Michigan, Ohio State Can't Rival Past

Here is where it all went wrong.

It's a date that stands out like a maize and blue jersey on High Street, the day where the flowers stopped and the weeds started.

November 16., 2006, the last day it all made sense for Ohio State and Michigan. The Buckeyes and the Wolverines were both undefeated, the nation's two top teams primed for a game that, as far as hype is concerned, had spent all week plate first at the buffet. It was No. 1 vs. No. 2, the Game of the Century. That the Century was barely six years old was irrelevant for the biggest chapter in college football's greatest rivalry. The game was legendary well before its legend would be played out on the field, and waiting for the next 94 years to pass to confirm there would be no greater 21st century game was merely as unnecessary as waiting till noon to confirm the sunrise.

The day was a testament to the power of the winged helmet and the scarlet and gray, but like all days, it lasted just 24 hours.

Time has never failed to make a third-down conversion and that day was no different.

The next morning, everything changed faster than Woody Hayes could've ever dreamed of losing his temper. Bo Schembechler, who was all but a walking bronzed statue of a Michigan Man, died just before noon the following morning. One day later on Nov. 18, Ohio State beat Michigan, 42-39, but the muted celebration would be short lived on both sides. Michigan lost the war of public opinion and was sent to the Rose Bowl, where USC rolled a convoy all over the Wolverines on New Year's Day. In the national title game, Florida steamrolled Ohio State, stopped to fill in a few pot holes left around Troy Smith and then steamrolled them again. By the time the clock ended a game that had long since been over in Phoenix, November's game of the century seemed yellowed at the edges and as relevant as single-wing offense or the telegraph. Arguing about which Big Ten team should've been in the national title game seemed as ridiculous as the fella who told Columbus the world was flat.

It grew worse.

In the season opener in 2007, Michigan lost to Appalachian State, a school formerly known as Division I-AA, currently known as FCS and generally accepted to be someone who should take a beating in the Big House, be thankful for the opportunity, and maybe steal a few souvenir towels on the way out the door. One week later, Oregon trampled Michigan in Ann Arbor. For the Wolverines, the season frayed like an old blanket; Lloyd Carr resigned, Les Miles turned the job down and the BCS was an impossibility. Ohio State won the rivalry game again in a forgettable effort marked only by Beanie Wells' running. But Ohio State again pulled the football equivalent of tripping over the footlights and falling head first into the orchestra pit on a national stage as LSU blew the Buckeyes out for another national title.

For the Buckeyes, it was like forgetting the words to the Star-Spangled Banner before the World Series and then tripping into the dugout on the way out. The first time it was just an embarrassment. The second time it was a YouTube-sized punchline.

In 2008, the promise of a new season barely lasted three weeks. New Michigan wunder-coach Rich Rodriguez lost to Utah in the opener. These Wolverines, hit hard by graduation and defection, were as unrecognizable as the bland pablum of an offense that stood in place of Rodriguez's spread attack. In Week 3, Michigan lost on national television to a woeful Notre Dame squad at 3:30. At 8PM, Ohio State was driven from the field by USC.

And for another season, there was the same great bands on stage, decked out in those same classic maize and blue, and scarlet and gray uniforms, but it wasn't something from the classics; this time they were going to play something from the new album.

Michigan's season lept over all the adjectives between bad and awful like hurtling a defensive back, settling on a historic level of suffering. They racked up eight losses, what Schembechler might've called a so-so decade. And a coach who should've been on his victory lap entering this Ohio State game, barely seeming able to figure out which way he's supposed to be running.

Ohio State, meanwhile, trudged through the season with all the drama of a car commercial and half the flair. The Buckeyes again imploded before a national audience against Southern Cal, but by now these things were simply de rigueur and childishly predictable, college football's answer to the kid whacking his father in the groin with a plastic baseball bat. But they beat the teams they should've beaten, lost to those who were better and along gave rise to Terrelle Pryor, the skillful freshman quarterback who glides through the fields of dust.

Still, they did little to halt the slide of a rivalry that once determined not just their season, but, it seemed, everyone's. And now, two years after the Game of the Century, The Game, on a national scale, is all but unrecognizable.

The betting spread is nearly three touchdowns, the largest in series history. For just the fourth time since 1976, the year the Big Ten allowed teams to compete in bowls other than the Rose Bowl, both teams won't each be eligible for the postseason. (And it's just the second time by modern bowl eligibility definitions, as Ohio State finished 6-6 in both 1987 and 1999.) It's just the second time either enters below .500. And for just the third time since the formation of the BCS, neither school is likely to be among the the selections.

While Ohio State could become the first team to win some part of the Big Ten title four seasons running, it's history that feels more like a footnote than a headline.

And not only is The Game not the most important game in the Big Ten this weekend, it will likely not even be among the top three games played by Michigan teams in the final two weeks of the season. Michigan State's game against Penn State will decide the Rose Bowl for the Nittany Lions, and, should Penn State win, make The Game all but irrelevant. Meanwhile, both Central and Western Michigan take shots at undefeated Ball State and a MAC title and could disrupt a potential BCS berth for the Cardinals, pending losses from Utah, Boise State and a healthy bounce in the computer rankings.

And without college football's finest rivalry to serve as lighthouse warning for the end of the full slate of regular season games, the year seems almost unfinished, a song with no coda whose chorus just drifted into the air.

With lesser rivalries taking the stage and relegating The Game to an opening act (literally), it's as though the college football season offered a command performance and then left without an encore.

Sure, Michigan and Ohio State play Saturday. And the I will be dotted and the winged helmet will be on hand.

But it just won't be the same.