Love the write-up Grantland has of The Game:

Ohio State at Michigan — Columbus is managing its depression with visions of a new superstar coach, and Ann Arbor is full of righteous optimism (or, toward Ohio State, self-righteousness), but the Buckeyes still have more than enough talent to cause trouble, and beating Michigan would salvage their season. It would also send Luke Fickell out on a high note — assuming Buckeyes players have any interest in sending Luke Fickell out on a high note. For Michigan, it's the opposite. None of the good vibes it has enjoyed during the 2011 campaign will mean a whole lot if it loses to Ohio State again, for the eighth straight time, especially when Ohio State is vulnerable. Things won't get any easier next year, in the Horseshoe, with Braxton Miller a fully functioning quarterback and with Urban Meyer running things. Better go ahead and win this one, Wolverines. Better get off the schneide right damn now.

OK, reader, let's talk man to man. Life is wearing us pretty thin, and the holidays are only going to make things worse. Ohio State-Michigan is one of those venerable, old rivalries deserving of your undivided attention, and you deserve to be able to give it. Don't watch this game at home, where the girlfriends and wives and kids can mess with you. Don't watch this game at some newfangled, 500-TV, shares-a-parking-lot-with-Bed Bath & Beyond chain joint that serves neon-orange chicken wings. We need this, guys. Girls like '80s parties, and we like to sit in bars that seem like they haven't changed since 1964. I'm hoping for plenty of chippiness in this game. A lot of pile-ups that take a long time to untangle. A lot of running plays in which the back gets stood up but not taken to the ground and then the linemen from each team get on opposing sides of the guy and push until the refs blow the whistle 20 times, like a reverse tug-of-war. All that, and to keep us alert, a dose of streaking Florida speed in the form of Denard.

Let us watch this edition of Wolverines vs. Buckeyes in an old, off-white building that if you didn't know it was a bar, you'd think was a locksmith shop. One of those places where the barmaid is pushing 50, a cousin of the owner, and probably down on her luck. A bar with that smell that isn't good but is the perfect smell for a bar. Get off the grid, my friend. The season's almost over and then who knows what these women will have us doing on Saturdays? Leave the cell phone in the glove box. I'm even giving you permission to step outside during halftime and bum a smoke from the old guy you're going to meet who laughs in wheezes and drinks a brand of whiskey you've heard of but have never seen anyone drink. Let's claim a TV — with any luck a TV from before the flat-screen era, a TV with a body — and hide behind the closed blinds of a place with a vaguely Eastern European name that sits on the edge of a neighborhood that's about five decades past its prime.

Is Meyer gonna be at this game?