You would think being a Michigan fan since the age of 4 would make this a difficult piece to write, but the truth is not really because it’s just accepting the reality of the situation.

For 18 years, Ohio State has outright dominated its rivalry against Michigan. Aside from one 35-21 victory in 2003, the last time Michigan won the Big Ten, and a fleeting 40-34 victory in 2011 where Brady Hoke beat Luke Fickell, the games between the two “rivals” haven’t been very close at all for the most part. Close scores here and there sure, but mostly blowouts in favor of the Bucknuts.

The last two have been particularly hard to stomach because they came against Don Brown-led Michigan defenses that were statistically strong against everyone else on the schedule before surrendering 111 combined points to OSU at the end of November in back to back seasons. 62-39 in Columbus was bad enough in 2018, but 56-27 in Ann Arbor is really just as bad to be honest with you.

The fans aren’t happy at all, and why should they be? It’s not just another year of “evil” triumphing over “good,” or just another year of no Big Ten title, or even just another year of ESPN and FOX Sports treating Michigan like a punching bag for everyone’s amusement.

No, it’s also the year of finally acknowledging what we’ve all wanted to avoid but now no longer can: The rivalry between Michigan and Ohio State is dead. Definitively. Unmistakably. Even objectively if you want to talk about competitiveness as a metric.

We can bring out all of the old Bo and Woody clips we want, watch Tiebreaker on repeat and tell stories about how awesome it was when John Cooper was manning the OSU sideline, but it doesn’t change what has happened in modern college football and how that alone has absolutely obliterated what was once a proud and competitive rivalry game between two blue blood programs.

Yes, the change in modern college football, specifically with respect to program construction and recruiting, is absolutely at the heart of why the Wolverines and Buckeyes no longer have a competitive rivalry. Fans of college football are well aware of the stories, whispers and downright evidentiary postings on social media detailing the “advantages” that certain schools have on others with respect to recruiting top tier talent in the country. It always seems like the same schools are in that Top 10 category year in and year out. Now of course, recruiting rankings are subjective in nature, but when you compare them to the on field results generated by those same players in college, the correlation is more than just a little bit strong.

Alabama has had the top composite recruiting class in the nation 4 of the last 5 years and that one year they didn’t, 2018, they were 5th. Clemson has had 3 Top 10 classes and given that the only other ACC team that has had Top 10 classes since 2015 was FSU 3 times(2015, 2016, 2017) and Miami once in 2018, you could see why these two teams have been in the national championship game each of the last 4 years.

What does this have to do with Michigan and Ohio State? Well, the Buckeyes have had a Top 10 class each of the past 5 seasons. Two of them were second in the country behind Alabama and Georgia, and the lowest any of them were was 7th in 2015. Michigan has had 3 Top 10 classes since 2015, two of them being 8th in the nation in 2016 and 2019, and one of them being 5th in 2017. The difference between them and Alabama and Clemson is that Alabama and Clemson don’t play in the same division in the same conference. Michigan and Ohio State do, which means recruiting battles for them are literally for who gets to win the Big Ten East Division and ultimately get to Indianapolis for the championship game.

This is where those “advantages,” made infamous once upon a time by Jim Tressel, leading to his exit as OSU’s head coach in the late 2000’s, come into play. Whether people wish to admit it or not, it is known that there are practices in the recruiting game that OSU is willing to engage in that Michigan is not, and that coupled with the rate of success for the program since the Tressel era, is what gives OSU that 3 to 5 spot advantage over Michigan in the Jim Harbaugh Era. Might not seem like a lot, but that second ranked 2017 OSU class brought in Chase Young, Jeffrey Okudah, Baron Browning, Shaun Wade and Wyatt Davis, all 5-stars, along with 4-star RB J.K. Dobbins among others. Comparatively, Michigan had two 5-stars in its 5th ranked 2017 class: Donovan Peoples-Jones and Aubrey Solomon, the latter of which is no longer on the team.

Now this isn’t a referendum on OSU being a dirty program because the other half of that “advantage” is most certainly OSU’s track record back to the Tressel Era, which featured at worst, a 6-7 season in 2011 under Fickell, surrounded by what is now 15 double digit win seasons between 2002 and present. The Buckeyes simply handled the transition to the modern game much better than Michigan did, which had three seasons of missing bowl eligibility in 2008, 2009 and 2014, after Lloyd Carr went 1-6 against Jim Tressel’s Buckeyes before he retired.

The bottom line is that OSU has recruited high level talent for nearly two decades at a consistent clip and have managed to stay ahead of Michigan in that department enough to create a gap in the pool. Again not a huge gap, unless you look at the scoreboard. One RB like Dobbins is enough to destroy your defensive line to the tune of 211 yards rushing and 4 TD, before you get to all the other talent throwing and catching touchdowns as well.

Until this gap is closed, OSU will continue to have this advantage and as the years go on, it becomes more of a mental advantage as well. How can any Michigan team that recruits 3 to 5 spots lower than OSU ever hope to beat them? Especially since it’s now been 17 out of the last 19 seasons that OSU has won that game, and the scores have gotten worse recently? Recruiting isn’t the end all be all of college football, but again given the correlations that are there, it’s not good at all to see OSU with two committed 5-star players in the 2020 class and Michigan with none. That puts your development of these players at a higher premium and you simply have to play “perfect” football in order to win, while OSU only has to play competent football to beat you by at least three scores.

This is why the Michigan-OSU rivalry is dead, because after 5 years of the Harbaugh Era, that gap has not closed and there’s no indication that it will, unless Michigan is willing to do things that OSU, Alabama, Clemson and a handful of others do, to get those 5-stars signed and to stick around. In the past many fans have called out “stargazers” who place an immense premium on recruiting as the lifeblood of the program, because there are so many examples of teams with lower rated talent classes that have beaten top 10 schools. Thing is, you can find a game or two here and there for that, but not consistently. Michigan State and Penn State have each beaten OSU once in the last 5 years and that was 2015 and 2016 when it happened. Since that first second-ranked OSU class, the Buckeyes haven’t lost to either school either at home or on the road. Yeah there’s Iowa in 2017 and Purdue in 2018, but again it’s not consistent. If you want to beat the Buckeyes with any consistency, which no one has done in a very long time, you have to recruit on their level, even if it’s just 3 to 5 spots higher than you normally recruit.

Until that happens, AND it translates into just ONE competent, composed and organized win over Ohio State, The Game is just a designated loss for Michigan every year and the best we can hope for is 11-1, which won’t get Michigan to Indy unless OSU falters. That’s seriously where we are now, hoping for OSU mistakes to help us out, which is really the same position as the rest of the Big Ten overall.

This is difficult for a lot of Michigan fans to hear let alone accept, but the proof is in the pudding and there’s not much to refute it. Whatever hope you have of the Wolverines finally reigning supreme over their arch-nemesis again one day will only go as far as that coaching staff’s recruiting efforts, whether it’s Harbaugh or whoever succeeds him, so it’s not as easy as replacing the head coach or the defensive coordinator. You need talent on OSU’s level to beat them and until you get it, this isn’t a rivalry anymore. It’s just a pre and post-mortem for what will always be a dour and defeating end to the college football season for Michigan.