Punt/Counterpunt: The Game 2015

PUNT

By Nick RoUMel

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association rule book, college athletes are not to receive preferential treatment, gifts or other special benefits because of their athletic skills. Michigan fans will recall that our athletic teams have been punished more than once because of this rule.

In February 1996, UM basketball players Maurice Taylor, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, Louis Bullock, Willie Mitchell and Ron Oliver took Mateen Cleaves, then a senior at Flint Northern High School on his official recruiting visit to Michigan, to a party at a Detroit hotel. On the return trip, Taylor’s Ford Explorer rolled over on M-14, breaking Traylor’s arm and leading to many questions. Ann Arbor News sports reporter Jim Cnockaert reported, in a 2002 article, that immediately after the accident, the NCAA asked Michigan for financial records detailing the leasing arrangements for Taylor's vehicle. The aftermath led to the Ed Martin booster scandal that rocked the Michigan basketball program, causing its rapid and long demise.

In enforcing the rule against providing benefits to players, the NCAA did not limit the scope of its inquiry to college. In February 2000, UM basketball freshman phenom Jamal Crawford was handed two separate suspensions totaling 14 games, arising from his relationship in high school with a man he considered his father figure and godfather, who helped rescue him from a childhood of poverty and criminal influence. The major accusation against Crawford was that this good Samaritan had given him a used car to help him get to school. The New York Times reported in 2000 that Crawford’s was just one of a rash of aggressive investigations the NCAA launched against college players accepting benefits while they were in high school.

The NCAA has been kinder to Ohio State. In 2010 it was learned that several players had traded “nine Big Ten championship rings, 15 pairs of cleats, four or five jerseys and one national championship ring” for cash or trade, including tattoos. The players were suspended for five games – but they did not have to sit out until the beginning of the non-conference 2011 season. They were permitted to play in the January 4, 2011 Sugar Bowl, which the Buckeyes won over Arkansas to cap a 12-1 season. After the game it was determined that then-coach Jim Tressel was aware of the NCAA violations by his players, had led others to believe he wasn’t, and failed to report them. He too was eventually suspended for five games, but in the face of controversy about his relatively light punishment, he left amid allegations of more extensive problems.

The Buckeye football program was transformed by these violations, but in a good way. After a 6-6 2011 season that saw Michigan’s only gridiron victory over their rivals since 2003, OSU hired Urban Meyer to head their program, less than a year after Meyer retired as Florida’s coach to “spend more time with his family.” (Sportswriter Mac Engel quipped, “Urban Meyer has apparently spent enough time with his family.”)

Some may argue that Meyer has brought an SEC mentality to Ohio State; others respond that nothing has changed. Their reaction to the complete beatdown that Sparty laid on them last week was outrage. Suddenly a coach who had won 23 straight games didn’t know what he was doing. Star running back Ezekiel Elliott blasted the playcalling, and declared there was “no chance” he would return next year. Cardale Jones also announced he would not return. One might expect that such openly public criticism would lead to discipline; no chance of that in Columbus. Meyer stated of Elliott, “He apologized. We squashed it as a team.”

Thus the Buckeyes, remarkably, come into Ann Arbor as a cohesive unit, and the rumors of their implosion are highly exaggerated. They are the same program that has owned Michigan for a dozen years, and the same team that are the defending national champions. They have been ranked #1 for much of this year, and are still in the top ten.

Sure, Sparty exposed some vulnerability. But don’t expect Michigan’s offensive line and running game to enjoy the same success, and I think that Barrett/Jones/Elliott will fare better offensively, especially with Ryan Glasgow’s absence in the middle.

If you’re looking for scandal: move along, nothing to see here. The Buckeyes are one big, happy, dysfunctional family. This is who Urban Meyer really wanted to spend more time with, and he’s found a home.

OHIO STATE 23, MICHIGAN 19

COUNTERPUNT

By Heiko Yang

Hate is a strong word, but it’s the only way to describe what I felt when OSU fans swarmed onto the field around me after their team beat Michigan 26-21 to secure an undefeated season in 2012.

I remember the final moments of that game cinematically: the last kneel down, the roar of the crowd, and then just a muted daze as I looked around and marveled at how much I hated everything in that frigid stadium. I hated their band, hated their fight song, and hated that all the prematurely made victory signs somehow weren’t enough to jinx the outcome. I hated that I was there to suffer their happiness. I had to force my way past throngs of jubilant idiots on my way to the press conference area, and I just hated that they were euphoric about the very thing that made me miserable.

I didn’t know I was capable of such all-encompassing hate until that moment. I had to keep telling myself “it’s just a game and none of this matters,” but never had those words felt so hollow.

Hate is a powerful thing. We don’t even need to talk about the recent tragedies around the world to know that it can inspire terrible things when misguided and left unchecked. But hate isn’t always bad. In the world of sports, we happily subject ourselves to regular exercises in hate on because it’s a constructive outlet for an emotion so potent that even for a contest premised on moving a leather balloon 100 yards back and forth we will cultivate century-old rivalries based on little more than geography, provisional ideologies, and color schemes.

Our capacity to hate gives these rivalries meaning and character. It’s no longer just a simple game with inconsequential outcomes; when we’ve invested our very identities into something, everything matters. We remember all the verbal slights, the guarantees of victory, the recruiting battles, the midfield brawls, and the tearing down of our banners, and for one day every year we lay that hateful history on the line. The stakes are very real: emerge triumphant or be sentenced to suffer your opponent’s gloating happiness for another year.

This is Michigan’s proverbial Year. It’s been on the warpath toward this game ever since Jim Harbaugh took the reins of the program and channeled a decade of personal frustration over Michigan losses into his coaching. Like Bo in 1969, Harbaugh has built this team to beat the Buckeyes. The Wolverines defense is rock to Urban Meyer’s scissors, and the offense has been meticulously stockpiling weapons capable of punching holes through the Ohio State defense. More importantly, the team has come together over the course of the season and achieved a heightened level of focus and determination just as the Buckeyes are beginning to fall apart. This year more than ever, Michigan is prepared to win. And they will – with character, cruelty, and hate.

The Ohio State fans here today will be in for a real treat. It’s been too long since they’ve been forced to suffer our happiness. I don’t think they remember what it’s like to regret having to be in our frigid stadium to listen to our band play our fight song while they filter out miserably past our throngs of jubilant fans.

It’s time to remind them what hate feels like.

Go Blue.

Michigan 24, Ohio State 12