Explaining Ohio State’s recent success in The Game
Charts, timelines, receipts...the case is made.
Lionel Messi is the reason.
welp, gotta go kidnap Messi. BRB.
A buddy of mine from my UMich days thinks the answer is Lebron. I think he's half-serious. And strangely, it kinda fits.
- Homegrown Ohio talent Lebron entered the league in summer of 2003 for the 2003-04 season. OSU goes on a 7 Game win streak.
- Homegrown talent Lebron takes his talent to Miami in search of the elusive NBA Championship. Michigan wins the Game and snaps Ohio State's win streak.
Lebron wins 1st NBA Championship in 2012 and OSU is now on a 8 game win streak.
/But what about the Pistons winning their 3rd NBA Championship in 04 (Lebron's rookie year)?
//I don't know what any of this means.
enhance.
.gif)
since the mid 2000s, the results vs OSU have been...
messi
YYYEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
That's bending it better than Beckham.
If you think losing to Ohio is funny it's time to find another team.
Lighten up. It’s a game. Assuming you are not associated with the team, You literally have zero ability to impact the results... unless you are Lionel Messi, apparently.
If you think humor and dedication are opposing perspectives, you need to reexamine your life.
If you think your morality should dictate other's behavior, you're the problem in the world.
To OP: HAHAHAHAHAHAH, go blue :)
Losing to Ohio bothers me about 6 days per year. It runs low on my list of concerns about life.
This is true. Also this is how it should be. It’s not worth wasting time being depressed or hating the world because of sports. Unfortunately, the truth is we’ve been dominated by them so much recently that we’ve become very good at coping with losses. Which also sucks.
I still believe it was Shawn Crable's late hit out of bounds that has set the tone for the last decade and almost a half.
SMH Shawn Crable. Late hit on Smith and I don't even know how to describe his blocking vs App State on the last second FG besides "he didn't block the right guy".
Weird how, when it’s been two top 5 teams in The Game, the game swung on very suspect calls in OSU’s favor. I mean, they’ve owned UM for the most part but both of those games were decided by iffy calls and would have changed UM’s trajectory significantly.
If you’re saying Crable’s late hit on Smith was suspect, then you are just in denial. There are a lot of calls that you can question, but that ain’t one of them.
Meh. It was not a must make call. Can it be made? Sure. Crable’s pursuit found him contacting Smith out of bounds. Was it vicious? No. Did it look intentional? Not by my eyes. Troy Smith had been stealing 4-8yds right along the sideline on his roll out option all damn day. I wouldn’t be surprised if coaches were railing the LBs to get his ass out of bounds or down but stop letting him steal 1st downs.
It's all about context of the times, though. If that game were played in the last 5 years, then yes, that call would have been a no-brainer penalty. But 2006? It's a questionable call IMO.
Regardless, I am still more mad at the coaching staff at the time for having zero fucking clue how to stop any kind of spread offense in any shape or form.
Well, they finally got rid of Jim Herrman before that season. I was doing the dance of joy when that news broke. So there was at least somewhat of an attempt with different blood.
But...yeah. I've never gone back and watched any highlight from that game but I do remember us being up 7-0 after our first drive and then when OSU had the ball for their first drive, they ended up converting a 3rd & 20 with shocking ease. It's like the writing was on the wall early.
What was the call? He wasn't out of bounds (Smith's foot is still in). Since Smith had thrown the ball a bit before Crable launched, roughing comes into play. He went helmet to helmet but I can't recall what the rule was then.
legit ask. Was it roughing the passer?
I believe Lionel Messi is a direct Spanish translation of Shawn Crable
Close. It means Train Wreck.
Took me a minute.
I still believe that play (and team, too) are among the tragically overrated items in Michigan football history.
I think if Michigan gets to the championship game they get pasted as badly or worse than OSU did. (I don't buy the idea that Jake Long erasing their rush end tips the balance in Michigan's favor.)
How does that alter the program's trajectory? Does Ron English put together a better game plan for Appy State the following year? Oregon? Does Lloyd get to make Mike DeBord his replacement? I'm not seeing anything rosy.
A reversal of the 2016 outcome is more interesting.
Crable gets way to much blame. The entire defense failed that day. If not for our offense in the second half, it would have been just like the 2018 Game.
I agree with this. Lloyd Carr was a year from retiring. Then Rich Rod. Crable's hit and losing that game didn't matter in the grand scheme. We were walking the road to fuckdom anyway.
Tough call on Crable.
He'll be on the Jordan Morgan Foundation virtual event this Thursday. Think someone will ask him?
Jim Tressel set the tone for all of the woe and misery that has befallen Michigan for the last decade and a half. Not Shawn Crable.
Tressel's teams built up that level of dominance and the mentality of "We don't just think we can win, we know we're going to win." Because of him, OSU has been living in Michigan's head, rent-free, for nearly 20 years. All the blown leads, stupid game-costing penalties, momentum-shifting turnovers, all of the stupid mental mistakes that Michigan finds a way to make against OSU at the worst possible time....that all can be traced back to Tressel and what he did for OSU the moment he was hired. Meyer and Day took what he did and built on it, but it all started with Tressel.
I don't think Shawn Crable's late hit changes anything for how the next 10 years would go for Michigan football. They probably still would've lost to App State the following year, Carr would've still left, and we still end up with the RichRod shitshow. Even if that hit doesn't happen, Michigan is still down at that point in the game. Even if they get the ball back, there's no guarantee they score. Even if they somehow come back and beat OSU, I have a really hard time seeing them beat Florida, much less even stay in the game much past halftime. If OSU got curbstomped, Michigan probably would've as well.
We had lost 4 of 5 already before that hit.
As soon as Tressel said "You'll be proud of our football program in the classroom, in the community, and in 310 days in Ann Arbor Michigan" he managed to shift the entire mentality of the program.
We haven't gotten anything like that here in 20 years other than Hoke, and it showed in those games.
For some reason, I am reminded of this...
Makes sense...I mean, did you see Ghost Rider?
Spurious correlation is fun.
Very odd... what is even eerier is that someone actually recognized that pattern and overlaid them!!!
I wish I had remembered this one first...
Thank god it was Messi all along. All this time I thought the cat I got in the summer of 2001 was cursed. The cat is still alive and kicking.
Maybe you should start kicking the cat back.
And here I thought the problem was that they score more points in most of these games than we do. In fact, the one time this decade we scored more points, we won (2011)!
Or, it's because they're a pro team, and we're an amateur team.
Edit: Do people not think this is true, or do they just not like that it is true? Honest question.
(Or maybe it's an objection to me describing us as amateur?)
What is lyfe
I googled Lionel Messi. He has a hot wife.
@ $100M+ per year would would you expect?
I would say he's the 3rd most popular athlete in the world at the moment.
LOLWUT. RLY?
You needed to google Lionel Messi?
At last, a target for the Michigan money cannon that the NCAA doesn't prohibit. We offer to reimburse Manchester United for the transfer fee to acquire Messi. No more Barcelona, no more OSU pact with Satan. Just like George Steinbrenner overpaying Drew Henson to turn pro in baseball.
THEY HAVE BETTER PLAYERS=winning
Better coaching. Better QB play. Papa Johns.
It seems to me that the reason is that they have better athletes who are not required to attend classes. And I often wonder who actually does the work for the all-online classes they 'take'.