3 questions Ohio State faces after Michigan's third-straight victory over rival Buckeyes

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – It is late Saturday afternoon in Michigan Stadium, and in the tunnel rising up from the field, the two locker rooms are 12 steps and a universe apart.

Here come the beaten Ohio State Buckeyes walking forlornly up the ramp and turning right into their locker room. There’s Ryan Day, flanked by police escorts, his head down. If his face has any expression at all, it is a suggestion of pain. Then the door is shut, to keep the clamor outside from the party that is about to happen just across the tunnel.

Here comes the Michigan Wolverines, shouting and celebrating as they turn left into their locker room, some of them holding up three fingers. Three wins in a row over . . . well, everyone here knows what those fingers mean.

“You want to put on the Louis V (Vuitton), the $1,000 outfit, you want to act hard but when you’re out there, I see the film, you’re not tough . . . I don’t think they wanted it like how I wanted it,” Michigan receiver Roman Wilson would chortle later about the Buckeyes.

“To work that hard for that opportunity and to just come up a few plays short hurts, and there’s no way around that,” Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord would say.

To the winner goes the chance to revel, to the loser anguish revisited. Six points — and 12 steps — apart.

So while the Wolverines savor the moment and look ahead to the Big Ten Championship Game next week and probably the College Football Playoffs beyond, let us take a few steps across the tunnel to a place where the world looks far darker.

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There we can find Ryan Day . . . college football’s coaching conundrum.

His team is among the nation’s elite. No question.

He’s 40-0 against all Big Ten teams that don’t wear wings on their helmets. Let’s repeat that, 40-0.

He is a football coach with a 56-7 career record. No, change that. Day is the most questioned football coach in America with a 56-7 career record, at least by some of the fans back home. And Saturday will only make it worse.

The roars from Michigan Stadium Saturday, the tens of thousands of waving maize pompoms, the sad news from the scoreboard and the deja vu it represented, the rewarmed suggestions of lack of toughness — these were the stuff of an Ohio State nightmare and of the shadow that hangs over a man with a positively golden track record.

Because back in Columbus, they don’t ask what have you done for us lately. They ask, what have you done against Michigan?

In Day’s case, lose. Three times in a row after Saturday’s 30-24 Wolverines victory, leaving him 1-3 against that nemesis up north. Three Michigan defeats in three years. That’s two more than Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer had in their 17 combined seasons. No Buckeyes coach had lost three in a row to the Wolverines since John Cooper last century.

“I’m just sick,” Day says later in his press conference.

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“We know what this game means to so many people. So to come up short is certainly crushing, not only because you invest your whole year in it, we know at Ohio State what this game means. So there’s a locker room in there that’s devastated," Day said.

How does a coach with two playoff trips and a 56-7 record end up feeling as if he’s been run over by a bus? This is Ohio State and Michigan. Always been that way, always will.

Day looks at this latest defeat and finds no mystery about it. He has seen the stat sheet. Ohio State had two turnovers, both interceptions, and Michigan had none. The Wolverines outrushed the Buckeyes 156-107. Fait accompli. “In this game, you’ve got to win the rushing yards and you’ve got to win the turnover battle,” he says. “We did neither of those things.”

He has the facts to prove it. Since 2001, the team with the most rushing yards is 22-0 in this rivalry.

McCord’s interceptions were especially costly. One set up Michigan at the Ohio State 7 in the first quarter. The Wolverines stuffed their first two series and actually scored a touchdown before they had a first down. The second killed the Buckeyes’ last chance.

“Everything comes down to a handful of plays, where you make them or you don’t,” McCord says.

Other factors will be pointed out by the public and pundits. How the Ohio State defense, for all its season-long effectiveness, could not make the vital stops when needed in the second half. The defense has come far since being humbled by Michigan last November. “Not enough,” Buckeyes’ defensive coordinator Jim Knowles says afterward. “Ultimately you’ve got to win this game. We were a play short, that’s something I’ve got to keep working on.”

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Also the Michigan game plan came with enough daring and risk-taking to do the job. The Wolverines were 3-for-3 going for it on fourth down, also called up a halfback pass that went for 34 yards, and slipped speedy and elusive backup quarterback Alex Orji into the game, where he gained 22 yards in two plays.

Meanwhile, the Day decision that will probably draw the most fire will be the final half minute of the first half, when Ohio State had 4th-and-2 at the Michigan 34 and a timeout still available, behind 14-10. Rather than gamble and go for a first down and get closer, Day elected to run the clock down to the last three seconds and try a 52-yard field goal. Wide left.

The matter, of course, is brought to Day in the most-game inquisition. He answers that he thought a 52-yard field goal was worth a try. And there was nothing automatic about going for it on 4th-and-2. To be stopped would get the Big House in a full roar and send the Wolverines into halftime with even more momentum.

“If you make it you feel great, if you don’t you don’t,” he says. “We missed it so you certainly second-guess everything. If you don’t convert on that 4th-and-3 (actually 2), you don’t get anything so I felt like at that time that was the right move.”

Perfectly sound reasoning, but it was Michigan rolling the dice Saturday.

Now, while the Wolverines prepare for Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game, where a win would put a College Football Playoff bid in the bag, the Buckeyes face questions.

Here’s one. Is there a way they could still slide into the playoffs? Sure, but it’ll take a lot of help. They caught such a break last year, grabbed an 11th-hour bid and very nearly knocked off Georgia, but more lucky bounces elsewhere will be needed now.

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“The worst part is that we have to sit back now and see how everything shakes out,” McCord says. “Our future is really not in our hands anymore.”

Here’s another. Is there really a toughness issue with the Buckeyes? Lou Holtz famously made the suggestion early in the season, which pushed a hot button for Day. And now the Wolverines’ Wilson has seconded the motion. The best way to put that subject to rest is to beat Michigan, which is another reason Saturday hit the Buckeyes in the heart.

Here’s a third question. Will the conversation around Day get truly silly now; could a coach really be on the hot seat with a 56-7 record? The internet will be searing, the Columbus talk shows a four-alarm fire. But really.

His team did not exactly lose to a nobody on Saturday. Michigan has won 22 consecutive home games, its best streak since the early Bo Schembechler days 50 years ago. The Wolverines have a 24-game winning streak against Big Ten opponents — the third longest in league history — and have won 28 consecutive regular season games. Michigan hadn’t done that since 1903. Also, the Wolverines are now 12-0 this season and have trailed only 23 minutes and 33 seconds all year.

To lose by six to a freight train like that on its home field should hardly require an apology. Or a sense of fragile job security.

But this is Michigan vs. Ohio State.

“I do believe this team could play with anybody in the country,” Day says of his Buckeyes.

Play with? Certainly. Beat? Not the team just across the tunnel. There is so, so much difference in those 12 steps. To the left, pure Michigan exultation. To the right, a program and a coach who must bear the pain and the doubt, for at least 52 more weeks.