History lesson: Controversy often surrounds ‘The Game’

Jim Tressel and Lloyd Carr did their best not to fan the
flame this week.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Ohio State’s Jim Tressel and Michigan’s Lloyd Carr did their first bit of coaching this week when they instructed their players to not say anything negative about the other team on the eve of 104th meeting on Saturday in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Idle talk has inflamed The Game, in a history of controversies before, after and during the annual grudge match:

The Tie

No. 1 Ohio State and No. 4 Michigan met in 1973 with both teams unbeaten (the Buckeyes in nine games, the Wolverines in 10). Michigan had outscored its opponents 320-58, Ohio State by a margin of 361-33. After an epic struggle, they ended up in a 10-10 tie.

In those days, only one Big Ten team got to go to a bowl, and the only bowl was the Rose. Since the teams ended up tied in the league standings, the Big Ten athletic directors met and voted who should represent the conference in Pasadena.

Ohio State had gone the year before, which normally would have favored Michigan. After some deliberation the ADs picked the Buckeyes. Whether it was because Michigan QB Dennis Franklin broke his collarbone in the game, or because the Wolverines failed to win on their home field, Ohio State was the choice.

Many Michigan people believed that Michigan State, humiliated 31-0 earlier in the season by the Wolverines, voted against their in-state rival out of spite. Some also said that two former Michigan men who were ADs in the conference betrayed their alma mater.

The Buckeyes did go on to wallop Southern Cal 42-21 in the Rose Bowl to (somewhat) vindicate the choice.

But on Nov. 13, 2006, just four days before dying of a heart attack, Bo Schembechler, Michigan’s coach at the time, still was angry.

“It was the greatest disappointment of my career. Everybody, including [Ohio State coach] Woody Hayes, congratulated me after the game and said, ‘Oh, you’ll do a great job in the Rose Bowl’ and all that. And everybody expected Michigan to go to the Rose Bowl because, if you look at the game, we outplayed them,” he said. “It was strictly a political thing. The whole thing upset me to no end. I think that team, that 1973 team, is the reason that we’re [the Big Ten] playing in other bowls today.”

Harbaugh’s prediction

Michigan had just sustained its first loss of the 1986 season the week before against Minnesota, prompting quarterback Jim Harbaugh to say, “I guarantee we will beat Ohio State and go to Pasadena.”

Harbaugh expected Schembechler to be extremely angry.

“The way our leader, Bo Schembechler, handled it was genius,” said Harbaugh, now Stanford’s head coach. “He just came into the team meeting and I’m kind of expecting to get an earful. He said, ‘Well, at least I know our quarterback thinks we can win. Rally around him. Let’s go to Columbus and beat the Buckeyes.”’

And they did, 26-24, to earn a berth in the Rose Bowl.

Earle’s exit

The Monday before the 1987 game, Ohio State President Ed Jennings fired coach Earle Bruce, a successful coach who was devoted to his alma mater but had never been truly embraced by the Buckeyes faithful.

The untimely firing shifted sentiment to Bruce, and Jennings was vilified for the decision.

In Ann Arbor that Saturday, Bruce was standing on the sidelines when he turned to say something to an assistant when he noticed out of the corner of his eye that his players were all wearing headbands.

“I was going to tell them to get those headbands off,” Bruce recalled. “When I looked at them, I saw that they said ‘Earle’ and then I thought I can’t very well tell them to take them off.”

The Buckeyes won 23-20 and after the game Bruce went to the Michigan locker room to say goodbye to his friend and peer, Schembechler.

Schembechler looked up and said, “You know how I don’t like losing. But, somehow, today I don’t mind.”

The Greatest ‘Win’

Just before the 1991 Michigan-Ohio State game, Ohio State President Gordon Gee gave head coach John Cooper a four-year contract even though he was 0-3 against the Buckeyes’ No. 1 rival. Cooper’s team then went out and lost 31-3.

A year later, Cooper and the Buckeyes tied Michigan 13-13 and after the game Gee called it, “one of our greatest wins ever.”

Fire Cooper!

Michigan captain Walter Smith, a wide receiver who had not played all season because of an injury, was asked several days before the 1994 meeting with Ohio State why he wanted to win the game.

“We want to get Cooper fired,” Smith said. “That’s what I want to do. We want to keep on beating them and beating them until he’s not there.”

Cooper, by the way, was 0-5-1 against Michigan to that point and was close to being run out of Columbus on a rail.

The No. 22 Buckeyes responded with a 22-6 win over the 15th-ranked Wolverines.

Michigan Nobody

Ohio State was ranked No. 2 in 1995 and had rolled to an 11-0 record.

Then the week of the game, wide receiver Terry Glenn told reporters, “Michigan is nobody.”

The Buckeyes lost 31-23 to the nobodies in Ann Arbor.

Boston Massacre

Ohio State wide receiver David Boston, ironically, was from Humble, Texas.

Yet a few days before the fourth-ranked Buckeyes played at No. 1 Michigan in 1997, he said, “If our offense and defense are clicking, we should win by two or three touchdowns.”

The Wolverines took that as a challenge. With Heisman winner Charles Woodson having a big game — a memorable photo on the cover of Sports Illustrated showed Boston upside down after being hit by Woodson, an Ohio native — Michigan won 20-14.

What a riot!

After Ohio State intercepted a pass near the goal line on the final play of the 2002 game to preserve a 14-9 victory, the fans went wild. Police had to use pepper spray to keep the crowd away from the goalposts.

“Celebrating” the No. 2-ranked Buckeyes’ victory, the crowd went on a violent spree that resulted in cars being overturned, couches being burned and trash set afire. More than 60 people were arrested and eight students were expelled from school. The party-turned-riot led to crackdowns on alcohol at games and also a major public-relations push to stem any violence beforehand.

Who let the dogs out?

When No. 7 Michigan’s bus pulled up to Ohio Stadium for the 2004 game, Carr and his players were put through a security gauntlet that included being subjected to drug-sniffing dogs.

When Carr complained of the shoddy treatment, Ohio State officials said that every visiting team that year had gone through the same process — although three of the teams denied that was true. Carr said he was told by a campus police officer that the order to do the embarrassing security check came from the athletic department and not from police officials.

Carr left the stadium even angrier, on the wrong side of a 37-21 score to the unranked Buckeyes.