Michigan Versus Ohio State: GO BLUE!!!

This cartoon is only slightly exaggerating the immense hysteria attending the biggest rivalry in college football, multiplied tenfold by the fact that the two teams this year are indisputably the two best in college football.

I am a U of Mich grad and therefore rooting for the TRUE BLUE [that is in the old-world conservative sense] Wolverines, although as a Wisconsin native I detest OSU for the simple reason that Ohio State would beat the Badgers like a drum in my formative years, even though Wisconsin was then a perennial contender for the Rose Bowl.

Also, part of the heat of the rivalry might also derive from the little-known border war between Michigan and Ohio in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ohio wanted to annex the Toledo Strip, and the Michiganders literally took up arms to thwart them. But in the end, Ohio got Toledo and Michigan got a copper/iron/timber rich Youper pot of money. Guess who was the big loser:

Consequently, and ironically, the only state that definitively "lost" was not even involved in the conflict: the mineral-rich land in the U.P. would have most likely become part of Wisconsin had Michigan not lost the Toledo Strip.[32]

Back when I was the head of Students for McCarthy at U of Mich, I made a trip to Toledo and met with Ohio Gov. Gilligan, who asked if McCarthy kids would come to Toledo to work for him in the '68 governor's race. Toledo was the favorite Ann Arbor destination for cheap legal alcohol back then, so I concurred and we got about fifty UMich kids to canvass and work, with plenty of partying to spur the political juices.

But for me, this Saturday, it's go Blue all the way.