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The Game: The Michigan-Ohio State Football Rivalry
The Game: The Michigan-Ohio State Football Rivalry
The Game: The Michigan-Ohio State Football Rivalry
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The Game: The Michigan-Ohio State Football Rivalry

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Simply known as "The Game," the history of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry - one of the oldest and, arguably, the fierecest in college football.


With a history that stretches over a century, the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry is one of the oldest in college football. The two teams claim a combined 19 national championships, hundreds of All-Americans, and 10 Heisman Trophies. Each year, millions of Buckeye and Wolverine fans watch the two teams with great disdain for one another battle in late November - usually for an opportunity to win the Big Ten championship.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 7, 2015
ISBN9781439653371
The Game: The Michigan-Ohio State Football Rivalry
Author

Ken Magee

Ken Magee was born and raised in Ann Arbor and is an expert in Wolverine football history. Ken is a 30-year veteran of law enforcement, retired federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and former chief of police for the University of Michigan. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Ken Magee Foundation for Cops. The foundation assists police officers who have been permanently injured in the line of duty and their families. Jon M. Stevens was born and raised in Powell, Ohio. Jon made his way to Ann Arbor through his interest in architecture. He earned a master's degree from the University of Michigan and is currently a designer for an architectural firm in downtown Ann Arbor. He is an avid sports memorabilia collector and devoted Michigan Wolverine football fan.

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    The Game - Ken Magee

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    INTRODUCTION

    In late 1999, in celebration of a new century, ESPN studied the great rivalries in all of sports and created a top-10 list. The number-one choice for sport’s greatest rivalries was the Michigan–Ohio State football game. This great rivalry has now spanned 111 games. Prior to the first game in this series in 1897, Michigan had been playing for almost 20 years, with their first game in 1879, defeating Racine College. This victory was only 10 years after the very first college football game, played in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers. Ohio State played its first game in 1890, beating Ohio Wesleyan College. It was in 1897 that Michigan met Ohio State on the gridiron for the first time. This historic rivalry has resulted in 58 Michigan wins, 47 Ohio State wins, and six ties. Since 1919, when Ohio State achieved its first win against Michigan, the series record stands as follows: 47 Ohio State wins, 45 Michigan wins, and four ties. The two teams have combined for 19 national championships and 77 Big Ten Conference championships and produced 10 Heisman Trophy winners and hundreds of All-Americans. While many great rivalries have a trophy to symbolize victory, the prize in the Ohio State–Michigan game is simply bragging rights.

    As storied as the rivalry is between these two football giants, so are their nicknames, fight songs, and traditions. The team nicknames, the Wolverines of Michigan and the Buckeyes of Ohio State, have lore attached to both universities. Wolverines has been used since the 1860s. Michigan is known as the Wolverine State, and there are many theories as to its original designation for both the state and the university. They range from when the French settled in Michigan in the 1700s to a battle over a border dispute between Michigan and Ohio in 1803. It is certain that a wild wolverine is a rare occurrence in Michigan, and there has never been an example of skeletal remains or a trapping of a live wolverine in the state. Only once since the 1800s, in 2004, has a wolverine been verified as living in the wild in the state. Fielding Yost embraced the nickname, going so far as to bring caged wolverines from the Detroit Zoo to Michigan Stadium in 1927 to parade them in front of spectators.

    The nickname Buckeyes originated from the fact that Ohio’s nickname is the Buckeye State. In addition, due to the popularity of the buckeye tree and its prevalence throughout the state, in 1953 the buckeye tree was designated as the state tree. The word buckeye has a connection with the Native American word hetuck, meaning buck eye, as the markings of the buckeye nut resemble the eye of a deer. Although historians show that Buckeyes was used for residents of Ohio as early as 1788, it was not designated as the official nickname of The Ohio State University until 1950.

    With respect to the Michigan rivalry, the Buckeyes started a custom in 1934. The Gold Pants tradition was started by Ohio State first-year coach Francis Schmidt. A gold pants charm is awarded to Ohio State players who defeat the Wolverines. Once, when Coach Schmidt was asked how his team could defeat the Wolverines, he responded, They put their pants on one leg at a time, like everybody else. Following that 1934 claim, the Buckeyes defeated Michigan four straight years, outscoring the Wolverines 114-0. Since then, a gold charm in the image of a pair of football pants has been awarded to each player and coach of the teams that defeat the Wolverines.

    Another dynamic fact that exemplifies the greatness of this rivalry and the respect the two teams have for each other comes in the form of the marching bands, who incorporate school spirit with each note played. Spelling out the script Ohio is legendary when the Buckeye marching band performs on the field. The honor of dotting the i goes to a selected sousaphone player, and it is the pinnacle experience of his or her career. The tradition of the script Ohio was actually performed first by the Michigan marching band as a tribute to the Ohio State marching band during the 1932 game in Columbus, when the University of Michigan band performed in front of 40,700 spectators. Members marched in block formation and spelled out Ohio in script, diagonally across the field with a dotted i. In 1936, the Ohio State band, with a new formation designed by director Eugene Weigel, performed the first script Ohio in the band’s storied history. It has evolved throughout the years to now include the triple revolving block Ohio as the lead formation, peeling off into the script movement, the interlaced shoestring progression performed to the pervasive driving beat of the venerable Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse and the much celebrated dotting of the i.

    A description of these two great universities would not be complete without mentioning the school colors. Ohio State adopted its official color scheme in 1878, when a committee of three students gathered in University Hall to select a combination. The first choice was orange and black, but the committee learned that Princeton was using these colors and thus quickly discarded the idea. They then moved to select the now-famous scarlet and gray because they thought it was a nice combination and unique. Michigan selected its colors in 1867 after a group of students chose azure blue and maize as emblematic of the university, which is now the legendary maize and blue. The colors are adorned by Buckeye and Wolverine players and fans worldwide. On game day, at the Horseshoe in a sea of scarlet and gray or at the Big House in the land of maize and blue, there is no doubt as to who the home team

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