While you’re reading this, I’ll be working my way through some Thanksgiving leftovers and watching the Ohio State Buckeyes beat TTUN, 103-0, as Michigan fans go back in time to the Jim Tressel-Urban Meyer years.

OK, so no one — even the most rabid Buckeyes fan — expects that kind of score. But after four consecutive losses for Ohio State in the best rivalry in sports, most of us will settle for any kind of victory in The Game.

The Buckeyes are the defending national champions after storming through last season’s playoff by manhandling Tennessee (42-17), Oregon (41-21), Texas (28-14) and Notre Dame (34-23).

By the time the greatest college football playoff run of all time was finished, almost no one outside of Ann Arbor remembered that Ohio State’s 2024 regular season ended with a fourth consecutive loss to TTUN. That’s because the game — and also The Game — has changed.

The expanded playoff field now means that regular-season losses don’t necessarily ruin a team’s season. The Buckeyes won it all despite not even qualifying for the Big Ten Championship.

Quick: Who played in that game last year? I had to look it up myself. Oregon, which had beaten Ohio State in the regular season, beat Penn State 45-37 in the BTC. We know what happens to the Ducks after their first-round bye. But I’d long forgotten how deep the Nittany Lions went in the postseason. They blew out SMU (38-10) and Boise State (31-14) in the first two rounds and then fell to Notre Dame (27-24) in a national semifinal.

Who would have guessed that James Franklin wouldn’t even make it through October less than a year later after 12 seasons at Penn State? “What have you done for me lately” is now the college sports mantra. Franklin couldn’t beat Michigan, Ohio State or most other top-10 opponents, so now he’s trying to rejuvenate his career at Virginia Tech.

Ryan Day proved last year that his Ohio State teams can beat anyone. His career record is a ridiculous 81-10. But four of those defeats have come against Michigan — and they’ve come in a row from 2021 through last season.

After the hugely disappointing 2024 defeat in Columbus — when the Buckeyes’ high-scoring offense inexplicably kept trying to run between the tackles against a dominating Wolverines defensive front — there was talk that Day had to go. He couldn’t win the big games. It was the same stuff disgruntled Penn State fans had already been saying about Franklin.

But Day and the Buckeyes then went on that unprecedented playoff run. When it ended in glory, even his harshest critics recognized that the coach they loved to criticize and wanted to banish to a Virginia Tech-type outpost had officially put his name alongside those of Paul Brown (1942), Woody Hayes (1954, 1957, 1961, 1968, 1970), Trestle (2002) and Meyer (2014) with Ohio State’s ninth national championship.

Day can join Hayes as the only Buckeyes’ coaches with multiple national titles. But he doesn’t need to beat Michigan today to do it. He proved that last year. The only “flaw” on Day’s resume is that 1-4 record against the Wolverines. An Ohio State win today will go a long way toward making even more people forget that the Buckeyes last beat the Wolverines in 2019.

If the Buckeyes don’t win in Ann Arbor today, all is not lost. But despite the way college football has changed — the huge coaching contracts, the transfer portal, players getting NIL money and an expanded playoff bracket — this is still The Game.

It’s the annual Saturday that just about everyone — especially in these two hard-nosed, Rust-Belt Great Lakes states that share 70 miles of border and a grudging respect — circles on the calendar.

Today is why Tressel had a continuous clock in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center that counted the days until Ohio State and Michigan would meet again. It’s why Meyer wouldn’t allow anyone to wear blue in the same building. It’s why Hayes, when asked why he went for 2 after a late touchdown against the Wolverines in 1968, reportedly said, “Because I couldn’t go for 3!”

Maybe he said it, maybe it’s just the stuff of lore. But as far as most Ohio State fans are concerned, you couldn’t convince them Woody didn’t say it.

Maybe Day can add another Columbus-friendly chapter to the legend of The Game. You have to believe he and the Buckeyes want nothing more today. It’s been too long.

But if Ohio State’s 15-game winning streak ends today, here’s hoping Buckeyes fans take a deep breath and remember what happened in the weeks after last year’s bitter disappointment.

Ed Puskas is editor of the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator. He can be reached at epuskas@tribtoday.com or at 330-841-1786.