Ohio State football not ready to accept altered future of The Game

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Watching the 2016 Ohio State football vs. Michigan game as a New Jersey middle schooler, Kyle McCord had no trouble grasping the magnitude of the rivalry.

He watched merely as a college football fan, long before the Buckeyes offered him a scholarship. To this day, though, he remembers Curtis Samuel’s touchdown in double overtime to lift the No. 2 Buckeyes past the No. 3 Wolverines.

Now McCord lives inside the rivalry as OSU’s starting quarterback, as No. 2 again prepares to face No. 3. Tuesday he was asked to imagine if he and his teammates already knew they would rematch with Michigan one week after The Game in the Big Ten Championship game.

“That’s crazy,” McCord said. “I think that’s just kind of the world of college football now, with everything going on, it’s twists and turns. But that would be wild.”

For the second consecutive year, though, that is precisely what would be unfolding if the Big Ten had already done away with divisions. Both teams made it to the regular season finale 11-0. Big Ten West champion Iowa has already lost twice (and is the betting underdog at Nebraska on Friday, for good measure).

Despite the reverence, tradition and mutual dislike between Ohio State and Michigan, The Game will lose something beginning next year. The rivals obviously will not rematch every year. Sometimes when they do, it will not be locked up a couple of weeks in advance. Yet it will happen often enough that the stakes will be compromised.

The finality of this annual battle — and the bragging rights and year-long misery handed to the vanquished opponent — have been sacrificed for college football progress. When one of these great teams is left out of the current College Football Playoff due to its strict exclusivity, even those who hate what The Game will lose may long for what the future will provide.

BET ANYTHING

GET $250 BONUS

ESPN BET

Both Ohio State and Michigan will still want to win The Game next year. Ohio State will either be defending a crown it fought hard to reclaim or resolved to stop a three-game losing streak. The recent sign-stealing scandal will likely still drag on Michigan’s reputation — especially if it loses on Saturday. Or, it will have a chance to push the winning streak to a full four years.

Of course, The Game will still mean a ton. More than a ton. It will carry the weight of an entire 100,000-plus seat stadium and all of the fans who will keep filling it every Thanksgiving weekend.

But it will also mean less, and to argue otherwise means someone is maybe in a bit of denial.

Ohio State coach Ryan Day, for one, is not prepared to accept the thought of a diminished The Game.

“I don’t know if that’ll be the case,” Day said. “I’m sure there’ll always be just as much on the line when when these two teams play. Certainly it’ll be different. But I don’t think it’ll change anything just on the format. It’s always going to be this way.

“The format certainly will change next year, but I don’t think the rivalry we know will ever be anything less than it is right now.”

Maybe Day is correct. Maybe these universities, these states, have so much history with and against each other that nothing will be diminished.

It’s more likely we will all experience something special, and a different kind of final, on Saturday.