Under My Thumb

Roman and Colston, after Michigan went ahead for good. (Maize and Blue Nation)

"It's down to me, oh yeah

The way she talks when she's spoken to

Down to me, the change has come

She's under my thumb

Yeah, it feels alright."

--"Under My Thumb" by The Rolling Stones from their 1966 album Aftermath

I don't like to think about Michigan losing to Indiana.  Truth be told, it has only happened twice in my lifetime, one of which was the COVID year that we don't talk about. It's just, "Oh, Indiana games are always going to be stupid."  This is not wholly true, but the stupid ones do stand out.  But Indiana has only beaten Michigan ten times in seventy-two tries ever.  The Hoosiers have not won in Ann Arbor since the Johnson administration.  So there's this strangeness of simultaneously not wanting to worry about Indiana but being really annoyed that I have to worry about Indiana.

So when the first quarter ended with Michigan having not crossed midfield AND being down 7-0 to the Hoosiers on a cold, wet, miserable day in Ann Arbor in the middle of a solar eclipse, you could be forgiven for thinking this was about to be one of the weird ones.  But to start the second quarter, Michigan ran seven consecutive plays for positive yardage, ending with a Blake Corum one-yard TD run, and the game was all tied up.  This is the closest it would be the rest of the way.

A lot of the rest of the game felt perfunctory.  A long drive that resulted in a TD pass to Roman Wilson, a shorter TD drive set up by a good punt return by Tyler Morris that ended with a Blake Corum TD, but not before a Mahomesian flip pass by McCarthy to Donovan Edwards that got Michigan inside the 5.  Michigan scored on every subsequent possession until the game-ending kneel-down, and the result was a 52-7 final.  (There was a tense moment at the end of the game where Indiana looked to have a touchdown that would have put Indiana at 14 points, but the Hoosier receiver Omar Cooper, Jr. was found to have stepped out of bounds before he made his catch, and Michigan kept the result as 52 unanswered points.

This game was not boring, especially because there were a lot of cool plays by Michigan on offense and defense (two picks and two fumble recoveries, for starters.) but, at a certain point on a rainy October day, if you're in the stadium, no matter how well you've prepped your outfit choices, you're getting ready for it to be over.  Michigan stayed on course for all of its goals, especially important as they headed into Michigan State week up at East Lansing.  A great deal of business was accomplished, just as expected.

Tales from the Spreadsheet

• Win 0996
• 52-7 is NOT a Scorigami (previously occurred October 29, 1988, vs. Northwestern)
• 110,264 was the attendance (highest of the season, 106th largest crowd in Michigan Stadium history.  Especially impressive given the weather and being Fall Break.)
  
  
• Michigan moves to 62-10-0 all-time against Indiana.
• Michigan has won 2 straight over Indiana, 27 straight in non-pandemic seasons, and 22 straight in Ann Arbor over the Hoosiers.
• Michigan moves to 14-4-1 all-time on October 14.
  
  
• Michigan moves to 13-0 when scoring exactly 52 points. (This marks the second time this season that Michigan has had the exact same offensive scoring output in back-to-back weeks)
• Michigan moves to 111-13-4 all-time when allowing precisely 7 points.
• Michigan has won 7 games all-time by precisely 45 points.

(Also, through a lot of hard work and cross-checking, I found the two issues that were making the Win Count not make sense.  One of them was a transcription error in the original data from 1998 that made that year's Wisconsin game appear in 1988.  But if you would like to see The Spreadsheet, please click here.)