OSU tries for 6th in a row vs. Mich.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The Game has lost a lot of luster.
Ohio State has beaten Michigan five straight times, its best winning streak and the longest in the series since the 1920s.
The ninth-ranked Buckeyes (9-2, 6-2 Big Ten) have already clinched at least a share of their fifth straight conference title and a spot in the Rose Bowl.
Michigan (5-6, 1-6) is mired in another miserable year — coming off a school-record nine-loss season — and is nearly a two-touchdown underdog to lose at home to guarantee consecutive losing records for the first time since 1962-63.
Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, though, insisted those factors haven’t diminished the rivalry.
“That would never occur to the participants,” Tressel said. “Perhaps to someone from the outside, someone from Utah or something, might not maybe jump on it because neither team is being talked about every day in the national scheme of things.”
An upset against Ohio State would take some heat off Michigan’s Rich Rodriguez for his on-the-field woes and would give a lot of young players some much-needed practices and upperclassmen who were recruited by Lloyd Carr a chance to experience the postseason again.
Penn St.-Michigan St.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Rose Bowl is out of reach for Penn State and Michigan State.
But their regular-season finale will have a lot to do with determining where both teams spend the holidays.
No. 13 Penn State (9-2, 5-2 Big Ten) still has a shot at earning an at-large BCS bid. Michigan State (6-5, 4-3) also is bowl eligible and would guarantee a bid with a victory at Spartan Stadium.
“A lot has been said if this certain team wins or this certain team loses ... all that’s thrown out the door if you don’t handle your business in the last football game,” Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark said. “We need to get this win, and then we can talk about Big Ten things.”
Win or lose, the Spartans plan to make it to a bowl game for the third straight season for the first time since 1995-97. A victory would ensure a better trip.
“We need to play hard and with a chip on our shoulder,” Michigan State fullback Andrew Hawken said.
Notre Dame-UConn
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame and Connecticut keep coming up a play short.
They do it in dramatically different styles, but the common theme heading into their game is this: Their seasons could be drastically different if someone could have come up with a key tackle, catch or run.
The Huskies (4-5) keep getting ahead and finding ways to lose. The Fighting Irish keep getting behind and falling short in their comeback attempts.
“We can talk about having hard luck and tough losses and losing four games by 18 points,” Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said. “But UConn’s had it even tougher than us. They’ve lost five games by a total of 15 points.”
Weis is trying to figure out why his team can’t play with more urgency earlier in the game, saying he posed that question to the team in the locker room after the Pitt loss last week.
“If I had that answer, we would have answered it a long time ago,” Weis said. “We’ve tried about every mode. We’ve tried no huddle. We’ve tried blitzing on every down. We’ve tried not blitzing. We tried change of personnel. I mean, you keep on fighting to try to find the answer, and we’ll try to do that again this week.”