Ohio State harnessing emotions of The Game as Michigan’s hostile environment awaits

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State football must harness its emotions Saturday against Michigan, and that starts with Ryan Day.

The fifth-year head coach has arguably been more emotive than ever this season. Chief of staff Quinn Tempel is tasked with restraining him on the sideline — a job which at times requires as much muscle as any on the field.

To call Michigan Stadium a hostile environment for the Buckeyes would be the understatement of the college football season. The bad blood that already existed between these programs and fan bases has only grown more rancid throughout the season. Allegations that Michigan broke NCAA rules to scout future opponents in person and used that to decipher OSU’s signals the past two seasons threw gasoline on the fire.

Saturday’s game may be the most emotionally incendiary edition of this game ever played. Third-year cornerback Denzel Burke said thinking of The Game has his “blood boiling.” Safe to assume he’s not alone.

Which means Day’s example, and that of the rest of his staff, means more than ever before.

“We have to keep our emotions in check, starting from the head down,” Day said. “It has to start from me. We have to go in there and execute at a high level and handle the environment.”

Emotions would have been elevated for this season’s game, anyway. Michigan has won the last two meetings as the lower-ranked team and betting underdog. Safety Mike Sainristil planted a Michigan flag at midfield of Ohio Stadium after last season’s victory — the program’s first there since 2000.

Both deprived OSU of a chance to play for the Big Ten championship. Both would also have knocked the Buckeyes out of the playoffs, if upsets elsewhere had not provided a back-door route back in last season.

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The Big Ten is eliminating divisions when Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington join next year. The College Football Playoff is also expanding to 12 teams. Going forward, it will be possible for the rivals to rematch either one week later in the Big Ten championship game, or at some round of the playoff, or both. This edition of The Game will be the final one with true finality of outcome.

Tensions between Day and Harbaugh have always been high. In the postgame press conference after Michigan won The Game in 2021, Harbaugh cracked “Sometimes people that are standing on third base think they hit a triple — and they didn’t.” That was an apparent reference to Day inheriting the OSU machine from Urban Meyer.

Harbaugh later said the jab was a “counterpunch” to Day allegedly telling his players OSU would “hang a hundred” on the Wolverines. That supposedly followed what was reported to be a terse verbal exchanged between the two coaches on a Big Ten conference call in the summer of 2020.

The 2020 edition of The Game was canceled due to a COVID-19 outbreak at Michigan. Ohio State has not won in the rivalry since.

Senior linebacker Cody Simon said ignoring the noise is a difficult yet essential part of preparing for this game.

“If I see something, I scroll past it or just don’t even focus on it — because I know what what really matters is what we talk about here in the Woody,” Simon said. “Anything else I see out there just doesn’t mean much to me. I know what the truth is here and I’m just getting ready for The Game.”

Harbaugh was asked Monday whether he respected Day and his staff. He paused before conjuring a non-answer which, essentially, acknowledged the premise.

“It’s all about our preparation for Ohio,” Harbaugh said. “Anything else is irrelevant when we get into this kind of big game.”

Day took a pass on a similar question Tuesday, pivoting instead to talking about respecting the rivalry by working hard towards it year-round.

Fair to speculate he has much more he would say that isn’t for public consumption. Another example of harnessing emotions, rather than being victim to them.

“You have to play with emotion, you can’t let emotion play with you,” Day said. “I think that’s important. You have to have your emotions in check — which isn’t easy in a game like this. Because as we all know the magnitude of it all. But it’s something that we identified in the offseason, so we’ll talk about this week.”