year’s Day football on tap after a quick errand in Indianapolis.

Football has always been an allegory for war. Why Wolverine faithful should bask in this moment resonates in the final line delivered by George C. Scott in the movie, Patton:

A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.

Enjoy!

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Kidding, of course.

In this video, McNamara discusses how he’s coaching the Iowa defense on UM’s “entire system.” The ability to advance scout by recruiting your opponents’ players from the transfer portal is yet another reminder of the negligible advantage gained by Stalions “vast network.”

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