Ohio State fans the world over are wont to sing their irreverent tune, “We Don’t Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan.” While it’s especially true the week they face off against their fiercely disliked rivals up North, it’s really always true. Ohio State fans sing it before games against Hawaii, they sing it when they’ve clinched a victory against Minnesota, they sing it at weddings and meetings and gatherings that have nothing to do with football other than the fact that, well, everything having to do with Ohio State has to do with football. They probably don’t sing it in the closing seconds of a soul-punching loss to Michigan State, but they sing it at all other times — and with great enthusiasm and glee.
The song largely undermines itself — that someone took the time to compose the tune shows that Ohio gives at least one damn about Michigan. But it rings true in other ways: particularly when it comes to assembling a winning football team. Aside from the occasional prized recruit from Michigan, Ohio State largely ignores the Mitten State when it comes to designing or running its football team. Because Ohio’s native football talent is so plentiful, Ohio State need only leave home to fetch the shiniest of recruits, only a handful of which hail from Michigan. Ohio State has the luxury of not giving a damn about Michigan.
I already wrote a lengthy post about this last year, so feel free to visit that that if you like words and stuff. This year I went through and updated my figures and data with the following:
- More complete data on player hometowns at FOXSports.com, the only mainstream place that has historical rosters with hometowns from most college football programs.
- A new interactive recruit hometown map here.
- A new interactive map that shows the production levels by state at both Ohio State and Michigan here.
- Made the tables and charts look purrtier.
- Looked at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library website, which as a database of University of Michigan Football players. The database allows one to obtain the hometowns and states of 12,575 University of Michigan player-years or roster entries, or every recorded person to ever play football at Michigan according to its own records. It only has about 300 entries with unknown hometowns, which isn’t bad. It’s worth exploring just to see great nineteenth century names like Irving Pond, Elmer Beach, Henry J. Killilea, and John Jaycox. (I contacted Ohio State inquiring about such information. A reference archivist graciously responded, and said they are working on digitizing old football programs, but these programs and rosters aren’t in a usable electronic form yet. There was also some veiled resentment that Michigan has an archivist dedicated to sports and Ohio State doesn’t.)
Some may view Ohio State’s inability to prevent Michigan benefiting from any Ohio products as a failure on their part. But Ohio State can’t have a monopoly on Ohio football talent — it’s an overly abundant natural resource. The counter to that would be that it’s a matter of pride that Ohio is so rich in football talent that it nourishes the entire region with quality football players — Michigan included — and that Michigan has to rely on Ohio to maintain its stature as a top-tier football program. It’s kind of like Lex Luthor borrowing Superman’s cape.
But whether Ohio State fans get to call Michigan a fraudulent, imported football program for the next year or Michigan fans get to call Ohio State a jealous ex upset that its talent abandoned it for the next twelves months will be decided on Saturday. But whatever happens in The Game on Saturday, there’s no denying that Ohio has a big IOU from University of Michigan football — but they do accept payment in the form of losses.
