Oller: Ohio State-Michigan fans spewing venom like it's the early 1970s all over again
Pete Cusick saw it all play out in black and white … and scarlet. The colors of Woody’s hat.
During Michigan week, Cusick saw his Ohio State coach try to eat his trademark Block O cap.
“He was notorious for ripping shirts, ties … diving across the Astroturf,” said Cusick, a Buckeyes defensive tackle in the early 1970s, when the “10 Year War” was at its most intense.
Emotional osmosis occurs when you are 19 years old and privately and publicly see your coach show utter disdain for the Wolverines. You begin to believe TTUN is an enemy as real to Ohioans as the British Redcoats were to the Minutemen. “Hail to the Victors” turns your stomach, because it turned his stomach. You take your cues from the Woody Hayes.
As you move on with life, having escaped the Old Man’s Michigan Week tantrums, your hatred softens. Stories of Hayes’ paranoia over UM spies stealing plays by filming practices brings an eye roll and chuckle more than anger toward the Wolverines.
But deep down you wish, if not the worst for the Wolverines, then something close to it, because it was wired into your system during those Monday through Wednesday regular-season practices, when all you did was game plan for Michigan.
“We never practiced against the team we were going to play that week until Thursday or Friday, because the entire spring and everything we did during the week was to prepare for Michigan,” Cusick said.
It is no surprise, then, what Cusick thinks of Jim Harbaugh.
“As far as issues of today, Michigan under Harbaugh is an outlaw,” said Cusick, who still follows the Buckeyes from his home in Hawaii. “He gets to Michigan and there isn't a rule he wouldn’t break. There’s no rules for him, and yet he complains about the other guys. Too bad polygraphs aren’t admissible.”
He wasn’t finished.
“This guy is nuts. Pathological. He doesn’t think rules apply to him and has proven it.. He just has no credibility with anyone who has any modicum of integrity. He’s a jerk.”
After giving Cusick a standing ovation for saying what many think, remember the former Buckeye is a product of an era before media handlers made sure Ohio State and Michigan players said only polite things about each other. And before coaches clammed up during rivalry week, worried anything they say will show up on social media – they’re right about that – and used against them as motivational bulletin board material.
You haven’t heard any Michigan player this week guarantee victory over the Buckeyes, as Harbaugh did as a UM quarterback in 1986. No Ohio State player said he wants to win to get Harbaugh fired, unlike Michigan wide receiver Walter Smith, who in 1994 said he wanted to get John Cooper fired.
The closest any OSU player came to creating a stir during interviews Tuesday was cornerback Denzel Burke saying, “Nothing,” when asked what stands out about Michigan.
In a different era, Burke would have had plenty to say about the Wolverines, and might have offered some of it. Not anymore.
Asked to describe the respect level that Ohio State and Michigan players have for one another, Burke smiled, dropped an “Um …,” followed by a telling little chuckle, then said, “There’s respect for them. We didn’t get it done the past two years and our job is to go up there and get it done.”
I understand why coaches and players keep their comments clean and safe, but I miss seeing their personalities come out during rivalry week.
Instead, the back-and-forth badmouthing is left to the two fan bases, which Woody would be proud of, especially this year when Michigan’s alleged sign-stealing scheme has ramped up rage on both sides of the rivalry. Ohio State fans are calling the Wolverines cheaters. Michigan fans are calling the Buckeyes bitter losers who whine because OSU has lost the past two games.
Adding fuel to the inferno of the Michigan scandal is the enormity of what is at stake – two 11-0 teams vying to make the playoff. I don’t recall a more heated buildup to The Game, despite what coaches and players choose not to say.
It’s as if OSU fans are channeling Woody, which reminds me. If you run out of gas near the Ohio-Michigan border, be sure to push the car across the state line rather than pay for gas up there. Show the Old Man some respect.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State fans find fault in everything Michigan does, and vice versa
