Ohio State has dominated Michigan in their rivalry on the field for most of this millennium. The buckeyes have won 12 out of 13 games against the Wolverines including last year’s epic contest, which was the first in the history of the series to go into overtime. While the rivalry has definitely been kicked up a couple of notches since the arrival of Jim Harbaugh in Ann Arbor, he still hasn’t found a way to beat Urban Meyer yet.
And that goes for some off the field things as well.
This weekend Ohio State and Michigan will both be playing their spring games on Saturday afternoon. And in a bragging rights statement for Ohio State (and something that’s sure to irk Michigan fans) Big Ten Network is choosing to air the OSU spring game live at 12:30 PM ET while the Michigan spring game will air on tape delay at 3:00 PM ET.
Via Eleven Warriors:
Ohio State fans not able to attend Saturday’s spring game can watch the game live on BTN, starting at 12:30 p.m. ET.
Thirty minutes later, Michigan kicks off its spring game. Wolverine fans wanting to catch it live will be forced to watch through BTN’s mobile app, BTN2Go. BTN will air Michigan’s game on tape delay at 3 p.m.
It’s not all bad for Blue fans, though. They can catch their lacrosse team’s game against Ohio State live from the Big House on BTN at 10:30 a.m.
One wonders if BTN could have been able to convince the two top programs in the conference to schedule their spring games at the exact same time so they were forced into making a choice between the two. It is a bit of ignominy that Michigan can’t even get their own conference network to show their spring game live, but the decision was probably pretty easy for BTN once the conflict became an issue. Ohio State’s game is more likely to draw more fan interest and bigger ratings.
That may not sit well with Michigan fans, but it’s the simple truth and another victory for their rivals in Columbus to hold over them. And it’ll likely be that way for the foreseeable future until Michigan starts winning games again or Jim Harbaugh decides to wrestle a lion for halftime entertainment at their spring game. Whichever comes first I suppose.
