Contact/Follow Phil Harrison
That’s a great one Mark, but I’m going to go with the hire and subsequent contest that turned the tide in the rivalry to what it is today. Michigan had owned Ohio State in the 90’s when John Cooper was coaching the Buckeyes. It seemed like a yearly tradition for an Ohio State team capable of winning a national championship to get stunned by Michigan in late November.
When Cooper was fired, there were rumors about some pretty big names out there being interviewed and looked at to run the program (Bob Stoops being one of them). Instead, the Ohio State administration settled on a little known 1-AA coach by the name of Jim Tressel.
Tressel embraced the rivalry with Michigan, making his now famous (infamous if you’re a Wolverine fan) speech about Buckeye nation being “proud of the young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially — in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the football field.”
Then, amazingly, Tressel took his Buckeyes up there and knocked off a heavily favored Michigan team to turn the trajectory of The Game around and send it on the course we’ve been on since then. One where Ohio State beat back the demons of the past and set the dominance we’ve seen over the last two decades in motion.
Do you have goose bumps yet?
Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion.