FootballSaturday, November 15, 2019
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M
y Uber driver last weekend didn’t
care about Michigan or Michigan
State.
His son goes to Indiana, he explained,
so he’s a Hoosiers fan with no real
connection to either in-state school.
Naturally, though,
the conversation still
drifted to this game,
because that’s what
happens in this state.
Instantly, his tone
changed: Well, yeah,
of course I care about
the Michigan State
game. He’ll be root-
ing for Michigan, he
explained, without
providing a reason.
To me, the uninitiated out-of-state kid,
that still seems weird. Because on paper,
this game doesn’t really matter.
I know that’s not 100 percent accurate.
For the Wolverines, a loss would end any
faint hopes at a New Years’ Six Bowl. For
Michigan State, it could be the difference
between the Quick Lane Bowl and the
Pinstripe Bowl — both worthy succes-
sors to its prestigious 2018 RedBox Bowl
appearance.
But around these parts, none of that is
the talking point. Eight Michigan players
and three coaches were made available
to the media this week. The sole question
about the Wolverines’ Big Ten title hopes
was instantly struck down.
There’s seemingly universal agreement
that Michigan is going to win, but that’s
not the talking point either. The Wolver-
ines are favored by 13.5, the type of line
more befitting of a game against Purdue
or Illinois than one against the Spartans
— and more importantly, the type of game
Jim Harbaugh has never lost at Michigan.
By pure loss probability, it ranks a dis-
tant fifth behind trips to Wisconsin and
Penn State and visits from Notre Dame
and Iowa. The lead-up to each of those
Saturdays brought legitimate suspense,
and subsequent dissection of the Wolver-
ines’ strengths and weaknesses.
This week has provided none of that.
On paper, it isn’t as important as any of
those top-25 bouts. And yet, this ostensi-
bly meaningless game is Michigan’s most
important since last November.
Just ask Harbaugh: “Most important
game of the season — it’s our next game,
and it’s huge, big game. I think everybody
would share those feelings.”
Or Ambry Thomas: “You come to
Michigan to play in this game right here
and that team down there in Ohio. You
come to Michigan to play in these two
games.”
Or even Aidan Hutchinson: “Obviously,
Michigan State (is) our biggest rival — or,
maybe our biggest rival.”
You get the point.
It’s a point that was instantly ham-
mered home Monday afternoon, the
second I walked into Schembechler Hall,
even before Harbaugh took to the podi-
um. Where there are usually six or seven
cameras lined behind the media seats,
this week required two rows. As players
later spoke in scrums, reporters lined up
three or four deep.
None of this, on the surface, should
have come as a surprise. This isn’t my
first rivalry week and I remember the
similarly-sized swarms that preceded last
year’s rivalry games.
It shouldn’t have caught me off guard
when Thomas said, “It’s about who’s the
big brother and who’s the little sister in
this state” given the similar hysteria sur-
rounding last year’s game.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise when
I was sitting in the Starbucks on State
Street and overheard a kid telling some-
one on the phone that he couldn’t come
home this weekend “because it’s Michi-
gan State.” After all, it was just two years
ago that I was offered $200 for my ticket
to see John O’Korn take on the Spartans
in the driving rain.
But all of it still seems just a little bit
strange.
Each of the past two matchups car-
ried the tangible notion of championship
hopes for Michigan, against a Spartans
team with a pulse. For an out-of-stater
like myself, I suppose there was some
ingrained assumption that the hype was
correlated with how much the actual
game mattered.
But then again, I’m from the part of the
country where the notion that this game
matters as much as the Ohio State game
would seem absurd. The part of the coun-
try known as, ‘Not Michigan.’
This week, that’s the lesson I’m learn-
ing.
All it took to cement it was a conversa-
tion with my girlfriend, who’s lived in
Michigan her whole life. Every year dur-
ing this game, she’ll get a text from her
dad with a picture of him decked out in
maize and blue. Her sister — a Michigan
State grad — gets a picture from him, too,
but hers is green and white.
So this week, I had her ask her family
group chat who’s rooting for who. Her
mom’s response was swift: Michigan. Her
dad, as of this writing, is still evading the
question. Inside, she knows it’s Michigan
State. Just another person to trash talk if
Michigan wins and hide from if they lose.
It’s a small snapshot of why this game
matters so much, an explanation for the
hysteria surrounding a matchup with a
4-5 opponent.
It’s also what makes this rivalry so
great.
Mackie can be reached via email at thmackie@
umich.edu or on Twitter @TheoMackie.
What makes a rivalry
THEO
MACKIE
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Michigan State has won eight of the last 12 matchups in the in-state rivalry, including two of the last four.