part of me wants to believe michigan would have come out hungrier and probably won that osu game had the bucks not lost to msu the week prior. i almost feel like that moment could’ve been the guns of icarus shorting the surface tension of the outsized wolverine aspirations, long before the first-quarter clock in the big house even began winding down. but rather, it came off the frenetic chaos of an overtime win on the road in bloomington, and subject only to a formality over in columbus, set to be a mildly entertaining display of cold fatalism, which harbaugh’s team would no doubt be watching in bed later that night. over in the corner, that scarlet revenge-fantasy was just sitting there on a platter, ripe and bloody for the taking, and drenched in all the haunts and pines for a reprise of bo’s improbable first-year finale against the mighty bucks. entropy accelerated, distorting reality, ready to rip through our collective maize and blood-barrier, and rapture us bathed in the unforgettable chorus of the victors.

and, then, just as inexplicably as past had nearly become prologue, entering stage left was sparty to pull the spartiest spart out of his seemingly bottomless bag of tricks - deftly switching on michael geiger to silence the tremors festering under ann arbor and to pull bucky’s curtain with one swift kick. as the spartan team rushed over to taunt the osu student section after the improbable win, i couldn’t help but think the spartan players were not in fact rushing the osu student section, but rushing the nearby cameras to taunt the prone wolverines through their television sets instead; sparty’s teeth gleaming with white hot enthusiasm known only to mankind, watching big brother deflate in disbelief in an encore performance of a repressed memory several weeks removed.

and with that, msu had eviscerated the pregnant possibility of an orgasmic coup-de-grace; that vanquishing an undefeated buckeye squad; that white whale - right in front of our helpless eyes. i want to believe this because i want to believe there is more to the strength of a football team and the appeal of the sport than just physique and technique. i want to believe that there’s something sticky in the ether that envelops those stupefying moments of glorious delirium seen only on saturdays in the fall. hail, hail to saturdays in the fall.

/end catharsis.