Sweet Schadenfreude!

How low has the UM program fallen?

Let’s just say things are bad when a coach tells his fans who are upset at a 3-win season to “Get a Life.” You stay classy, RichRod.

el Kaiser and I have spoken at length over how long UM fans must suffer before the universe is brought back into balance. During the dark Cooper years, most UM fans were absolutely insufferable. Year after year, even when Ohio State had the better team, UM fans sat back and laughed at the shock and embarrassment of Buckeye fans as they dropped the annual November matchup.

Most Michigan fans even started advocating that the Spartans or the Irish should become the Wolverines’ primary rival. This was never a serious suggestion, it was just something that was said to rile up their southern counterparts.

For thirteen years this went on. Superior OSU team after superior OSU team found a way to lose to inferior Michigan competition. The Wolverines cost the Buckeyes two for-sure national championships during that period. In contrast, a single game against the Buckeyes earned them a national title and a Heisman winner.

The statistical oddity of Cooper’s tenure and the perceived superiority of the Michigan team and culture caused the fans in maize and blue shirts to sneer more and more every year, and to become more insufferable.

And then Cooper departed, and Tressel entered, and things finally turned around.

So at what point is this Sicilian thing totally balanced? When is payback enough?

Michigan fans, consider this:

For those of you who are down on the program now, try imagining your next victory against OSU coming in 2012. That’s what we endured under Cooper.

However, it goes without saying that OSU fans are not as rabidly unsportsmanlike and full of cockiness and overconfidence as our neighbors to the North were in the 90s. Getting your team’s butt whipped in two consecutive national title games tends to force a realistic humility.

Ergo, when considering whether “enough is enough,” we’re prepared to give some allowances for the suffering you endured due to (1) losing seven out of eight games to Tressel**, (2) Appalachian State, and (3) the entire 2008 UM Season of Fail^TM. Because even when Cooper was losing to UM annually, at least he never dropped to a I-AA team at home and humiliated the conference with a 3-win season. And he never would have told his fans to “get a life” if they were upset with said 3-win season.

So while I may post rib-jabbing “Memories” pics every day of Beat Michigan Week, it’s all in good fun. I can take it like I can dish it out. If the Bucks lose this week, next year’s “Memories” pics would be Michigan highlight pics, intended to fire up the OSU masses to not let it happen again.

And make no mistake, my Buckeye brethren, a loss to a grossly inferior UM team, at home, on Senior Day, with the highest favored point spread in the matchup’s history, would be humiliating. And it absolutely could happen. For those that pick on Michigan’s inept offense, guess who’s not really that much better? Now is not the time to be cocky and overconfident. Let’s not act like a bunch of Mike Harts, here.

But oh, how awesome would will it be to graduate two consecutive classes of players that have never lost a game to Michigan? Why, I just might call it “even” if that happened.

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**All this assumes the Bucks win on Saturday. Otherwise, I take it all back.