Learning again the lessons of Ohio State-Michigan, but what of Browns' rivals? - Bill Livingston (photos)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - I promise to remember that Ohio State-Michigan is a rivalry game and that anything can happen in it, even if for the last three decades only two things have happened.

Either Michigan won almost all the time when Ohio State was coached by John Cooper, or Ohio State won almost all the time when it was coached by almost anyone else.

I picked Michigan to win this year. The Buckeyes laid a 62-39 extinction event on Michigan instead. Afterward, an internet meme of a sign at the state-line proclaimed, "Welcome to Michigan, owned by Urban Meyer."

I will remember that rivalry games, like Trix, are for kids - even in the warm glow of the Browns' first w-w-winning (It's hard to get the words out, even if it's only two games) streak since October 2014.

They're about the colors, college friends and memories, even of the math midterm, on which a distinguished silver-haired gentleman of my acquaintance (blush) got a 29. The best score in the class was a 57. Rockets have not gone farther over the head of a freshman English major than that test did.

After the Browns' 35-20 win in the "Battle of Ohio," perhaps the new Bengals consultant, "Boo Hue" Jackson, former maestro of the orange and brown, is spreading incompetence from the lake to the river, from sea to shining sea, from the Earth to the moon, and thence to infinity and beyond.

I treasure America's top college rivalry because Jim Harbaugh, former Michigan quarterback, and Meyer "get" its meaning.

Earle Bruce groomed his young graduate assistant, Meyer, by asking him and anyone else he ran into on the staff, "What have you done today to beat Michigan?"

That was the mindset even if The Game was 310 days away, as it was when Jim Tressel, another former Bruce aide, on the day he was hired, vowed to put pride back in the rivalry.

Cooper never believed the Holy of Holies of The Game, which was that Woody Hayes' teams practiced for Michigan throughout the season.

Meyer doesn't just embrace the rivalry. He tackles it, saps Wolverines fans' spirits, and reduces even this year's lordly Michigan team to discord and despair.

So pervasive is Meyer's chromophobia (irrational aversion to a color, in this case, blue) that he has been known to upbraid Ohio reporters dressed in the hated hue. (The shade, not the alleged coach.)

In 2014, running back Zeke Elliott refused to answer a question because the reporter declined to call Michigan "The School Up North."

I will remember that you can throw the records out in a rivalry game, although why would you want to in Dwayne Haskins' historic season?

Haskins' revised total of six touchdown passes Saturday gave him 41 for the season, breaking no less than Drew Brees' Big Ten record of 39.

I will remember that any similarity between Ohio State's 2014 national championship season and 2018 is coincidental.

The 2014 Buckeyes went the whole season without their most irreplaceable player, quarterback Braxton Miller.

The 2018 Buckeyes lost defensive end Nick Bosa, their most irreplaceable player, in September against TCU.

Cardale Jones, taking over for Miller's injured replacement J.T.Barretti, who was then a red-shirt freshman, used a 59-0 rout of Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game to begin a stunning national championship run.

It included an enormous playoff upset of Alabama.

Haskins led last season's comeback in Ann Arbor after Barrett, by then a fifth-year senior, was injured.

One of Alabama's greatest teams would be the first opponent if Ohio State somehow squeezed into the College Football Playoff as a No. 4 seed. The Buckeyes were No. 4 in 2014.

Just sayin'.

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