i wanted to ruminate on OSU for a bit. to be clear: nothing i say here is about coaching or strategy which is all fair game to discuss. this is about program culture. 

i think OSU as an institution is filled with scumbags, but they are currently better at football than we are. i would love to crush them, and instead i choose to enjoy the sport, watch the games, support my alma mater, and not enter into emotional crisis when we lose to a better team -- but that's just me. 

anyway: a lot has been made of the absurd online course load that OSU athletes can take, consequently allowing them to focus on football significantly more so than academics. why isn't this possible at michigan if it's possible there? our respective institutions value different things in a time when education is increasingly precarious.

at Ohio Sports, they have long mortgaged the "legitimacy" of their student athletics program, openly acknowledging it as absurd by flouting the rules constantly. at michigan, we have maintained a stance of "integrity" while we (harbaugh) try to convince ourselves and the world that there's something special about taking classes and playing football at the same time. 

i believe the difference is rooted in many factors that affect both institutions, but includes the corporatization of higher education, the defunding of k-12 schools in favor of private enterprise, and long-standing feelings of cultural inadequacy in comparison to the michigan people that can read and write good and don't wash themselves with a rag on a stick. that and the confused ethics around money-making in sports. i won't get into any of the former stuff in a sports blog, however.

the main sports factor here, though, is the professionalization of college football and its relation to television money. we make a tremendous amount of money off of this stuff -- yet there is a contradictory acknowledgement by folks like harbaugh and manuel that NIL rights are worthy of exploration and that athletes deserve compensation. they want to go about it the "right way" but still engage in the same exploitation as all the other programs. i think that is hypocritical. 

tressell, urban, and now day have created an atmosphere where they don't play school but actually mean that. for these elite football players, Ohio Sports is not a fucking academic institution, it's a professional training academy. it's IMG college. while michigan players are being enriched with life experiences such as traveling to south africa, the goons in ohio are working on football. when shea patterson was playing golf, justin fields was pretending to be a student while working on football. it's a different mindset that only pretends there's something special about college football before going to work. 

i guarantee, however, that not all their players get all the extralegal benefits, just the stars. but in order to facilitate this, they all must be okay with lying. the coaches and admin are all good with cheating some of their own players like regular ncaa athletes, while rewarding others with cash and benefits. the cheating bleeds into a culture that will make a decision to cover up domestic violence and then lie about it. i think that's extremely hypocritical, but also deeply cynical. 

and that's kind of the crux: Ohio Sports is a cynical institution, we are a romantic one. they pay their stars while still exploiting them, and exploit everyone else more to placate the facade. they lie; they enable abusers to prowl their campus; they win. we romanticize a wonderful football past; we romanticize the michigan identity; we romanticize the bo era and 1997. we feel entitled to relive the glory of our past. they feel entitled to the present at any cost. 

the central reason, then, that elite recruits haven't really amassed for us in the way they have for the "football factories" (Ohio Sports isn't the only school that is a fake institution of course, they're just the worst people in that they're from ohio) is that these athletes now have options to develop their craft without having to play school at all. zach harrison probably saw that his quickest ticket to millions of dollars and lifetime wealth and security is to focus on his profession. being a kid, i bet it was extremely tempting to come to michigan and be around people i am going to assume he liked better because they're not buckeyes, and doing fun things like going on trips.

but we live in a world where money is freedom, safety, and security. any rational person who is touted as elite would be mistaken to not take the shortest path towards these things. michigan's path is circuitous and filled with obstacles like college classes. you have to want that to come to michigan. most elite athletes don't want that. why not opt for a more professional approach? 

i think that because of these things, michigan fans have to decide whether they want to be another meaningless place that takes the easiest path towards winning, or if they feel there is something unique about michigan that's worthy of support despite being worse at football than our rival. i am in the latter category, having completed both undergrad and graduate degrees at michigan, and having experienced what makes michigan special. i value this more than winning at all costs. i don't know if there's a direct trade-off between these dynamics, but i know that i'd probably be a lot less interested in football if my team's coach was a piece of shit like urban meyer. 

i have little recourse, then,  but to remain enthusiastic and optimistic, support our team, and adjust the expectation from "the best team in the world" to very good, plucky underdogs. teams like iowa and wisconsin exist and have great traditions and are mostly enjoyed by their fanbases, with many good seasons and successes short of championships.

unfortunately that's where we are stuck right now. i don't think a coaching change or a new scheme is going to overcome vast gaps in talent and ability, no less the other significant advantages already discussed. but to me, this is still much better than rooting for a fucking sham run by liars who will go to any length to maximize profit, including covering up domestic violence, and whose aim is to extract as much wealth as possible from 17-22 year olds.

if that's what you're in to,  just buy an IMG academy jersey and embrace the slime. even if the rules themselves are dumb, playing by a different set of rules that trample everything else just to win is what stupid, childish bullies do. throw in copious greed, and that sounds like a buckeye to me. 

with legislation and more legal entanglement sure to come, we have reason to believe that the landscape of recruiting and college football writ large will indeed change in the near future. but  for now, unless we choose to change who we are for what i deem to be the worse, we are going to be miserable.

which begs the question: given all that we know, why would anyone want to be like Ohio Sports University in the first place?