Michigan Tries to Steady That Big Chip on Ohio State’s Shoulder (NYT)

On Saturday, in Columbus, the teams will meet for the 114th time. The stakes are again high: A victory would send either No. 4 Michigan (10-1) or No. 10 Ohio State (10-1) to the Big Ten championship game, where a win over No. 20 Northwestern (7-4) could mean a College Football Playoff spot.

This is not quite a debate over which university has been the better program over all. Nor can this be the simple question of who has won more games in the series (Michigan) or during the last 10 or 20 years (Ohio State, in a wipeout). Rivalries are about more than that: They’re about identity and pride and expectations and broad historical sweep.

This rivalry is college football’s Yankees-Red Sox. Michigan is the Yankees, the front-runners, who have monuments to their great players and a history of domination that they will not let you forget. Ohio State is the Boston Red Sox, who have four World Series title in this century but a boulder-size chip forever in place on their proverbial shoulder

Every year is its own chapter, but the story doesn’t really change,” said Ramzy Nasrallah, executive editor of the Ohio State site Eleven Warriors. “The story is that Ohio State’s aspiration is to be Michigan.”

U.S. News & World Report ranks Michigan as the fourth-best public university in the country. Ohio State is 17th.

John U. Bacon, who has written several books about Wolverines football, has his own way of making a similar point. “Almost everything Ohio State does — academically, athletically, or otherwise — they compare to Michigan,” he said. “Michigan almost never does that.”

“It has been a brutal century for Michigan,” Bacon said.

It is likely that we are witnessing not Michigan’s rejuvenation, but rather the latest stage of the elegantly managed decline of a great empire. Which, to be honest, seems rather in tune with the times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/sports/ohio-state-michigan.html