Why Michigan-Ohio State should move to October if the Playoff expands to 24 teams

The Michigan-Ohio State game is as much a part of college football’s late November schedule as Thanksgiving leftovers and Lane Kiffin coaching rumors.

The Game was meant to kick off at noon under a slate-gray sky, with a few snowflakes in the air and fans huddled up in the stands. Playing the rivalry at any other time would be an affront to all that’s good and holy. However, if the people who run the sport insist on ramming through a 24-team College Football Playoff, then Michigan and Ohio State must set aside tradition and think about what’s best for the rivalry.

If the CFP expands, Michigan and Ohio State should move The Game to October.

I realize this proposal will be wildly unpopular with fans. You know what else is wildly unpopular with fans? The 24-team CFP. Allow me to explain why my unpopular idea is a good one. I, too, love the Michigan-Ohio State game exactly as it is, but I worry the greatness of The Game will be wasted if it’s played after most of the 24-team Playoff field is set.

The goal should be to play The Game when the stakes are highest. For most of the rivalry’s history, that meant playing it on the final Saturday of the regular season. Part of the rivalry’s greatness is watching tension build throughout the season, leading up to the crescendo in late November.

If the CFP expands, my prediction is that the crescendo of the regular season will hit earlier. Probably sometime in October, when we’ve seen enough to know who’s good, yet not enough to have the whole CFP bracket figured out. The final Saturday of the regular season will feel more like Week 18 in the NFL — extremely relevant for a few teams, anticlimactic for everyone else.

In October, everybody will have something to play for. Teams will be warmed up but not as beaten up as they’ll be in late November. We’ll know enough to identify the most important games, but nobody will be locked into a particular CFP track. Also, fans won’t yet have Bracket Fatigue from analyzing the same handful of scenarios again and again.

Last year’s Michigan-Ohio State game offered a glimpse of what we can expect if the CFP expands to 24 teams. The Wolverines were a ticking time bomb of dysfunction, but they still would have been a Playoff lock, even after failing to score a touchdown against Ohio State. The Game will always matter, but assuming it will be just as good without postseason positions at stake overlooks what makes this rivalry different from all of the others.

As The Athletic’s Joe Rexrode pointed out, the national stakes helped create the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry as we know it today. It was Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler battling for the Rose Bowl year after year in the 1970s, the Game of the Century in 2006 and the top-five matchups in 2016 and 2023 that made the rivalry what it is.

One nasty side effect of the expanded CFP is that the better these teams are, the less incentive they’ll have to lay everything on the line in the last week of the regular season. If both teams are highly ranked and assured of a first-round bye, what’s really at stake, other than the pride of beating your rival?

To be clear, I’m not worried about Michigan or Ohio State resting healthy starters for The Game. That’ll never happen. Would Jordan Marshall and Jeremiah Smith play through injuries if both teams were guaranteed to be in the CFP? That’s harder to answer, though I suspect players would do everything possible to play.

My main concern is that Michigan-Ohio State won’t feel as big. The games that matter in late November will be the ones involving teams on the CFP fringe. That could be a good thing for USC-UCLA, Iowa-Nebraska, Illinois-Northwestern and other Big Ten rivalry games that tend to get buried on the last weekend of the regular season. It’s not such a good thing for Ohio State-Michigan.

That’s the rub for the Big Ten. The 18 conference schools play 81 games against each other every season. If an expanded CFP makes the other 80 matchups more meaningful, that would be a win for the Big Ten — and also for Fox Sports, which televises a bunch of those games. That extra juice has to come from somewhere, and the risk is that it comes at the expense of the Big Ten’s most valuable property, the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry.

I know some people think those worries are overblown. One of those people is Ohio State coach Ryan Day, who said the expanded Playoff could make Ohio State-Michigan “even more important.”

“You’re playing for either a chance to get into the Playoff or a chance to get seeded high to get a first-round bye,” Day told The Athletic. “Or, if you are already maybe predicted to be one of the top eight schools, then you’re fighting for a high seed. So, all those are critically important to your success in the Playoff.

“I think with the elimination of the championship game, it keeps that rivalry as fierce as it’s ever been, the stakes just as high.”

From Day’s perspective — and Kyle Whittingham’s, too — taking the rivalry pressure down a notch wouldn’t be the worst thing. You could argue it’s already happened. The 12-team CFP made it possible for the Buckeyes to lose to Michigan in 2024 and go on to win a national championship. If The Game no longer decides the season for both teams, it’s worth at least considering the argument for playing it a few weeks earlier.

Falling leaves or barren branches? Halloween candy or pumpkin pie? Sweaters or winter coats? Going from one to the other would be a huge adjustment for Michigan and Ohio State, but if the rest of the sport is changing, the rivalry should be open to change, too.

A Michigan-Ohio State game in mid-October will never mean as much as the epic rivalry games of the past, but it’s guaranteed to always mean something. Instead of deciding the season, it would set the stage for everything that comes next — including the possibility of a rematch in the CFP.

I don’t love it. I also don’t love the thought of Ohio State-Michigan gradually losing relevance as the final weekend becomes all about the teams fighting for the final few CFP spots.

Moving The Game would be an insult to everything fans know and love about college football. Since the people who run the sport have shown us they’re OK with that, it’s an insult worth considering.