Michigan Football: It’s past time to ‘Just beat Ohio State’

The post-Jim Tressell Buckeyes are 7-1 against Michigan football teams with an active streak of seven games. It’s time for the Wolverines to end that.

What happened in 2011? Well, there was an Egyptian revolution, Muammar al-Gaddafi was overthrown and subsequently assassinated, Kobe Bryant was still a Laker, I got engaged, and Michigan football beat a controversial Buckeye team.

On November 26th, 2011, Ohio State, in the midst of its one-year bowl ban, arrived in Ann Arbor unranked at 6-6, and they left with head coach Luke Fickell’s tails tucked between his legs. It wasn’t a comfortable victory, OSU’s dual-threat QB Braxton Miller rushed for 100 and accounted for three total touchdowns in the teams 34 point performance, falling a touchdown short of beating the rival they affectionately call ‘that team up north’.

Fickell was replaced by Urban Meyer, who did the unheard-of – taking a sub .500 team going undefeated the year after. For Jim Harbaugh’s first four years, he was terrorized in the annual Ohio State matchup, although he came up just short of a win in 2016 (but not really because J.T. Barrett was the one who was short on that fourth down).

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Now that Meyer has – for the most part – handed the reigns to Ryan Day, its time for Harbaugh and company to exact revenge. As much as it pains me to say this and despite his skewed moral compass, Urban Meyer is a great coach and would likely have remained at the top of the Big Ten with his significant advantage in recruiting and sheer coaching abilities. This isn’t me talking; this is the 62 points his team hung on UM last year with the mic.

With Day, you have an overconfident head coach who was handed arguably the most talented team in the country and a weak schedule. Yes, the Buckeyes defeated Wisconsin and Penn State, two teams that have wins over Michigan, but UM lost on the road while OSU won those at home.

Ohio State’s road games this season includes Indiana, Nebraska, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Rutgers. Coach Day is winning cupcake contests on the road and squeaking out victories at home aided by a crowd somewhere north of 100,000. They won’t have that on Saturday.

We deserve this

There is a unique and uncontrollable phenomenon happening on social media, fueled partially from the hatred between the teams but mostly from the mental anguish felt by the Wolverine fanbase. That phenomenon is the hundreds and possibly thousands from the Michigan football Twitter community changing their names to some form of ‘Just Beat Ohio State’.

https://twitter.com/WolverineCorner/status/1198388646702931968

The fanatics that follow the Wolverines want one thing and one thing only: Beat OSU. It’s simple, and the message couldn’t be more precise.

While a small minority believe that’s all that matters every year, the well-adjusted majority feel this way during the one week running up to The Game.

This is not a passive-aggressive measure witnessed nationwide like those who protested Vietnam in the ’60s; this is a grief-stricken fanbase – that hasn’t had the privilege to talk trash to that team down south for almost a decade –  aggressively sending a message those in the organization.

They’re not asking for much, just one game. Michigan football is passed due for a win, so just beat Ohio State, will ya?