Michigan Alum Rich Reacts to #1 Ohio State Blowing a Late 20-Point Lead in Their Loss to Texas

There are good college football Saturdays and then there is the kind Rich wanted frozen in carbonite.

The setup was not promising. Michigan had survived Western Michigan the week before on an extra second and a heave of roughly 60 yards with no time left, a sub 1 percent proposition that turned the program into the scourge of college football for reasons Rich noted had nothing to do with anyone in Ann Arbor.

So Oklahoma came in with a defense built to punish exactly the thing Michigan had been hiding. Brent Venables dialed up everything he could invent for Bryce Underwood, a quarterback who had spent last season and the Western Michigan game struggling with pre-snap and post-snap processing.

Underwood was better. That is the part Rich kept coming back to.

"That's why it's football," he said. "Week to week, you can improve."

The kid heard all of it, including his own head coach saying the job is not infinite. Rich did not find that outrageous, just worth sitting with. It is true of anybody in any profession, and this is now a profession. Underwood is being paid like a professional at an age that matches his uniform number, 19.

The game plan was to run him, which some will call simplifying the playbook. Rich framed it differently. If the run works, the quarterback is not standing in the pocket asking himself what he is looking at.

Michigan's defense did the rest. Lights out, in Rich's words, even through a strong Oklahoma third quarter. In the fourth, a Michigan interception ended a long day for John Mateer and set up Jordan Marshall's game winning run. Kyle Whittingham's team held, in front of 111,000.

"Not weird, not controversial," Rich said. "Not asterisk. Let's coach them up, let's be physical, let's win and protect the home turf."

That alone would have been a good day. Then Ohio State blew a 20 point lead to Texas.

"I didn't see that one coming," Rich said. "That just put the scarlet and gray burnt orange cherry on top."

He posted the moment to Instagram with a glass of red and a list of people to tip his cap to. Matthew McConaughey. Steve Sarkisian. Arch. Bevo. Kevin Durant, who was there. Hollywood Smothers, a name Rich has decided is the best in college football, partly because he grew up on the Smothers Brothers.

The running bit is that Rich considers himself an unofficial Manning, which makes Arch Manning family. He played the postgame clip and introduced it as his brother before correcting course.

"You dream of playing in games like this," Manning said. "Hosting the number one team in the country at home. I mean, how about that? And get him a win."

Nephew, Rich decided. Definitely nephew. Archie called him, after all.

There was also a structural observation in there, delivered as a law of nature. Death, taxes, and Ohio State having problems in the kicking game.

But the part Rich actually savored was not the scoreboard. It was the reaction.

"My favorite part is the scarlet and gray leopards eating their own faces," he said.

His case is that Ohio State has decided it never has any business losing a game, because it has the best talent, the best program, the best stadium, the best everything. Rich was quick to note that Michigan fans are not exactly a model of perspective either. Read any message board, nobody is great.

"But nobody's as insufferable in losing than the Ohio State Buckeye fan base."

He even offered sympathy to the head coach caught in the middle of it. "I hope Ryan Day, you have a nice home, man, because God bless, you deserve a medal for coaching on behalf of this fan base."

None of the outrage survives contact with the actual stakes. The loss came on the road at a fourth ranked Texas team. Ohio State could drop two more and still be in the conversation for one of the 12 playoff spots. Rich anticipated the pushback, which is that the Buckeyes will beat Michigan anyway.

Fine, he said. It will suck for him. It does not change the math.

What it does change is the entertainment value of the aftermath, which Rich compared to a popcorn GIF. All that money, all that talent, former NFL head coaches like Arthur Smith and Matt Patricia working as coordinators, and a fan base that is never happy.

"I love Texas football," he said. "Thank you for that."