OHIO STATE vs. MICHIGAN….It’s the game of the century! Who are you rooting for?
I’ll be rooting for Michigan, though for fairly convoluted reasons. As a lifelong USC fan, I was raised to consider the entire Big Ten an undifferentiated enemy of everything good and pure, so there was never any reason to care who won games like this. The Rose Bowl was all that mattered.
On the other hand, as a lifelong USC fan I also favor whatever result is most likely to get USC into the #2 spot in the BCS rankings and therefore into the BCS championship game (assuming they manage to win the rest of their games, of course). So which result would most likely accomplish that? I figure a Michigan win, because the BCS computers love Michigan. The humans will probably drop the losing team to #3, but a Michigan loss might cause the computers to drop them only as far as #2, and this could result in them hanging on to the #2 BCS spot by a fingernail. But if Ohio State loses, I figure they’ll drop below USC in both the human polls and the computer polls, pretty much guaranteeing the Trojans the #2 spot.
Did that make sense? Probably not. In any case, today’s game sure shows off the absurdity of the human polls. Out of 238 voters in the AP, coaches, and Harris polls, we’re supposed to believe that a grand total of two think Michigan is the superior team. Sure.
And now, it’s off to the game.
UPDATE: That was sure an impressive opening drive, wasn’t it? Go Wolverines!
FINAL UPDATE: Well, that was about the worst possible result from my parochial West Coast point of view. Ohio State won, but Michigan kept it so close they’ll almost certainly stay pretty high in the polls. Bummer.
But hey ? congratulations Buckeyes! Maybe we’ll see you in Arizona next year.
