Sonny Styles could not beat Michigan wearing his old #6. Saturday he tries with #0. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Ohio State doesn’t diminish the importance of playing Michigan and all that a victory would mean. However, they are convinced that their strategy to treat it like A Game will send them to the Big Ten title game.
Columbus, OH – The how-to-prepare conundrum chased by Ohio State and Michigan football teams for decades has dogged good coaches on both sides of the rivalry.
Answers are more elusive than a shifty halfback.
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So, they trial-and-error every detail in search of the best way to prepare. They want – they must – get it right in the annual noon ritual on the final Saturday of November.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
How do you best prepare for and play The Game like it’s A Game without treating it like it’s just Another Game?
The coach who can perfectly answer the preparation question about the greatest and most meaningful rivalry in sports, with 100% certainty, hasn’t been born yet. Yes, Urban Meyer was 7-0 against Michigan. But had Meyer coached long enough, he would have lost at least once. Then he, like every other coach who has lost in The Game, would have questioned his preparation the next year.
Ryan Day asks himself questions every day, wondering if proper plans were made to be ready to win. He’s lost four straight games to Michigan, and every rabid to casual college football fan knows it. The microscopic fishbowl Day works in never lets him forget.
“The past four years hasn’t worked. We have to try to make things better.” – Ryan Day
“The past four years hasn’t worked,” Day said after Wednesday’s practice. “So you got to look at these things and try to figure out how to make them better, and what you got to do to make sure that you’re getting the job done.”
Unique versions of how to prepare were tried for the previous 120 meetings of these two giants. Some versions worked better than others. For the 121st meeting – this Saturday between the No. 1 Buckeyes (11-0) and the No. 15 Wolverines (9-2) – Day is employing Version 2025.
“Keep a routine,” he said. “If we keep saying that this week has to be like the other weeks in terms of our preparation – we know on the field, it means a lot different – then we have to keep the routine, the routine.”
The Buckeyes have long bused north with an escort of state troopers to the enemy line. This year they are flying. Other rites, like the marching band joining them at practice, have been moved or altered. Not to mention it’s Thanksgiving week.
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“You start adding these things, and it’s like, wait a minute, that wasn’t a normal week,” Day said. “This is just one little thing [flying] that we wanted to get done to make sure it’s as routine as possible.”
The players hear what Day is preaching, and the more routine the better for them. They know the history of the past four years. They know the history of The Game. They know what’s at stake. A trip to Indianapolis to play for the Big Ten title. The gold pants. The chance at a No. 1 seed. A 15-game winning streak. And maybe a Heisman Trophy for quarterback Julian Sayin.
“Coach Day said right after the game, ‘We’re playing for hardware now,’” senior linebacker and captain Sonny Styles said. “We understand what’s at stake, but we’re not approaching the game like that. We’re approaching it like we do each and every week. That’s when we play our best.”
The motivation is inherent. There will be some form of a pep talk before they run out of the tunnel. But what is said in those moments are only reminders of Day’s consistent 365-days-a-year admonitions.
“The biggest message from Coach Day is just sticking to our routine, sticking to our mindset that we come into every game with and what we do and who we are,” Styles said. “And, obviously, respect the rivalry, respect The Game. We know how big it is, but you can’t go into the game thinking about the stakes.”
If you do, you start playing not to lose. Therefore, from captain to captain, the talking points Wednesday remained consistent about how to win.
Good place to start…deliver the blow, don’t receive it. And it might snow…forecast is for possible 4 to 6 inches of the white stuff.
“There’s a difference,” left tackle Austin Siereveld said. “We know who the team is, but we’re pretty much trying to keep it as routine as possible.”
All-everything safety Caleb Downs, who also played in the Iron Bowl against Auburn as a freshman at Alabama, appreciates routine.
“I would say we’re doing the same thing as we did when we played Texas, the same thing we did when we played Ohio, the same thing we did when we played Grambling,” he said. “We’re just preparing every week to play at a high level on Saturday, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”
Routine, as important as it is from Sunday morning to Saturday morning, can’t be overrated once the game starts.
Downs’ game-day version of routine is putting as much effort into playing the first 11 games as he does Michigan.
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“If I told you I wanted to win more than I wanted to win game two or game three, that’d be weird,” he said. “That’s how I play football, with the want to win. I want to win every play, win every snap possible. That’s what we’re going to do.”
When the Buckeyes’ offense huddles around Sayin, it will feel nothing like it did in Week 1 against Texas. The routine of Sayin as leader is firmly established.
“He’s been growing up each week, getting better,” Siereveld said. “I’ll comfortably say this is his offense, and he’s running the show.”
Part of Sayin’s leadership job is to keep his teammates focused on their jobs. There’s no time to discuss or think about what all this means, about breaking the losing streak. The next thought is always the next play.
“You can really think a lot about it, and your concentration goes too much to the game, rather than technical fundamentals,” Siereveld said. “We’ve just got to be technically sound and just work on our fundamentals.”
The captains get it. But most of the starters didn’t play at Michigan two years ago. Some of them watched mostly from the sideline last year. No matter how sternly Day reminds them to focus on A Game, not The Game, the risk remains that too many players will lose focus on the next play and become paralyzed by what is at stake.
“When I was a young guy I let that get into my head a little bit,” Styles said. “I was thinking about, ‘Oh, wow, I’m in The Game.’ Especially for me, being a kid from Columbus, knowing how big it is and everyone’s watching, how cool it is to be in the moment. At the end of the day, it’s a game.”
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