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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — By the time last Tuesday rolled around, it was too late. The narrative had been set — falsely, at that.
Michigan had to cancel its annual tilt against rival Ohio State due to rising COVID-19 cases on the team, but the week before, when ESPN College GameDay host Kirk Herbstreit openly speculated that the Wolverines could cancel the game to cost the Buckeyes a potential berth in the Big Ten championship game and College Football Playoff, the notion was out there, and it couldn’t be taken back.
Many in the media mocked the maize and blue, despite there being a documented uptick in cases. Michigan had missed the Maryland game the week before Ohio State was on the schedule, and only once in Big Ten play had a team — coincidentally, OSU being that team — been able to take the field a week after canceling due to rising cases.
There were many who proclaimed that the Wolverines ‘ducked’ the Buckeyes, which several current players openly refuted on social media. Going even further, defensive tackle Carlo Kemp, a team captain, said on Monday that there’s no way that his team or teammates would have avoided OSU, no matter the perception of where either program is in the college football landscape.
“I mean, it’s just that listening to some of that stuff — you try to ignore it as best as you can,” Kemp said. “A lot of us do a really good of ignoring all of that stuff. It was a lot easier to see it this week because we were just at home, so we had more time to see what people say during the week. It’s frustrating and there’s so much that goes into it. These are the rules that are put in place by the highest level doctors we have in the country. This is beyond any players’ control. Players don’t vote on if we want to play games this week or if we want to play this opponent. We’ve been playing games for over 100 years, and all of a sudden now we don’t want to play The Game? That’s just not the case, it would never be the case.
“Like I said before, you come to Michigan to play that game. It’s the only game you think about the entire year. This is the last game and you want to keep building your entire season and use every game until you get there to get better and better, so that by the time you play them, the last game, you’re the best version of yourself, the best version of your team. And hopefully, be able to go out there and showcase that on Saturday.
“But, by no means was anyone not trying to play them. We had a spike in numbers and this is peoples’ lives and this is peoples’ health. And that’s more serious than anything — than playing a game on a Saturday.”
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Despite notions otherwise, Michigan takes this rivalry seriously and treats it with the utmost respect. Sure, Ohio State may be more fanatical about its approach, which very well could have something to do with its sizable winning streak. But the Buckeyes have been among the elite in some time — Michigan has been trying to get back to that level, unsuccessfully.
Kemp says that just because people outside of Schembechler Hall may have seen The Game as an automatic loss doesn’t mean that those within that building have the same mindset.
“That game inside this building has always been on every players’ mind,” Kemp said. “There’s — just because the outcomes the last few years have obviously not been what we wanted, what we expected, that does not mean we go into that game thinking it’s like any other game. This is the game that you train for, this is the game that you work for since January every single year. This is the game you think about every single time in the weight room, every time you’re practicing, every time you’re training. That’s been the standard that all those seniors set when I came in here in 2016. As time has gone on, just trying to keep that same example, keep that same foundation for these younger players coming up so they can do the same thing when it’s their senior year, as well.”
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For now, the Wolverines are back to practice and hope to be healthy enough to take on a top-notch Iowa team on Saturday as part of Big Ten Champions Week.
That contest is set for 7 p.m. kickoff at Kinnick Stadium with the game being broadcast on ESPN.
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