Welcome to the Skull Session.
You've heard of Marvelous Marv, but have you heard of Muscle Marv?
.@MarvHarrisonJr has been in the gym pic.twitter.com/06HfYONmmy
— NFL (@NFL) July 7, 2025
Have a good Tuesday.
THE GREATEST RIVALRY IN SPORT. This week, The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman ranked college football’s top 100 rivalries. Three Ohio State matchups appeared on the list: Ohio State vs. Illinois at No. 84, Ohio State vs. Penn State at No. 8 (Mr. Dochterman, this is not a rivalry) and Ohio State vs. Michigan at No. 1. The Game took the top spot ahead of Alabama vs. Auburn, Oklahoma vs. Texas, Army vs. Navy and USC vs. Notre Dame.
Before kickoff, college football rivalries bring families, friends and colleagues closer together. The outcome instantly divides those same people.
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) July 7, 2025
But which ones rise above the rest in the nation? pic.twitter.com/Y76gDXpzrm
In a separate article, Dochterman said he used 11 principles to rank the top 100 rivalries: data, prominence, relevance, trajectory, frequency, proximity, competitiveness, moments, intensity, longevity and history.
Dochterman called The Game “an easy No. 1” because it “meets every principle and tops the chart in meaningful games historically.”
Good man.
Another good man is Tyvis Powell, who told The Athletic’s Austin Meek and Cameron Teague Robinson that Ohio State and Michigan’s rivalry will never lose significance so long as the Buckeyes and Wolverines go to war each fall.
“The only way it could get diminished is if they don’t play anymore,” Powell said. “If one team left the Big Ten, that’s the only way this wouldn’t be the best rivalry in sports. As long as they continue to play this game, there’s nothing that will be better.”
Amen.
THE PRESSURE IS (STILL) ON. It would appear The Game was on a lot of people’s minds this week, as CBS Sports’ Josh Pate also addressed Ohio State and Michigan’s rivalry on his college football show over the weekend.
X user Tommy Delgato submitted the question: Am I crazy to think that there is still a lot of pressure on Ryan Day because of the Michigan losing streak?
“No,” Pate answered emphatically. “No, you’re not crazy at all.”
Pate, one of Day’s staunch defenders over the past few seasons, acknowledged that Day winning a national championship relieves some, but not all, pressure for the Ohio State head coach. His rationale? National championships are great – but not as great as beating your rival.
“This is where college football is over here, and any other sport is over there as a concept,” Pate said. “If you win a championship, a national championship in any other sport, the word pressure is not even in the galaxy of conversation about you the following year. Repeat, complacency, reload or rebuild – no one is talking pressure. And we’re not talking job security with Ryan Day or anything like that, but I believe rivalries are the most important part of college football. I believe beating Michigan is the most important role that you have as the head coach at Ohio State, above winning the conference and above winning national titles.
“My personal college football worldview is that if you’re the head coach at Ohio State, your job is to beat Michigan and then the Big Ten can be won and then the national title can be won in that order. But beating Michigan is No. 1, and he hasn’t done it in several years now. So, if you’re asking me if there’s pressure on him, absolutely, there’s pressure on him. I don’t care if they won the national title by 100 last year. That’s almost like its own conversation. The national title picture is its own conversation. The Michigan game is a season. It is its own season.
“I’d say the same thing if the head coach at Michigan had lost to Ryan Day three years, four years in a row, going on half a decade in a row. I don’t care what else you’ve done. You have failed several times consecutively in your most important role. And I think (Day) is one of the best in the game. I overflow with respect for Ryan Day. I could not think any more highly of the guy. But I’m not saying anything he doesn’t know.”
Take a deep breath.
Pate continues.
For a while.
“In fact, I think (Georgia head coach) Kirby Smart and Ryan Day are two of the most brutally honest coaches that we ever sit down with when it comes to their assessment of their job and program,” Pate said. “You don’t even have to say this to Ryan Day. He’ll say it for you. He knows. He knows the deal about being the head coach at Ohio State.
“If you were the head coach of the New England Patriots or whatnot, it doesn’t matter how many times you lose to the (New York) Jets in a row. Like, if you’re winning the AFC and you’re playing for or winning a Super Bowl, no one is talking about your record versus the Jets. That’s because the NFL is not college football. In college football, there are different compartments. They don’t even have to touch each other, they don’t have to overlap, but you can win a national title and still fail in your most important role as a head coach somewhere if that somewhere is a place like Ohio State.
“I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense to anyone else. … I’m not one of these people that was ever yelling, ‘If he doesn’t beat Michigan, you've got to get him out of there!’ I wasn’t that last year. I wasn’t that. I thought that was a little bit off the rails. But at the same time, there’s no one who places more of a premium on winning rivalry games than me. I literally prioritize it above winning the conference and the national title. That’s how imperative it is to me that you win rivalry games. So, to a casual college football fan, to an agnostic sports fan that looks at college football from afar, that will sound crazy, but that’s OK. They don’t understand this world. That’s fine.”
That was… ** checks timer **… a five-minute sermon.
I can appreciate his take that beating Michigan is more important than winning a national championship, but if I had to choose between the two, I would take the latter every single time. That in no way changes my opinion that The Game is the greatest rivalry in all of sports – I just think that national titles go a lot further, and are remembered for a lot longer, than wins over the Wolverines, especially from a national perspective.
WHO ARE YOU? Last week, Jeremiah Smith made headlines when he vowed to beat Michigan for the rest of his college football career.
“I didn’t want to go to Ohio State and lose to that team up north. I just hate them. Just something about them,” he told The Athletic’s Manny Navarro. “For the next two years, I promise you, I will not lose to them. I can’t lose to them for the next two years.”
Jeremiah Smith has called his shot.https://t.co/g4iqDKfmLA pic.twitter.com/B8uIr7FIhO
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) July 1, 2025
Then, over the weekend, Michigan commit Dorian Barney made a similar claim in an interview with On3’s Chad Simmons.
“I will not lose to Ohio State while I’m there,” the 2026 cornerback said.
I have one question and one wish.
Question: Who is Dorian Barney?
Wish: That Smith has one rep – just one rep, please! – against Barney during The Game in 2026. I guarantee Smith would either put Barney on skates or a poster, whichever he prefers.
“I’D RATHER STEP ON A RUSTY NAIL.” Time and time again, Urban Meyer has said he has no interest in coaching college football following his tenure at Ohio State (and his brief stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars, which feels impossible to forget, no matter how hard I want to). In case you were wondering, Meyer has no interest in being a GM either.
“I don’t know if I even told Rob (Stone) and Mark (Ingram) this, but I had a school come see me this year and ask if I wanted to be the GM,” Meyer said on the Triple Option Podcast. “And a couple other phone calls. And you start to think, ‘OK, they actually came to see me,’ so I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll meet and I’ll sit down with you guys.’ I said, ‘OK, what is the job description?’ They said, ‘Well, basically you meet with all the agents of the 17, 18-year olds.’”
And here comes the classic Meyer response:
“I thought, I’d rather step on a rusty nail and pull it out myself.”
Hilarious.
SONG OF THE DAY. “Who Are You” - The Who.
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