Ohio State, Michigan adjusting to limit issues between teams surrounding The Game
Neither team wants something negative to happen before the two rivals face each other.
When Ohio State and Michigan play, there is always a worry about emotions boiling over and players or coaches getting into scuffles with their opponents. When the rivalry game between the Buckeyes and the Wolverines is played in Ann Arbor, there’s even more reason for concern.
Unlike Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Michigan Stadium has just one narrow tunnel at midfield, the Lloyd Carr Tunnel, that both teams use to enter and exit the field. This has led to issues between the two teams throughout the years, as the players are forced to interact, including a coming together of the teams in the last meeting at the Big House in 2021.
“We’ve had conversations already,” Scarlet and Gray head coach Ryan Day said this week when asked about the tunnel. “Folks have been talking about it here for a couple of weeks and put some good plans together, again, to make sure that we can focus on what matters and that’s getting on the field and playing football.”
Fortunately, things will be different this year. It was announced in January that Michigan planned to widen the entrance to the Lloyd Carr Tunnel this offseason to be ready for this year. This was done, according to Wolverine spokesman Kurt Svoboda, as “a direct result of a thorough safety review that occurred following (last) season.”
Forty-five seats were removed from the movable stanchion that is brought out to the field for football games.
“It’s being done to widen access to the field for the competitors and all the game personnel that enter and exit from the tunnel,” Svoboda told The Detroit Free Press. “Our goal obviously is to ensure that safe and healthy environment for everybody who has to have access to the field.”
While this won’t solve all the issues, as the two teams will still use the Lloyd Carr Tunnel and will inevitably access it at the same time on Saturday, it will help with more space for players and coaches to walk into the tunnel, which has resulted in confrontations between Michigan and Michigan State and Penn State players over the last two seasons.
Additionally, Ohio State will have a more significant police presence for its trip to Ann Arbor. According to Cleveland.com, there will be more than the typical two campus police officers that travel with the Buckeyes for road games.
This has to do with the hostility between the Buckeyes and the Wolverines heating up in the build up to this game. The Maize and Blue have been found guilty of illegal sign stealing by the Big Ten and are still under investigation by the NCAA. There is a contingent of Michigan fans who have been convinced that the Scarlet and Gray, specifically Day, helped make the NCAA aware of what the Wolverines were doing, and the team wants to make sure nothing happens to the players and coaches while in transit or at their hotel.
Once the game kicks off, however, it will be up to the Ohio State players to make sure they keep their cool. There is a long history of altercations during the game and the Buckeyes won’t want to do anything that hurts the team in what is expected to be a tight game.
“I think that’s important,” Day said of keeping emotions in check on Saturday. “You have to play with emotion. You can’t let emotion play with you. I think that’s important. You have to have your emotions in check, which isn’t easy in a game like this because, as we all know, the magnitude of it all. But it’s something that we identified in the offseason and we’ll talk about this week.”
