2B — November 26, 2018
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

What makes a successful season
C

OLUMBUS — Shea Pat-
terson walked into the 
room, every camera 
focused on 
him, and sat 
down.
The junior 
quarter-
back sighed. 
Loudly. Then 
he sighed 
again.
Michigan’s 
starting 
quarterback 
didn’t have 
much to say about what hap-
pened at Ohio Stadium on Sat-
urday afternoon. Neither did 
his coach, nor his other team-
mates who spoke briefly with 
reporters after the Wolverines’ 
62-39 dismantling at the hands 
of Ohio State.
I don’t blame them. Truth 
be told, there isn’t much to say 
about this rivalry anymore, 
other than what has been said 
for the past few years.
Michigan has not beaten the 
Buckeyes in seven years, not 
since Ohio State hired Urban 
Meyer. The Wolverines have 
won once in the past 15 years, 
which means that if you are 
a freshman in high school 
like my sister, you have seen 
exactly one (1) win. And it was 
against a terrible Ohio State 
team led by an interim coach.
There are children reaching 
the formative years of their 
childhood, the years when you 
start to retain lasting memo-
ries, who have never seen 
Michigan beat the Buckeyes. 
Their formative memories 
of this rivalry will be of a 
botched two-point conversion 
in 2013. A disputed spot after a 
fourth-down play in 2016.
And what happened Satur-
day, when Ohio State quarter-
back Dwayne Haskins played 
pitch-and-catch with his team-
mates and Buckeye freshman 
receiver Chris Olave etched his 
name into history by catching 

two touchdowns and blocking 
a punt that was returned for a 
score.
Ohio State 
gets Herculean 
efforts from 
players like 
Haskins and 
Olave seemingly 
every year. And 
almost every 
time, the Wol-
verines are left 
with the same 
feeling — what 
Patterson put 
into words as “a pretty sour 
taste.”
Understandably, Patterson 
was muted and mostly kept his 
answers short.
But I want to discuss one of 
his longer responses.
Patterson was asked wheth-

er he would characterize this 
season as a success.
“I do,” he said. “We have 
high expecta-
tions and high 
hopes here at 
Michigan, and 
that’s displayed 
every day in 
work at prac-
tice. So any time 
we don’t reach 
our ultimate 
goal, that’s obvi-
ously a little bit 
of a letdown to 
most of us.
“But a 10-win season, you 
know, we played a lot of good 
teams, played in the Big Ten. 
And, I don’t know, I think this 
is a successful season. Still 
have a bowl game to go com-
pete for.”

That’s different from what 
Harbaugh said 32 years ago 
when he guaranteed a Michi-
gan win over 
Ohio State.
“The last 10 
games we played 
mean nothing to 
us right now. It’s 
down to a one-
game season,” 
Harbaugh said 
in 1986. “Ohio 
State is our sea-
son. If we win 
this game, then 
it’s a successful season.”
As I drove back from Colum-
bus last night, I thought about 
how to square those two state-
ments. They seem to conflict 
with each other.
I think now that I would 
agree with Patterson’s asser-

tion.
For the program in its cur-
rent state, this was a success-
ful season. 
Harbaugh and 
the Wolverines 
deserve credit 
for turning 
around the ship 
in one short 
year after fin-
ishing 8-5 last 
season. Har-
baugh parted 
ways with one 
of his longest-
tenured assistants. He brought 
a few fresh voices onto his 
staff. Michigan is recruiting 
much better than it was last 
year, which was very much 
needed. It’s playing much bet-
ter, too.
The Wolverines went from 

fourth in the Big Ten East to 
winning a share of the divi-
sion title by beating Wiscon-
sin, Michigan State and Penn 
State. The “Revenge Tour” 
injected life into the program. 
Now Michigan will have a 
chance to win 11 games, which 
it has done just twice this cen-
tury.
In all of those aspects, the 
season was a success, like Pat-
terson said.
Because things have 
changed since Harbaugh made 
his famous guarantee. This 
isn’t the same Michigan. The 
Wolverines don’t trade Big 
Ten titles with Ohio State 
anymore. They hardly go to 
the Rose Bowl, which is why 
a trip this year — even though 
it isn’t a playoff game — would 
still mean something to this 
program.
Losing to Ohio State with 
a Big Ten championship and 
playoff bid on the line is a bit-
ter pill to swallow.
That is the dark cloud that 
will be cast over this season. 
Saturday’s loss showed just 
far apart these two programs 
are, when many (including me) 
thought Harbaugh and Michi-
gan would close the gap this 
year.
But it wasn’t too long ago 
that this program finished 5-7 
and made its second coaching 
change in four years. Har-
baugh has revived Michigan. 
Since then, Harbaugh has led 
the Wolverines to three dou-
ble-digit seasons in four years, 
the first to do it since Fielding 
Yost. That’s why it would be 
hard to deem this season as a 
failure.
The bars have shifted lower. 
And that’s where they’ll 
remain until the Wolverines 
win the only game that used to 
matter.

Sang can be reached at 

otsang@umich.edu or on 

Twitter at @orion_sang.

EVAN AARON/Daily
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and the Wolverines left Columbus, Ohio on Saturday with a 62-39 loss to Ohio State and a 10-2 record headed into the postseason. 

The more things change
C

OLUMBUS — It 
felt shockingly 
improbable, yet so 
oddly familiar.
Like everything that 
happened 
— from the 
opening 
touchdown 
drive to 
the blocked 
punt to the 
four ensuing 
touchdowns, 
and all 
the gory 
details in 
the middle 
— was so wholly predictable. 
Like everyone with two eyes 
and a cursory knowledge of 
recent college football history 
should have known better. 
Especially those who’d lived 
it, breathed it and suffered 
the consequences.
Four hours later, after a 
staining 62-39 defeat, it sure 
seems like everyone was 
duped anyway.
“It didn’t go good, didn’t 
end up good,” said Michigan 
coach Jim Harbaugh “We 
take responsibility for it.”
This team was different; 
at least, the lead up to 
Saturday’s game was billed 
as such. Michigan had the 
top-ranked defense in the 
country, weapons galore 
on offense and finally a 
quarterback. It had paraded 
a “Revenge Tour” for the 
wrongs done in 2017 — and 
was 3/4th the way through 
those opponents. Tepid as 
it may have been, junior 
running back Karan Higdon 
guaranteed a win. There was 
swagger.
Ohio State was different, 
too. Finally, oh finally, 
vulnerable. It had lost by 
29 points to Purdue just 
weeks prior. It had a porous 
defense, ripe for exploiting. 
Conventional wisdom ahead 
of the matchup was that 
the home field was the only 
advantage the Buckeyes held.
Michigan went into The 
Game between a three- and 

five-point favorite.
“We all had mindsets to go 
to the Big Ten Championship. 
We all had mindsets of 
beating Ohio State,” said 
senior safety Tyree Kinnel. 
“And I felt like we start 
having that mindset after 
the Wisconsin game. After 
we beat them, beat Michigan 
State, beat Penn State, we 
were high on confidence.
“Maybe we were a little bit 
too ahead of ourselves.”
In the process, the 
Wolverines lost their season. 
There will be no trip to 
Indianapolis next weekend, 
nor a destination in the 
College Football Playoff. 
Just 10 hollow wins, one 
giant mental block and 
interminable questions.
The Buckeyes hung 62 
points on that aforementioned 
top-ranked defense Saturday 
— topping the prior Michigan 
record of 56 points allowed to 
Cornell in 1889. 
“I mean, I guess you could 
say shocked a little bit,” 
Kinnel said. “My mindset, our 
mindset as a defense coming 
into this game was to play 
like we’ve been playing all 
year. We feel like we had high 
confidence, we felt like we 
had a good shot at dominating 
this game.
“We made adjustments at 
halftime, we addressed the 
issues we had in the first 
half, and they came out and 
beat us with something else 
in the second half,” he added. 
“…They completely beat us 
today.”
The Wolverines offense 
didn’t fare much better, 
tallying just 235 yards of 
offense and 18 points before 
three late-game drives made 
the scoreline appear closer 
than the game really was.
In the end, this was Ohio 
State and this was Michigan, 
both holding true to form of 
the previous two decades. In 
the end, nothing was truly 
different.
It almost seems beyond 
the scope of the present to 

point fingers in a team-wide 
drubbing of this magnitude. 
Which is why it’s easy and 
fair to turn point them 
straight at the coaching 
staff. Harbaugh, for his part, 
accepted blame.
Even that seems to bely 
what’s institutionally 
baked into the program. 
This is 14 of 15 years now. 
It’s 19 years without a win 
in Columbus; players are 
coming into the program 
who haven’t been alive 
that long. There’s a mental 
stranglehold that extends 
beyond talent or execution 
or individual gameplans. 
This is a purgatory Michigan 
cannot escape until it finally 
clears the last hurdle. After 
Saturday, that mental hurdle 
seems as high as ever.
Ohio State quarterback 
Dwayne Haskins summed it 
up best.
“I mean, we didn’t need 
the underdog score point. 
We didn’t need the revenge 
tour. We didn’t need the 
guaranteed win. We know 
what this game means to our 
school, to our teammates and 
to our coaches.”
As the Michigan offense 
waved the proverbial white 
flag, milking the clock down 
by 23 in the fourth quarter, 

the mind wandered to 
broader implications. There 
will be a cushy bowl game in 
Pasadena or New Orleans or 
some destination getaway. 
Players and coaches will talk 
about turning the page. There 
will be hand-wringing over 
what consistutes a successful 
season. It will all mean 
nothing. It’s almost as though 
today was never about just 
one game.
This is a program that 
came into Ohio Stadium 
seemingly on the precipice of 
a breakthrough. It leaves four 
hours later as far from that 
as ever.
“We’ll come back motivated 
to make darn sure it doesn’t 
happen again,” Harbaugh said 
of his mindset. 
And he will, for the next 
12 months, convince himself 
that next year is the one. So 
will some fans. Then next 
November will come and the 
Wolverines will be shoved 
back into reality by the 
“rival” that still controls it 
all.
In the end, maybe it’s 
just that simple. Same old 
Michigan.

Marcovitch can be reached 

at maxmarco@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @ Max_Marcovitch.

The Michigan Daily Top 10 Poll 

Each week, Daily sports staffers fill out 
ballots, with first-place votes receiving 10 
points, second-place votes receiving nine 
and so on. 

1. Alabama: A real shame this entire 
season has been for nothing, and we will 
watch Nick Saban hoist another trophy.

2. Clemson: A real shame this entire 
season has been for nothing, and we will 
watch Dabo Swinney watch Nick Saban 
hoist another trophy.

3. Notre Dame: Is there such thing as a 
Passive Irish?

4. Georgia: Folks, Kirby sucks!*
*This is a joke about the video game
character

5. Oklahoma: The Michigan Daily would 
score more points on this defense than it 
does on The State News every year!

6. Ohio State: No comment.

7. UCF: Imagine how good this team would 
be with a coach like, I don’t know, Scott 
Frost.

8. Michigan: Our alternate SportsMonday 
headline was “Nut Punch.” We liked that 
better but will settle for using it here.

9. Texas: Ok. Cool
Hook Em! 

10. Washington: Jimmy Lake hates you.

ORION 
SANG

MAX 

MARCOVITCH

EVAN AARON/Daily
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh is now 0-4 against the Buckeyes at Michigan.

“And, I don’t 

know, I think this 

is still a successful 

season.”

“Still have a 

bowl game to go 

and compete 

for.”

