Last night the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals tipped off at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
That's the barely ten-year old home of the top seed Detroit Pistons, facing the 4-seed Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs play in Rocket Arena, previously named Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Quicken Loans Arena and Gund Arena. Thirty years old, but has had quite a bit of work done and doesn't look a day over, like, five.
You may be familiar with geography, which I think they still teach - Detroit is in Michigan, while Cleveland is in Ohio. Is History still on the curriculum? Michigan and Ohio are in a forever-figurative war, based on an actual war fought almost 200 years ago.
Fought is doing some incredibly heavy lifting here; no one died and one person was injured during an 18-month war. When the casualty list looks more like an injury report from a Spring Game, we're just mythologizing. Too soon? No one is saying that it wasn't important.
The Toledo War is a convenient backdrop for what became the sacred Ohio State-Michigan college football rivalry. It has no connection with the Detroit Lions playing the Cleveland Browns, the Detroit Tigers playing the Cleveland or Cincinnati baseball teams - or even the Detroit Red Wings playing the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Every Ohio-versus-Michigan sporting event outside of football borrows emotional infrastructure from the greatest and most mythologized rivalry in American sports. Mythologizing how they became rivals by using Toledo - which Ohio secured; Michigan got the Upper Peninsula from Wisconsin as a consolation prize - is fun.
Original. via USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
But the connection collapses under even minimal scrutiny. The Toledo War ended 61 years before Ohio State and Michigan played a football game. No one in Ohio gave a shit about it because Toledo became part of the state. No one in Michigan cared either, because it got the Upper Peninsula from Wisconsin. Nobody was thinking about Toledo when they played.
They became rivals because Ohio State spent decades building its football program in pursuit of Michigan. Ohio Stadium exists because Ohio State finally beat Michigan in large part due to one charismatic and gifted player.
There is a reason Ohio Stadium permanently memorializes Michigan colors inside its rotunda. Little Caesars Arena and Rocket Arena have no such relationship. No other Michigan or Ohio sports teams at any level have this foundation. This generally does not happen in sports, anywhere.
It's the dependency, ANCIENT history and SUSTAINED, annual CATACLYSMIC ENERGY of The Game that separates it. OHIO STATE-MICHIGAN IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL has no peer IN SPORTS AT ANY LEVEL.
Gold Pants exist because that aspirational goal was a program mandate nearly 40 years later. No one was talking about the Toledo War when Francis Schmidt was dropping folksy Texas sayings to Central Ohio media members who had never heard anyone talking about putting pants on the same way as someone else.
Wes Fesler grew up in Youngstown, went to Ohio State and lettered in baseball, basketball and football. He then worked his way up through the coaching ranks to take over his alma mater's football program, which he took over in 1947. The Buckeyes finished ninth in what was still the Big Ten that season.
In 1949, Fesler won the conference and the Rose Bowl. In 1950, his team finished second and his halfback Vic Janowicz was awarded the Heisman Trophy on Dec 5. Four days later, the three-sport Ohio State alumnus and head coach of his college program who had made it a national title contender resigned from his dream job, citing the pressure to win the Michigan game.
Fesler was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame four years later.
Original. GO BLU--hey wait a second. via IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
The Buckeyes had lost the Snow Bowl in his final game, which was a coin-flip afternoon featuring both teams repeatedly punting on 1st down. Ohio State ended up with Woody Hayes because of that game.
Any comparable angst among other sports in Columbus or Ann Arbor? Pro sports? Any sport?
The rivalry is mutually self-sustaining. Michigan's coaching tree from 1969 until this past season has been fortified by native Ohioans and Ohio State lineage, right up until Sherrone Moore (Jim Harbaugh acolyte from the Bo Schembechler branch of the Woody Hayes coaching tree) was replaced with Kyle Whittingham (idem ut ante Urban Meyer via the Earle Bruce branch).
The game is the alpha and omega of ANY rivalry BETWEEN MICHIGAN AND OHIO, WITH APOLOGIES TO THE TOLEDO WAR.
The rivalry is also intertwined. Woody brought Bo to Oxford and then Columbus. Bo brought helmet stickers to Miami, which Woody borrowed before Bo brought them to Ann Arbor. Ohio State and Michigan football have functioned as interdependent organisms for as long as anyone reading this has been alive.
So assigning this kind of foundational antagonism to any other Ohio-versus-Michigan matchup is mostly borrowed theater. The football game is the alpha and omega of the rivalry. If that wasn't true, this video would not exist:
I'm old enough to type this rhetorical question into the void - do you have any idea how many pets, screen identities and literal people I know who have some version of Chris Spielman as part of their names? His name is a permanent part of Ford Field now, so the closest thing to those yellow flowers on blue squares you'll see in Ohio Stadium.
It's the dependency, ancient history and sustained, annually cataclysmic energy of The Game that separates it. Ohio State-Michigan in college football has no peer in college sports or professional sports. The Browns and Bengals along with the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears are two rivalries where one of the belligerents would not exist without the other.
Legendary rivalries. Incredible histories. They don't spend all year thinking about each other.
The Cavs and Pistons faced each other for the fifth time this season last night, with as many as six more meetings to go. The Guardians stole the AL Central from the Tigers last season, before the Tigers ended Cleveland's playoff hopes a couple of weeks later. Rivalries are what elevate games beyond mere scheduling inventory.
If you choose to project Ohio State-Michigan football feelings when Game 2 tips off tomorrow night, great. As a long-time Cavs fan, I love the matchup, series and rivalry and am excited to see if Cleveland can bounce back.
There's been a Big Two Little Eight element for both the NBA and MLB here, and I love that. It feels transported from a simpler time. Today, I am functioning normally and completing my responsibilities like an emotionally stable adult. Contrast that with the week of The Game.
That's when my organs begin negotiating surrender while my brain loops Saturday scenarios on repeat. Cavs-Pistons in the Eastern Conference semifinals is not structurally Ohio State-Michigan football. Because nothing is.
