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Exactly... I find it really weird that fans of 8-5(!) Michigan are trying to flex on a fan base about to play for the national title, because of a regular season game that ultimately didn't matter because it didn't keep OSU out of the playoff. If OSU wins on Monday, that loss to Michigan doesn't matter at all.

The win over Ohio State matters a GREAT deal to Michigan fans and alumni.  It made the season a success.  I'm pretty sure Buckeye fans would feel the same way if the situation was reversed.

The win over Ohio State matters a GREAT deal to Michigan fans and alumni.  It made the season a success.  I'm pretty sure Buckeye fans would feel the same way if the situation was reversed.

That's just Michigan malarkey most of us never felt that way at all

but, usually the banner years include beating their rivals

Interesting point.  With the expanded playoff a lot of scenarios are going to come up that probably didn't in the past.  If LSU won the SEC (or more), it almost certainly meant they beat, for example, Ole Miss or Auburn or Alabama.  Being stuck in the same division, if they don't win those games, the other teams probably have good enough records to preclude LSU from winning that division.  We usually get knocked out of contention because of another good team in our division, and vice versa.  And the good teams tend to be who we think of as rivals.  If we lost the showdown to Ole Miss, 2003 never happens.  The Rebel Scum would've won the west, played UGA for the SEC, and we'd have been off to the Peach Bowl.  Conversely, LSU could survive a loss to a non-division rival, say, Florida, because of the way the division titles worked.  

I suspect we'll be getting more instances going forward of a legitimately good team not winning a rivalry game but advancing anyway, and possibly winning it all.  

Interesting point.  With the expanded playoff a lot of scenarios are going to come up that probably didn't in the past.  If LSU won the SEC (or more), it almost certainly meant they beat, for example, Ole Miss or Auburn or Alabama.  Being stuck in the same division, if they don't win those games, the other teams probably have good enough records to preclude LSU from winning that division.  We usually get knocked out of contention because of another good team in our division, and vice versa.  And the good teams tend to be who we think of as rivals.  If we lost the showdown to Ole Miss, 2003 never happens.  The Rebel Scum would've won the west, played UGA for the SEC, and we'd have been off to the Peach Bowl.  Conversely, LSU could survive a loss to a non-division rival, say, Florida, because of the way the division titles worked. 

I suspect we'll be getting more instances going forward of a legitimately good team not winning a rivalry game but advancing anyway, and possibly winning it all. 

This.  

For us, The Game represented two things:

• An end onto itself.  
• As a means to other ends.  

The Game as an end onto itself:
You obviously want to beat your rival even in a year when doing so doesn't really help you achieve any other goals such as league or national titles.  A great example of this for tOSU is Earle Bruce's last year, 1987.  It was a bad year for the Buckeyes, so bad that Bruce had been fired before the game.  Thus, beating Michigan didn't help win a league title (MSU won that year) and Ohio State wasn't in the NC race so it didn't impact that either.  For that matter, beating Michigan in Bruce's last game didn't even get Ohio State another game.  Despite the win and finishing over .500, the Buckeyes did not go to a Bowl after the 1987 season.  The win still mattered because it matters as a stand-alone thing.  

The Game as a means to other ends:
For generations Ohio State fans have repeated the mantra that the goals every season are to:

• Beat Michigan
• Win the League
• Win the Rose Bowl.  

Once the BCS (and later CFP) were established #3 was slightly amended to "win the NC".  Beating Michigan was a means to the other two.  Ohio State and Michigan have about 80 combined league titles and I would guess that they don't have more than a half a dozen outright titles in years when they lost The Game.  The last time either team won an outright league title WITHOUT winning The Game was in 1992 when Michigan had their "year of the tie" and tied tOSU.  They won the league outright at 6-0-2.  The last time the loser of The Game won an outright league title was in 1982 when Michigan lost to Ohio State and finished 8-1, half a game ahead of the 7-1 Buckeyes.  So it has literally been more than 40 years since the Ohio State/Michigan loser won an outright league title.  

I also don't think that either team has ever won an NC without winning The Game.  Until very recently it was generally a practical impossibility.  Look, for example, at the 1996 season.  Heading into The Game the Buckeyes were 10-0 and ranked #2 sandwiched between 10-0 #1 Florida and 9-0 #3 FSU.  The only other major undefeated team was #4 ASU.  The Buckeyes and Sun Devils had already clinched their Rose Bowl berths so Ohio State's path to the NC was pretty clear:

• Beat Michigan at home in The Game, 
• Beat ASU in Pasadena, and
• Hope that the UF/FSU winner lost.  

#2 and #3 happened.  Ohio State beat ASU 20-17 and FSU beat Florida in Tallahassee but turned around and lost to them in the Sugar Bowl.  In the final AP Poll for the season the top-4 were exactly the same as they had been in the Poll immediately prior to The Game.  All four teams had picked up one loss each and they all went back to where they had been before that all started:

• 12-1 Florida, was #1 on 11/18, dropped to #4 on 12/2 after losing to FSU, climbed to #3 after winning the SECCG, and climbed to #1 after beating #1 FSU in the Sugar Bowl.  
• 11-1 Ohio State, was #2 on 11/18, dropped to #6 on 11/25, climbed to #5 on 12/2 and #4 on 12/9 then climbed to #2 after beating #2 ASU in the Rose Bowl.  
• 11-1 Florida State, was #3 on 11/18, climbed to #2 after tOSU's loss, climbed to #1 after beating UF and stayed there until losing the Sugar Bowl to finish #3.  
• 11-1 ASU, was #4 on 11/18, benefited from tOSU's and UF's losses climbing to #3 then #2 and staying there until losing the Rose Bowl to finish #4.  

Some of this is simply because The Game has been the last game of the season for almost a century.  In 1996 if the Buckeyes had lost to Notre Dame in September and beaten Michigan in November there is a pretty good chance that they'd have won the NC.  

Beating Michigan was important in large part because it was generally a necessary precondition to winning the league and national titles.  That simply isn't true anymore.  If the Buckeyes don't win the NC this year it will be because they lost to ND in the CG not because they lost to Michigan in a game played two months earlier.  

I think I'd phrase it the opposite way--it prevented the season from being a failure.

I can't imagine that Michigan fans look at a season where they went 5-4 in conference, obviously didn't sniff a conference title or the CFP, and were an offensive mess all year, as anything resembling a success. But it would have been immeasurably worse if they'd lost to OSU, so I get that.

As a Purdue fan, our season was an abject failure. But if we had knocked off IU in their historic year to finish it off, it still would have been a failure, but that would have been a really nice little silver lining to it.
Yeah, I get that. And in my basketball scenario, I'd completely expect some irrational Purdue fans to be losing their minds if we were 0-3 against an IU team in a bad year. That's... Embarrassing. And the vitriol that would be sent at Painter from said fans would be ugly.

But a NC would salve all wounds. Which is why I'm sure I'd hear a lot from IU fans trolling Purdue--right up until Purdue won an elite 8 game and we were heading into final four weekend. I'd expect most of them to shut up right about that time.

Which is why I posted that it was pretty odd after OSU had won three playoff games, and are about to play for the NC, why it's still something M fans are trolling with.

If they lose Monday, that means OSU:

• Lost to M
• Didn't win the B1G
• Didn't win the NC

Then it makes tons of sense to troll. They'd be 0 for 3 in their season goals. But if they WIN on Monday, then achieving #3 excuses #1 and #2 completely.

Solid post, top to bottom. Part in bold is a great summation. The part that was really tough this year is that Michigan was actually a very good team, outside of 1 very specific position, QB. Everyone sees the 4 conference losses, but the only games they lost because of more than a qb is probably Texas and Oregon. Washington, illinois & Indiana the offense was so terribly bad, it put a ton of stress on the defense, which still kept them in the game. For example:

Washington - UM was ahead 17-14 going into the 4th with only 133 passing yards with an INT and qb fumble
Illinois - within a td most of the game, qb sacked and terrible qb sneak at goal line. INT and qb fumble in the game
Indiana - qb - 16/32 for 137 yards passing, couldn't throw it in the ocean and M defense absolutely dominated the 2nd half, 2 qb fumbles

With a remotely functional qb, Michigan was probably a playoff team this year. They absolutely should have won the Indiana game, probably the Washington game and probably 50/50 on the Illinois game as Illinois had a great defensive showing. 

The OSU win prevented total failure season. What's really sad is Michigan's defense was really good this year, even better considering how absolutely awful the offense was and put the defense in terrible positions. It's interesting concept when you think about it because OSU's defense has almost every stat in their favor, showing they're among the best, but OSU offense rarely put their defense in tough positions or rarely gave the defense a break. Only time I remember seeing it was against Michigan because OSU play calling took peed on their own leg that day. 

It's interesting concept when you think about it because OSU's defense has almost every stat in their favor, showing they're among the best, but OSU offense rarely put their defense in tough positions or rarely gave the defense a break. Only time I remember seeing it was against Michigan because OSU play calling took peed on their own leg that day.

This is a very fair point.  As usual, I like the College Football Nerds solution of ranking by yards per carry and yards per pass attempt because that MOSTLY takes out the impact of the offense being good or bad.  

I also like that they do it relative to opposition so if you play a bunch of teams that suck at passing you don't get an unrealistically good ranking based on their inability to throw.  Instead, you are compared to how they did against their other opponents.  

Passing yards per attempt allowed (relative to opposition):

• #1 Fresno State, 5.78, -27%
• #2 Texas, 5.61, -27%
• #3 Notre Dame, 5.67, -26%
• #4 Ohio State, 5.62, -24%
• #11 Michigan, 6.46, -18%

Rushing yards per carry allowed (relative to opposition):

• #1 Ohio State, 2.42, -44%
• #2 Ole Miss, 2.28, -42%
• #3 Michigan, 2.87, -31%

Michigan does MUCH better on these per-play metrics than they do on the per-game metrics where they were #27 in passing defense and #4 in rushing defense.  

Total Defense:

• Ohio State was #1 overall and #1 relative to opposition at 251.07, -33%
• Michigan was #10 overall and #8 relative at 307, -20%

Scoring Defense:

• Ohio State was #1 overall and #1 relative to opposition at 12.20, -57%
• Michigan was #17 overall and #11 relative at 19.92, -30%

There is no doubt in my mind that Michigan's defense was at least solidly in the top-10.  In those areas where they rank outside of that I think that their offense incompetence made their defense look bad*.  

Another factor that it is REALLY hard to eliminate is the fatigue factor.  If your offense sucks and can't move the chains then your defense gets forced to play a whole lot of plays and tends to wear down over the course of a game.  This was DEFINITELY an issue for the tOSU defense on Michigan's final drives in The Game.  Their final two drives were:

• 15 plays, 77 yards to the shadow of the goalpost then an INT
• 11 plays, 57 yards to the game winning FG.  

Michigan only gained 234 yards total so it is telling that they got 134 of those yards or nearly 60% on their last two possessions.  

That impacted Ohio State in that game but it impacted Michigan pretty much all year long.  

*Offensive incompetence making defense look worse than they actually are:
Once again the same thing happened to Ohio State in The Game.  Michigan got their TD on a possession that started at the Ohio State 2 yard line and they got one of their FG's on a three-and-out that gained 3 yards.  Vis-a-vis who won that makes no difference but if you are trying to evaluate the offenses and the defenses as separate units then you should give the credit/blame for those two scores to Michigan's defense and Ohio State's offense.  

Similarly, this impacted Ohio State in that game but it impacted Michigan pretty much all year long.  

The win over Ohio State matters a GREAT deal to Michigan fans and alumni.  It made the season a success.  I'm pretty sure Buckeye fans would feel the same way if the situation was reversed.

Agreed, but not as much as it used to.  

If a middling Ohio State/Michigan team had upset a NC Contending Michigan/Ohio State Team 20 or more years ago that upset would have ruined the NC chances for the loser.  Now, it just means a change in seeding.  Even if Ohio State doesn't win the NC it still will not be because of the loss in The Game.