How Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh are fueling the greatest version Ohio State vs. Michigan in The Game

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Is it crazy to think that Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh hate each other?

It’s a strong emotion to have toward anybody, but we are talking about the guys in charge of what most feel is the greatest rivalry in sports. Hate kind of comes with the territory.

But this doesn’t feel like your typical sports hatred.

Red Socks fans hate the Yankees, Duke fans hate North Carolina, and even in this rivalry both fan bases outwardly hate the other. They take it as far as not even referring to each other by name. OSU calls Michigan “That Team Up North” and the Wolverines constantly make sure to omit the word “State” when referring to the Buckeyes.

But Day’s and Harbaugh’s hate has found a way to take things even a step further. They have practically become the living embodiment for how two programs, two fan bases and two states feel about each other. They’re living out every hyperbolic way you could talk about this rivalry in real time, while also trying their best not to publicly acknowledge those feelings any earlier than they have to.

They can’t even answer a simple yes or no question in regards to whether or not they respect each other.

Here’s Harbaugh answer to that question on Monday:

“It’s all about our preparation for Ohio. The days, the minutes, the hours, everything leading up to this game, that’s where our focus is. Preparing ourselves, planning, practice then execute. Anything else is irrelevant when you get into this kind of big game week.”

Here’s Day’s answer to a similar question on Tuesday:

“With everything going on and the things that are out there, we’ve just stayed away from all the distractions we have and just focused on our team. I think the guys have done a good job of it. When you talk to our guys, I’ve talked to them a couple of times about what’s gone on this season going into the game. But they’re focused on this game. They’re focused on this season. They’re focused on their preparation and we’re just gonna continue on that.

Those are two long-winded ways of saying “No.”

These two have found a way to take something that is already historically monumental and make it probably the biggest and most important version ever. They obviously had some help in making that happen, but Saturday feels like the culmination of 119 years of hatred. Finally giving a fan base everything it could have possibly asked for on a Saturday afternoon in November.

And they have these two to thank for it, here’s why:

Let’s just start with the basic football part of this.

There have been three times in the history of college football that two 11-0 teams have played each other to close to the end of a regular season. The first was in 2006 in a game nicknamed “The Game of the Century,” featuring the nation’s top two teams, with one of the quarterbacks using it to win the Heisman Trophy. The second was last year with a spot in the Big Ten championship game and the College Football Playoff on the line. The third happens on Saturday.

All three times have featured the same two teams. Two times will have happened with Day and Harbaugh as the head coaches (although Harbaugh won’t be actually on the sideline Saturday due to a suspension over the program’s sign-stealing scandal). The fact this rivalry has habitually featured two of the nation’s top teams makes it that much more entertaining. Especially this season, because it’s the last time it will hold this much weight due to the 12-team playoff starting next season.

The cultural aspect of this speaks for itself, and there have been enough documentaries done about the differences in the two schools, programs and fan bases that we all get it at this point.

Just like in the first two 11-0 matchups, the Heisman is on the line. Troy Smith won it in 2006 in large part for what he did in The Game. C.J. Stroud has even acknowledged that he lost the Heisman in both years he was the starter in large part for what he didn’t do in The Game. J.J. McCarthy is trying to get to New York as a finalist. So is Marvin Harrison Jr., though he has a much better chance of actually winning it than McCarthy does. But none of that will matter if he doesn’t win this week.

Then there are player legacy conversations. McCarthy is trying to be the first quarterback to say he never lost to Ohio State since Brian Griese won three straight from 1995-97, though he notably came off the bench to win the game in 1996 .

The Buckeyes put together a historically good 2021 recruiting class, with many of those players living up to the hype. But right now their list of team accomplishments falls short because their entire careers have been built around the fact that they’ve never beaten the Wolverines.

All of those reasons alone make this exciting. Then Michigan had to go ahead and throw in the ultimate joker card. The Wolverines have spent the last two months dealing with alleged sign-stealing allegations that seem to get a new layer of detail every 48 hours. Those allegations have changed the way people have viewed the outcomes of the last two Ohio State-Michigan games. It’ll form the way people view the results on Saturday.

OSU wins, and public opinion will feel validated in thinking that the only reason Michigan started winning is because it started cheating. OSU loses, and public opinion will look down on the program regardless of what the Wolverines were doing because, clearly, it didn’t matter.

All of those reasons and more bring us back to why this edition of The Game is the greatest edition there has ever been, and probably ever will be. It will never matter this much again. The stakes will never be this high and the pain will never cut this deep. Thanks to the increase from a four-team to a 12-team playoff, seasons won’t have to die anymore with a loss, and the idea that you can win the ultimate prize while falling short in the rivalry might eventually be a reality.

But that hatred will always be there, and even that has a new level this year.

Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler spent a decade gunning for each other in a back-and-forth affair that, even to this day, fans still hold dear to their hearts. But their hate had a limit. They hated each other as rivals, but they still respected each other as competitors, and how they interacted once the dust settled was proof of that.

The years after the 10 Year War produced a world where the programs took turns having one-sided versions of the rivalry. Even if one side drastically hated the other, it’s not like they could actually do anything about it.

The one-sided rivalries appear to be done. What’s been born out of that is two people in a relationship where there’s no love lost. Harbaugh finally got his first win in the rivalry in 2021 and proceeded to take the side of the aggressor by taking shots at Day.

“Sometimes people standing on third base think they hit a triple,” Harbaugh said after that 42-27 win. “But they didn’t.”

Day hasn’t truly had his chance to respond yet, even with rumored behind-the-scenes talk of him once stating he’d “hang 100′′ on Michigan. But his thoughts after a 17-14 win over Notre Dame at least hinted at what might happen should he leave Ann Arbor victorious on Saturday.

The sign-stealing saga is only pouring propane on a fire already burning wildly out of control.

Ohio State and Michigan already hate each other and now their coaches do too, in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s going to ever going to be a salvageable relationship.

Perfect.

That element of this rivalry is probably long overdue. But what better year to add it than the one where every possible thing imaginable is on the line?

Both guys are all in, and the two guys holding the cards would like nothing more than to watch the guy across from him suffer, while being the reason for that suffering.

The Ohio State-Michigan game has never been just a game. It’s been a way of life that both sides live every single day, only to finally have all that build-up explode the last Saturday in November. This year is no different, while being so much more.

This isn’t just about two teams trying to win a football game. This is about two people who might have come to terms with the idea that the word respect might no longer be on the table when dealing with the other. A place the two fan bases got to a long time ago.