Please patronize our advertisers to help
keep theOzone.net free for everyone.

The-Ozone.net Mall

Interesting, Fun companies with interesting, quality products - and the-Ozone gets a piece of the action!

Football
The Week that Was
By Tony Gerdeman

Have you ever gone out for a night on the town and then woke up in the morning in your bathtub filled with ice and a note written in lipstick on your mirror saying, 'I took your rivalry—if you don't get to a hospital in six hours, you will die!'?

*** ***

Well, the fit is finally hitting the shan, and people are waking up to the very real probability that the Big Ten and two complicit universities will be shiv-ing the best rivalry in sports so that they can preserve the possibility of having them meet at a time when the game would be more important.

Of course, this is like having a fire downstairs, but not going and getting your upstairs extinguisher because you're saving it for when the fire gets to the second floor. Except in Michigan's case, their fire wouldn't spread past the foyer.

This past week Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith said he has received 350 emails concerning moving the game, and about 90% were opposed to it. My suggestion would be that he re-do the math, because I refuse to believe that 10% of emailers are fired up enough to support the inevitable. That's not the way things work. Emails and phone calls get sent because people are angry. It's how sports radio makes its money. It's how message boards stay popular. It's how cardiologists stay in business.

Nobody ever calls customer service to thank them for such wonderful service.

Madness may move the dial, but stupidity will kill it.

This is not the type of publicity the Big Ten needs. Ohio State losing to Vanderbilt 74-0 in this year's BCS Championship Game would be less damaging.

Besides, does Rich Rodriguez REALLY need any help in destroying this rivalry?

*** ***

Oh, and anybody sending emails in support of the move needs to be smacked with a gasoline-soaked cat, set on fire, and then SENT BACK TO RUSSIA!

*** ***

I get tired of thinking about it. I get tired of talking about it. I guess we should all just do what Ohio State, Michigan and the Big Ten want us to do and forget The Game ever existed.

HBO's documentary will have to be renamed “Michigan vs Ohio State: The Redacted”. It will be now be 90 minutes of bleeps and black boxes over football players as they run around on the television.

History will need to be rewritten, because history is overrated and new is obviously better.

“Coach, why did you go for two?”

“Because I couldn't go for [bleep].”

Take down the retired jerseys and give back the Heismans. There's no need for legacies here, because we've got twelve teams now and nowhere to put all this old crap.

*** ***

As I sit here writing this, I was just alerted to the most egregious of all egregiosity—according to WTKA on Thursday, Michigan AD David Brandon is saying that cross-divisional games wouldn't count in division standings, and they would only be used for tie-breakers.

Which means that if Ohio State and Michigan were in different divisions, the loser of The Game wouldn't even be harmed in the standings.

This doesn't preserve a rivalry, it reaches up its netherhole, grabs a hold of its backbone, rips it out, plays a cartoonish xylophonic tune on it, and then tosses it aside so that it doesn't get in somebody's way.

After you get done tearing up your house in anger, and your dog has gone into hiding, you can listen to the podcast by going here and searching for the Steve Clark segment on 8/26.

Don't listen to it if you are holding something you value, or near something you'd really love to punch.

The reasoning behind the world's most terrible idea? It would be unfair, as an example, for Michigan to have to play cross-divisional Ohio State every year when others would only have to play the likes of Indiana.

In other words, it would be too damaging to Michigan's record.

So rather than KEEPING MICHIGAN AND OHIO STATE IN THE SAME DIVISION AND ELIMINATING THIS BRAIN-DEAD ARGUMENT OF SOCCER-LOVING MAN-BABIES, they'll instead just eliminate all consequences of The Game...sorry, I meant 'the game', so that nobody is harmed by the outcome.

Because THAT'S what great rivalries are made of.

Zero consequences.

Why even keep the frickin' score?

If this happens, the legacy of Gene Smith, Jim Tressel and Dr. Gee will be chiseled in stone, lit in neon, and plugged in to a PA system that repeats, “We have killed what once gave us life!” over and over.

Forever.

As a wise man once mentioned to me just a little bit ago, where would Jim Tressel be if the Michigan game never mattered?

Where would John Cooper be?

This thing keeps getting worse, and I didn't even think that was possible.

I'm honestly afraid of what's next. Split squad scrimmages followed by some fun-loving citrus squeezing?

But hey, there's still the off chance that this is all make believe and I'm simply having the world's most idiotic dream, and when I wake up in the morning and I tell people that I had this dream where Michigan and Ohio State were split up and The Game got moved to earlier in the season and then wasn't even tallied in the standings, they'll look at me and laugh and ask what I ate the night before.

Seriously, if this happens, December 21, 2012 can't get here fast enough.

Editor's Note: Two "Save the Game" Facebook pages have been established. If you with to express your support of The Game as it has been scheduled since 1935, please join those groups.

Save the Game

Save the Game II

Donate by Check :

Ozone Communications
1380 King Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Help us bring you more Buckeye coverage. Donate to the-Ozone.

Click here to email this the-Ozone feature to a friend...or even a foe.

(c) 2010 The O-Zone, O-Zone Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, rebroadcast,rewritten, or redistributed.