Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)

Let's give it up for the 'bones! (Michigan Athletics)

Watch the band through a bunch of dancers

Quickly, follow the unknown

With something more familiar

Quickly, something familiar

Courage, my word

It didn't come, it doesn't matter

--"Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)" by The Tragically Hip, the third single from the band's 1992 album Fully Completely

Look, I'm not saying I knew how this season was going to go before it started, but I reserved "Courage" for the Ohio State game because I knew it was going to be a loss.  I didn't want it to be, I certainly hoped it could be different, but there was just no way, academically, to see Michigan winning the fifth straight edition of The Game.  Courage, it didn't come; it doesn't matter.

I mean, there certainly was an initial glimmer of hope.  The big run from Marshall on the first drive.  A field goal.  A tremendous PBU by Zeke Berry and then a pick by Jyaire Hill, and suddenly, Michigan is in business, and it's another field goal.  You aren't beating Ohio State, particularly this Ohio State, with field goals.  Even holding Ohio State to a field goal seemed to bode well.  And then, just as suddenly, it didn't, and the rest was pretty much academic.

Courage, my word

It didn't come, it doesn't matter

Courage, your word

It didn't come, it doesn't matter

Courage, my word

It didn't come, it doesn't matter

Courage, it couldn't come at a worse time

Ohio State remains what it is and who it has been: America's most consistently successful college football program.  Michigan remains an elite, a blueblood, but one that has had more ups and downs than its archrival.  This season and the shape and form it took led to an inevitable result: people who never believed Sherrone was the guy from the drop now think they have evidence that Moore was the wrong choice.  Michigan should have been a playoff team in their mind, that Michigan had no excuses for losing to Ohio State (despite being down its starting running back, starting fullback, a starting safety, a starting linebacker, and a starting receiver in The Game), that Moore "doesn't have the juice."  Which is fine; they're welcome to that opinion, but I will disagree.  Because the problem is as simple as Jason Kirk of The Athletic laid it out about the coaching carousel: "There are no sure things out there, just coaches you're not mad at yet."  

"There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them."

― Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night

As Tom MacInnes wrote about this song and this quote, "'Courage' is really a song about finding meaning for yourself and your life’s work, amid the cries of those who take you for granted." I think that's where I am, and where many of us are with Michigan football.  We began to take 2021-23 as the new normal, the standard forever, and it is challenging to take a step back, a step that is frequently inevitable in college football.  The problem is that Ohio State never takes that step back.  Your measuring stick is the only one that never does that, and that is both a challenge and an opportunity.  This isn't a Hoke backslide; this is a late 90s-early 2000s Carr team, very good but not great, but now in a landscape where more teams can match them.  Sherrone has some things to figure out. I don't think anyone has said anything different.  JB Brown has to go, Wink probably needs to move on, and there are some spots to fill in the portal.  For now, enjoy Orlando, beat Texas (probably, maybe Vandy). I mean, do we think ESPN is going to turn down a chance at that big of a helmet game for one of its non-playoff bowls?  Until then, enjoy the men's and women's basketball teams and the hockey team; we can have new and different anxieties, as a treat!

Tales from the Spreadsheet

• 27-9 IS a Scorigami!
  
• 111,373 were in attendance for the game (the 49th-largest crowd in Michigan Stadium history, and the largest crowd of the 2020s).
  
  
• Michigan moves to 62-53-6 all-time against the Ohio State University.  This is Michigan's first loss to Ohio State in the 2020s, as some of you may know.
• Michigan falls to 1-4-0 all-time on November 29 (this was Michigan's first home game on November 29.  The first three were in Chicago, the fourth was in 2014 in Columbus, the end of the Hoke era.)
  
  
• Michigan improves to 9-9-0 when scoring exactly 9 points (of Michigan's 18 games in which they have scored just 9 points, 6 have come against Ohio State).
• Michigan moves to 7-16-0 all-time when allowing 27 points to the opposition.
• Michigan has lost 3 games all-time by precisely 18 points, the most recent example being the 2025 USC game, meaning two of the three have come this season.