15.89 Million Tune in to Watch The Game

Just pull up that image anytime someone questions whether M-OSU is the best rivalry in college sports. Even at its most lopsided, it's a huge draw anytime both teams are good (which is often nowadays)

I'd say that the list is driven by huge rivalries (The Game, Bama-LSU, Iron Bowl) and teams (Alabama, osu). Alabama and osu each show up 7 times against 3 different teams. Michigan's appearances are all in The Game, and LSU's appearances are all against bama.

Even when Michigan is relatively down, The Game is a huge national draw. This is the only rivalry that shows up in every season during the timeframe given. 

That stupid 2016 game. We should have made the playoffs that year. We were the better team. Oh well, let’s just make it happen in 2021. 

It's a glitch from a few years ago. 

Like most others, my individual thoughts on the game are snowflakes. I posted in the snowflake threads and in the game story thread with my general impressions. Someone who is really concerned about my opinion and wants to see if I'll say "I was wrong" might re-read the coaching snowflakes thread where most people saw my full mea culpa right after the game the first time. 

I wasn't sure. I was very pessimistic, actually using the word "improbable" at one point. Some of that is just good old-fashioned Charlie Brown/Lucy pessimism, but some of my discussion last week was actually hypothetically assuming a loss for the sake of fairly evaluating the season without being colored by the emotion of losing to an excellent Ohio State team, as many of us feared we would do.

I did that because I felt that, before Saturday, the season was already a success. Obviously, last year I thought the time had come to part ways with Harbaugh, but instead Michigan re-upped and worked a new strategy. So, they called the play, you need to ride it out and see how it works. This year I've tried to be pretty even-handed in assessing the new strategy, including arguing against writing off the season after the MSU game. Last week I was careful to say that 10-2 was a good outcome not because beating Ohio State was impossible, but because it was unlikely, and because a growth trend that validated Harbaugh's current strategy would not be invalidated if Saturday had not happened. In fact, I specifically pointed out Ian Boyd's excellent pre-Game flyover because it painted a picture of a gameplan that could beat Ohio State (which was, in the event, basically the gameplan that Michigan used) that would have gotten absolutely eviscerated by fans if it had failed. And I wanted to establish that a gameplan with significant running and a bend-but-don't-break defense was a reasonable choice even if it didn't work.

That doesn't mean that I didn't have lingering pessimism (most notably regarding Harbaugh's QB coaching, one area where I probably should have followed my own wait-and-see philosophy a bit more closely, since he did make a change and hire a QB coach). It means that, given what the offseason brought, it was time to evaluate the season with a bit of an open mind. As I've discussed the season, I have occasionally mentioned that I favored defenestrating Harbaugh last year; a shallow thinker might think that saying that is a shot against him, but when I am discussing optimism or signs of growth I think it's important to be honest about my previous opinions so that people have the context of what I thought at different times available to fairly judge whether my opinions now are worth listening to. I speak highly of things that I think are good, and I will criticize things I think are bad. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. 

Anyway, Michigan won. The gameplans on both sides were terrific, exploiting weaknesses in Ohio State's talent and construction. The players were great. It remains difficult to know exactly how much of Michigan's offensive mix is Gattis and how much is Harbaugh (and, as I've said on multiple occasions, it is *not* unreasonable for an offensive-minded HC to have input into offensive decisions, my objections in previous years had to do with what I believed that input produced on the field) but as much as I would get frustrated at Harbaugh for, say, the second half of Rutgers, he deserves credit for choosing a strategy that ultimately punched Ohio State repeatedly in the mouth until they passed out. 

on saturday kick off was at 12:15 (+/-) and the final kneel down was just about 3:30.  i checked the time toward the end of the 1st quarter and with maybe 2 minutes left in the quarter i remember it being 1:08 pm.  i thought it would take 5 hours to play the game.  however, it seemed that there were a bunch of those 30 second timeouts after that, not the 'full media timeout' that means 3 minutes of nonsense.  guessing fox has a certain number of commercials that they have to stuff in the box but once they get to a certain number they ease off the gas? 

Nielsen has two different sample types: some families record their viewing in diaries, some have their viewing automatically tabulated (in the old days I think they put some sort of box on your tv for this, but maybe now they just need your permission to access data from your provider?).

This edition of The Game also featured real, classic November football weather in the form of temps in the high 20s and light to moderate snow. It had none the weak sunny and 70s in November weather you see in SEC country.