Mitch Albom: Michigan football upsets No. 2 Ohio State and it’s OK to look

It was a game that changes nothing, yet changes everything. A statistical dud, yet an emotional supernova. A forgettable performance, but an unforgettable afternoon, one that catapulted a first-year Michigan coach named Sherrone Moore into the company of another first-year Michigan coach named Bo Schembechler, who, 55 years ago, was told by everyone there was no way on God’s green earth his Wolverines could beat the top-ranked Buckeyes.

Wrong then. Wrong now.

Michigan 13, Ohio State 10.

Rub your eyes. We’ll wait.

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“You talk about a gritty performance by a bunch of guys! I love these dudes!” Moore gushed to a Fox reporter after the biggest upset in decades of this storied rivalry. “This is why you come to Michigan!”

Well, maybe not to see 62 yards of total passing, or two red-zone interceptions, or an offensive game plan that often looked like it was drawn with a ruler. But to beat Ohio State when nobody says you can? Absolutely, that’s why you come to Michigan.

And that’s exactly what happened Saturday. On a bracing cold afternoon when Ohio State, at 10-1 and ranked No. 2 in the nation, and Michigan, at 6-5 and ranked somewhere between “Why” and “Bother?”, the Wolverines marched into Columbus like the fiercest theater critic at the biggest box-office play.

Simply. Not. Impressed.

The Wolverines shut down an Ohio State offense that had been averaging five touchdowns a game, holding them to 10 points. Time after time, Ryan Day’s team tried to run into the mouth of the Michigan defense, and time after time, the Wolverines spit them back, squashing a top-flight rushing attack to just 77 yards and demoralizing it with every forced punt.

The only lead OSU had was 3-0 in the first quarter. Once Michigan turned a terrific interception by Aamir Hall into a short-field touchdown drive with 12:37 left in the half, it never trailed again.

Never trailed again? THIS Michigan team? Against THIS Ohio State team?

That’s about what they’re saying in Columbus right now.

Maybe with a few more $%#@# expletives.

Rub your eyes.

Bad place to celebrate

This most unlikely victory was stained by a melee in its immediate aftermath, when the victorious Michigan players carried a U-M flag to the middle of the field and planted it in the turf. Angry OSU players charged in force, leading to numerous wrestling, hitting and tackling moments that were ugly and unnecessary and unworthy of a rivalry that has stood the test of time.

At one point, Ohio State’s Jack Sawyer appeared to rip the U-M flag off its pole and throw it to the ground.

A terrible coda to an amazing afternoon.

“For such a great game, you hate to see stuff like that after the game,” Kalel Mullings told FOX Sports. “It’s bad for the sport, bad for college football. But at the end of the day, some people, they gotta learn how to lose, man. You can’t be fighting and stuff just cause you lost the game.

“We had 60 minutes, we had four quarters to do all that fighting and now people want to talk and fight. That’s wrong, it’s just bad for the game, classless in my opinion. People gotta be better.”

True, but that includes the Michigan players, who could have run into the locker room and celebrated with each other, rather than attempt a flag planting that was destined for trouble.

A shame. Because the Wolverines should have been waving their victory and Mullings should have been talking about his performance. He carried the ball 32 times for 116 yards, which is not what anyone would call a great average, but everyone should call gutsy.

Time after time, he plowed into the OSU defense, chewing up time on the clock, getting Michigan close enough to kick two Dominic Zvada field goals, one 54 yards and the clincher, from 21 yards out, with less than a minute to play.

Those field goals, along with two missed ones by the Ohio State kicker Jaden Fielding, were the difference on the scoreboard.

But not the difference in the game.

Michigan’s mind game

No, the difference in this game was belief. Michigan had every reason to think it couldn’t stack up against its archrival this year. Its old coach, Jim Harbaugh, was gone. So were his coordinators. The quarterback position was a carousel of problems. Its best offensive player, Colston Loveland, was out with an injury. Its best defensive player, Will Johnson, was injured as well. It had lost five of 11 games already this year

Meanwhile, the Buckeyes had been keying for this moment for 364 days, seething and seeing red after three straight rivalry losses to the Wolverines. The game was in Columbus. The fan base was fired up. Michigan, a 19.5-point underdog, couldn’t point to a single thing on paper that gave it a real edge.

But the game is not played on paper. It’s not really played on grass, either. It’s played on gray matter, the kind between your ears. If you believe in yourself and you’ve done it before, the combination can lift you physically to unimaginable heights.

Likewise, if fear gets the best of you, even usual excellence can wither. For much of the game, Ohio State seemed to be playing it safe — if not scared. The Buckeyes kept running into the teeth of the Michigan line, the defense’s strongest element. They seemed timid to open the passing game outside, on the edges, where they should have had a big advantage,

Their own mistakes didn’t help their confidence. Quarterback Will Howard threw a bad interception early in the game from his own 4-yard line that led to a Michigan touchdown. He threw another pick in the third quarter when the Buckeyes were deep in Michigan territory.

That likely played in his head on the Buckeyes’ final drive with just 45 seconds remaining and no timeouts, trailing by 3.

Here is where the wheels came off the bus. Instead of a sharp, calm, quick-hitting passing attack to march downfield and try a tying field goal, Howard and Ohio State were chased, harassed, threw three incompletions and gained 1 measly yard on four plays.

They turned the ball over on downs.

One yard? Ohio State?

Rub your eyes.

Moore’s shining moment

How great is this for Moore, who has battled doubters much of the year? Never mind that he lost an army of top players to the NFL draft, lost a host more to injuries and inherited a quarterback room left shamefully bare by Harbaugh, who had his eye on other horizons.

Most U-M fans had resigned themselves to a 6-6 finish this year, a minor bowl game and the annoying sight of Ryan Day celebrating a return to OSU dominance.

Instead, Moore provided the sharpest exclamation point since Schembechler’s crew upset the Buckeyes, 24-12, in 1969, when Ohio State was No. 1 and had won 22 straight.

But that game was in Ann Arbor. To do this in Columbus puts Moore in a special category. And likely makes his winter and spring a whole lot happier for the man.

The same cannot be said for Day, who was already being roasted on social media minutes after the game, with Buckeye fans calling for his dismissal. Day himself has basically said he lives and dies with this rivalry, and four straight years of losing it will not sit well anywhere in Ohio.

But that’s why they play the games. Who would have thought this one would have featured two bad interceptions by both teams, two missed field goals, a 77-yard, six-plus minute drive that came up empty, and a final four downs by OSU that gained a single yard?

And yet. It did.

Rub your eyes. This is everything that is great about college football — and it had nothing to do with which team spent more NIL money (take a guess!).

In the end, the game is still about heart, and while the Wolverines are not going to be champions of anything this year, they played with the heart of a champion Saturday. And made a memory for the ages.

Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.