Threat Level believes the road to restoring Ohio State’s dominance over Michigan will be a lot longer than people want to admit

When I was thinking about this article after The Game, I wasn’t really sure what Threat Level had to offer on Monday night that hadn’t already been hashed and rehashed thousands of times in the last 60 hours. Honestly, as I sit here writing this on Sunday evening, I’m still not entirely sure what that could be. Threat Level is by far the most popular ongoing book I’ve ever written, so I feel no small amount of pressure to add something unique to the discourse.

The problem is, I’m not entirely sure a guy who was too angry to shower this morning is up to the task. But I’ll try:

I grew up in the ’90s finding new ways to be angry about the loss to Michigan essential for the fashionable Ohio State fan. The end of each season was a roulette wheel of pointing fingers; Whether it was the coaching, the talent, the lack of focus or whatever, each loss was a new hell that made it seem like the Buckeyes would simply never get out of the woods.

And I suspect that Michigan fans probably felt that way for nearly two decades when Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer were sticking their faces in dog poop.

Anyway, one thing I keep thinking about is that in the immediate aftermath of an (incredibly embarrassing) loss at Ohio State, there isn’t a single cool trick that will magically fix everything.

You want to fire Ryan Day? It’s not the worst idea in the world, and depending on how Ohio State plays in the playoffs, he probably deserves it. But does it beat Michigan? Will Ohio State get another national championship?

So what now?

I often hear, “The current status quo is unacceptable and you have to take that risk,” which is fair; The Ohio State team is beaten The The way the Michigan team pulled it off is more than just a bad loss, it’s a symptom of something much worse at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. The desire to do the easy thing in the most difficult way is almost omnipresent, scoring style points that only exist in the mind of an extremely shaken head football coach at this point.

Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

That’s a problem because ever since Teddy Roosevelt made college campus rugby players stop gouging each other’s eyes out with rusty spoons, Michigan football has been an accurate measure of what makes a good football program . No matter what happens, the Buckeyes could always point to the last game of the season and say, “Well, if we beat this team, that’s a sign that we’re in a good position as a program.” Iron sharpens iron, right whatever idiom you use.

Tressel and Meyer immediately beat Michigan and then won national titles, while John Cooper couldn’t and didn’t. That goes back almost 40 years, which is long enough to entrench the idea that one thing follows another.

But I don’t think that’s true anymore. This version of the Wolverines really sucks! And will probably continue to be kind of an asshole! Which tells us nothing about the program when the Buckeyes win and only raises more questions when they lose.

LIMBO

So what lets us down is that in any decisions made about the football team going forward, we must recognize that getting rid of Ryan Day means trading a guy who reliably wins 10 to 11 games a season for this Equivalent of reaching your hand into a wet bucket full of eels and eel-shaped generational football coaches. Ross Bjork could reach into the bucket and pull out another Urban Meyer, or he could pull out a Bo Pelini.

Maybe you’re okay with that risk at this point, which is fine (heck, I might be okay with that too at this point)! Just consider that despite its long, long history of never being anything less than “good to great” for any significant amount of time, Ohio State is one bad coaching position away from… Damn: Being Michigan in 2024.

If the Buckeyes want to avoid that fate, the only real solution here is to get better.

That sounds as nebulous as I mean it.