The Blue Board

American football is a very hard thing to trace an origin for. It is the product of many variations of academy and college youth yardgames that could have dependent or independent origination from European football and/or rugby.

All were schoolyard games using a ball common in mid 19th century Northeast prep schools.

Now who is the first college to form and play collegiate football?

Not sure. I don't think it is fair to say they ivented the game though.

True about the fewer games played back then and, realistically, we would never catch you guys. Unfortunately for us UA fans, the forfeitures of 8 wins and a tie in '93 and the 21 vacated wins in '05-'07 are killing us. Without that we are sitting at 843 wins (only 15 behind Texas for 2nd) and .722 win% (3rd behind UM and ND). Oh well, you mess up you pay the price, although vacating those wins for the textbook thing was crap, but, whatever, we're still happy.

Yeah, it is what it is. We're not nearly alone in that category but, along with USC, I'm pretty sure we're the most high profile.

Me too. This game will show a lot in terms of where we are right now as a program and our weaknesses.

But how in the world are you going to make up ground if we keep beating you? LOL

It will be interesting to see how Urbie does. On the one hand, he was extremely successful at UF and looks to be installing something very similar in Columbus. On the other hand, he does not have the same group of assistants (it really was an all-star cast IMO) and he is not going to be able to cherrypick the top talent from the State of Florida the way he could when he was coaching at UF. Also (and I really don't think OSU fans fully appreciate this point the way UM fans do), it's almost impossible for Urbie to dominate the rivalry either on the field or in recruiting to the degree that the Vest did. For whatever reason, we just couldn't beat him. And in that sense, he was the 180° opposite of Cooper. We are just so happy that the Vest is gone, it's like a huge weight has been lifted and we can suddenly breathe again.

I can't explain it either. But it got to the point where it was almost psychological. In many of the games, we were beaten before we stepped on the field.

It's funny because I swear I could actually see the change in attitude on our side in last year's game. Not only did we believe we could win for the first time in years, but we were determined not to lose. And on your side, it was almost as if the players couldn't believe they actually had lost the game even after it was over. It took them a few minutes to process the whole thing.

I totally agree with you, for example I went to the 2007 game in the Big House. Hart, Henne, and Long are all seniors and Lloyd is retiring after the game? You'd think that has UofM win written all over it. Yet as the stadium is filling up, I could literally feel the tension of everyone in that place. It was like absolutely every Michigan fan and student in the stadium was getting to their seats and saying, "OK, how are we going to lose this time?". Very odd feeling.

Yeah, well RR didn't do our numbers any favors either.

Damn, I'm getting hemorrhoids just thinking about that group of coaching diarrhea.

So I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all the logistics of when ND's job was open vs who was available at the time, but how on earth did the Domers not grab a real coach somewhere in that stretch after Holtz retired? I mean damn you had Stoops who was a rising star as a DC at K-State and Florida, Meyer who turned Bowling Green and Utah into contenders, Nick Saban, and I'm sure a bunch of others. Like I said, I don't know the details, I'm just beginning to broaden my college football horizons outside Columbus, but its just staggering to me.