Say What? Lose to Michigan?

Ohio State’s easiest path to a national championship might be the most backwards sentence in college football, but in the 12-team Playoff era it’s flat-out true: losing to Michigan can be the smart play. Not because The Game doesn’t matter emotionally — it does — but because the format now rewards health and bracket positioning more than rivalry trophies.

Let’s talk reality. The only teams that can take Ohio State to the fourth quarter in a truly competitive game are Notre Dame and maybe Georgia. Everybody else is either a talent tier down, a trenches mismatch, or a team that needs chaos plus a perfect day to hang around. So what’s the reward for beating Michigan? Another brutal, high-variance game in the Big Ten Championship where you’re risking injuries for… what, the number one seed where you may face Notre Dame in the quarterfinal? In Columbus, the goal isn’t a conference ring. It’s national titles.

Here’s the cleaner route. Go to Ann Arbor, keep it simple, run the ball, don’t empty the playbook, rest the nicked-up guys, and if it turns into a 27-17 loss, so be it. You’re not dropping out of the top six with one loss. You skip the Big Ten title meat grinder, get a bye week to heal, and then you host a first-round Playoff game in the Shoe against some Group of 5 or ACC “nice story” team you’ll be a double-digit favorite over. That’s basically a postseason warm-up with a crowd edge and a talent gap.

Now add the sneaky extra bonus: that loss makes Michigan 10-2. And a 10-2 Michigan with a win over Ohio State suddenly has a real argument to be the fourth Big Ten team in the field if the committee is leaning conference-heavy. That’s where the chaos helps you. If Michigan grabs that last Big Ten slot, the bubble tightens. Someone has to get squeezed out — and there’s a very real chance it’s Notre Dame, because the Irish don’t have a conference title path to lean on. In other words, your “strategic” loss doesn’t just position you better; it also increases the odds that the one team you’d most like to avoid early gets kept outside the bracket entirely.

Then you hit the quarterfinals. Worst case, you catch Georgia — fine. You were going to have to beat Georgia or Notre Dame eventually anyway. Better to meet whoever it is healthy and whole than limping in after an extra war nobody will remember three years from now.

Yeah, losing to Michigan five straight years would sting. So would missing the Big Ten title. For about a minute. But if the tradeoff is positioning yourself for back-to-back national championships, you take it. That’s the sign of the times: rivalry games and conference championships just don’t carry the same weight when the real season is a 12-team tournament. It’s not about winning every Saturday anymore. It’s about being built — and healthy — for the postseason.