Stars of the Game: Buckeyes vs. Wolverines

Associated Press sports writer Rusty Miller has covered the Big Ten for 30 years, including 27 Michigan-Ohio State games. He recalls some of the top efforts in the storied rivalry:
1. Tim Biakabutuka, Michigan (1995): When former Ohio State coach John Cooper has nightmares, he sees Touchdown Tim. The Buckeyes were on a roll coming into their battle at The Big House. Ohio State was No. 2 in the nation, and playing a Michigan team that had lost two of its last three games. Ohio State was loaded with seven players who would be drafted the following spring, and a tailback who was a year away from winning the Heisman Trophy (Eddie George). Biakabutuka, born in Zaire and raised in Canada, dashed the Buckeyes' hopes of a national championship. On his first six carries, he gained 106 yards. By halftime he had 195. He finished with 313 yards on 37 carries and, for good measure, scored the TD that ended up being the difference in a 31-23 upset. The rushing total is the second highest ever by a Wolverines back and is easily the most by any back in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry.
2, Troy Smith, Ohio State (2004-05): Smith was a forgotten sub on an Ohio State team headed nowhere five games into the 2004 season. In the final game of a three-game losing streak, coach Jim Tressel replaced Justin Zwick with Smith, who led the Buckeyes to their only touchdown in a 33-7 defeat to Iowa. The next week, with Zwick nursing a shoulder injury, Smith got the start. A series of routs allowed Smith to learn on the job and by the time he got to the Michigan game, the Buckeyes had a dangerous multi-talented signal-caller. He completed 13-of-23 passes for 241 yards and two touchdowns and also ran for 145 yards on 18 carries with another score in the unranked Buckeyes' 37-21 upset of No. 7 Michigan. His rushing total was the second-highest for an Ohio State quarterback and his 386 total yards were the fourth-best mark in school history. The next year, Smith buried the Wolverines again. He completed 27-of-37 passes for 300 yards and a touchdown and ran for 37 yards and a score. With the Buckeyes trailing 21-12 with 7:49 to play, he engineered drives of 69 and 88 yards -- the last ending with Antonio Pittman's 3-yard touchdown run with 24 seconds left -- to give No. 9 Ohio State a thrilling 25-21 victory over the 17th-ranked Wolverines.
3, Chic Harley, Ohio State (1919): Michigan was a steamroller and the Buckeyes a carton of eggs back in the early days of the rivalry. Harley changed that. The Wolverines were 13-0-2 in the first 15 meetings and shut out Ohio State 11 times. Coming into the 1919 meeting, the Buckeyes had not scored against Michigan in the previous three meetings. Harley, Ohio State's first three-time All-American, had not played college football in 1918 because he was in the military. But he returned in 1919 and over his career led the Buckeyes to a record of 21-1-1. Against Michigan his final year, he scored the game's only touchdown on a 42-yard run, punted 10 times for a 40-yard average and intercepted four passes in a 13-3 win. Spurred by his brilliance, Ohio State decided to build a mammoth 66,000-seat stadium in 1922. It was dubbed "The House That Harley Built."
4-5, Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler, 1969-1978: Stars come and stars go, but for a decade the focal points of The Game were the general and his former lieutenant. Schembechler was a player for Hayes at Miami (Ohio) on an overachieving team that helped get Woody the Ohio State job. Years later, Schembechler was an assistant and best friend to Hayes, who ruled the Buckeyes like a dictator for 28 years and 205 victories. Bo learned from the master. After his own stint at Miami, he went to Michigan where he jousted with "the old man" for a decade. The year before Schembechler arrived, Hayes had poured it on the "school up north" by a score of 50-14. Legend has it -- erroneously -- that when he asked after the game why he went for a two-point conversion late in the game, Hayes replied, "Because I couldn't go for three!" That first year in Ann Arbor, Bo's Michigan team had two losses and Ohio State was No. 1, the defending national champs and riding a 22-game winning streak. Grinding out yards on the ground and pouncing on turnovers, the student's team beat the teacher's, 24-12. That touched off a contentious 10 years of head-to-head struggles between two stubborn coaches who, away from the limelight, loved and respected each other and were great friends. Let the record show that Bo held the upper hand, 5-4-1. Hayes was fired for failing to control that famous temper and punching a Clemson player in the 1978 Gator Bowl. At a dinner his former players had for him, Hayes got in the last word on the 1969 game. "He looked down from the podium at me and said, 'Damn you! You will never win a bigger game than that!" Schembechler said with a chuckle. "And he was right. I don't think I ever did."
Associated Press