Regarding RR: Maybe he will understand the rivalry when he takes his goof-troop into the Horseshoe and gets stomped like abused children. Maybe when the Drew Sharps of the world are calling for his head in his first full off-season, maybe then he will understand. Maybe when he loses one of his prize recruits, Sam McGuffie, along with several others according to Brian at Mgo. Maybe then he will understand. UM fans need to hope this Beaver kid is the truth or RR won’t make it past year 3.

Maybe he will never understand.

“he’d see is decent fans treating their rivals with respect.” What a crock. I was in AA for the game last year and heard just as much BS from the key jinglers as I would expect from college kids. Get off your high horse and get real. Hard to believe the general college football public considers UM fans arrogant. “We don’t yell, we don’t swear, we stand and clap and give kudos to solid football”. OK, if you want to believe that type of notion, be my guest but do not act like that makes your program is somehow different. If that were the case, that would make RR a huge sell-out hire. Recall any of the Eagle Scouts he recruited at WVU? UM wants to win badly and I can’t blame them but don’t act like you are taking the high road in a polo match.

If you’re talking to Wolverine fans who aren’t going to watch the game, they aren’t Wolverine fans. I rather hope if they ever try to jump back on this bandwagon in a few years, when we are rolling and The Game is back to what it should be, that they encounter by a gorilla with a chainsaw dick after rolling in a pile of bananas.

The conference becomes more of a laughing stock than it already is. Ohio State has the opportunity to play a game that will guarantee a share of the conference title, against a 3-8 team, in the season finale, for the 4th straight year. In the last 2 years, Ohio State has gone on to fall over dead in their bowl games against elite opposition. They fell over dead against USC this season. They fell at home, at night, against an apparently beatable Penn State team for the outright conference lead, and a Rose Bowl berth. They were preseason top-5, and we all thought they had the capacity to beat everyone on their schedule.

This game against Michigan is one of two ways these seniors can leave a lasting mark on the program. And it comes against the worst Michigan team that any Ohio State team has ever faced in its history. The rivalry scale doesn’t get any more lobsided than this. To lose would be embarrassing, not only to a team full of senior talent that should have been far more competitive on a national stage than they ever turned out to be, but to the entire conference that they b*thcsmacked for the last 3-4 years.

The 2nd way is to win a big bowl game. If that means a Sugar Bowl, Capitol One, or Outback Bowl against an SEC team, any SEC team, then so be it. If that means a Rose Bowl against Oregon State or a rematch against USC, then so be it. But this senior team needs to beat Michigan and win its bowl game.

Let’s say we lose the bowl game. If you told me in 2006 that Beanie Wells would go to the NFL having never won a bowl game at OSU, I’d have told you that you are a complete idiot.

Having said that, I restate my desire: I want half-a-hundred. A close game is embarrassing. A loss is unforgivable. Epic shame must be inked into the forehead of all that dawn the (super absorbent) wings. This must be the kind of loss that keeps Um fans guessing if they made the right hire all off-season (if they aren’t already). The sort of disaster that only Pear Bryant and ND playing Navy in 2007 can understand. Ultimately, I want what we all want from playing 3-8 teams. Stay healthy, look good doing it…and half-a-freaking-hundred.

The only legacy these seniors can leave is to never lose to Michigan. It would be even nicer if they could beat an SEC school for us in a bowl game. Is that asking too much?