The Michigan-Ohio State game that changed it all: How The Game in 2001 still resonates

June 04, 2024

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series by The Athletic looking at five pivotal upsets from the 2001 season that still resonate 20 years later.

On one of the last of the 310 days he’d spent preparing his team for that week’s game, first-year Ohio State coach Jim Tressel shared with his players a motivational letter he’d received from Fred Martinelli, the Hall of Fame coach for Division II Ashland College in Ashland, Ohio. Like Tressel’s father, Lee, the longtime coach at Division III Baldwin Wallace, Martinelli had spent decades watching their state’s flagship university take on hated rival Michigan.

“He said, in the end, it’s usually a fourth-and-1 that decides the ballgame, whether you’re the team on defense that has to stop it or the team on offense that has to gain it,” Tressel described 20 years later. “So we talked about how, in rivalries, perhaps it comes down to 1 yard.”

On Nov. 24, 2001, in front of 111,571 spectators in a stadium where Ohio State had not won in 14 years, Tressel’s unranked Buckeyes held a 7-0 lead over No. 11 Michigan to start the second quarter. On a third-and-13, Buckeyes quarterback Craig Krenzel found receiver Chris Gamble on the flat, who turned upfield and lunged headfirst for the first-down marker. He came up 1 yard short at the Michigan 46.

Tressel, a notoriously conservative coach, initially called for the punt team.

“And the kids were all saying, ‘Wait a minute! You told us it was going to come down to a fourth-and-1. It’s fourth-and-1; let’s go for it,’” recalled Tressel. “And I thought, ‘Ooooh. You know, you’re right.’”

Wearing his ubiquitous red sweater vest over a white shirt, Tressel got on his headset and asked his defensive coaches — coordinator Mark Dantonio, defensive backs coach Mel Tucker, D-line coach Jim Heacock and linebackers coach Mark Snyder — whether they’d be OK with that decision.

“I was the one on the sideline with him,” Snyder said. “I said, ‘I’m good.’ And (Dantonio) said, ‘Let’s go.’ We were all in agreement. Shit, we’re here. We came to win. Let’s go play to win.”

It seems unfathomable today, amid Ohio State’s two-decade dominance over its rival up north, but there was a time, 20 years ago, when the rivalry was flipped. From 1988 to 2000, Michigan went 10-2-1 against coach John Cooper’s Buckeyes, including consecutive upsets in 1995 and ’96 of undefeated Ohio State teams that ruined the Buckeyes’ national title hopes.

“Everyone rubbing the last 20 years in my face, I say, well, we did you guys like that in the ’80s and ’90s,” said Michigan All-American linebacker Larry Foote (1998-2001), now the linebackers coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“I remember reading articles, and you would hear guys talk from a Michigan standpoint, that Michigan State was more of a rivalry game to them, just because of the in-state matchup,” said Krenzel, then a teenager living in Utica, Mich. “All the Michigan fans around us definitely looked at Michigan as the superior program at the time.”

Michigan was hardly dominant for most of the decade, but it produced a remarkable run of future NFL quarterbacks: Elvis Grbac, Todd Collins, Brian Griese and, of course, Tom Brady. And in 1997, undefeated, top-ranked Michigan, led by subsequent Heisman winner and Ohio native Charles Woodson, beat No. 4 Ohio State 20-14 in Ann Arbor. It went on to win a share of the AP national championship, a feat the Buckeyes hadn’t achieved since 1968.

“Ohio State can’t beat Michigan,” then-Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski wrote that year. “It’s some sort of Superman-Kryptonite thing.”

Cooper produced five Top 10 teams in six seasons from 1993-98, finishing No. 2 in the country in ’96 and ’98. Yet he was extremely unpopular among much of the fan base for his futility against the Buckeyes’ archrival. “My record against Michigan speaks for itself,” Cooper said after yet another upset loss in 2000. “It stinks.”

Cooper was fired in January 2001 after Ohio State’s subsequent Outback Bowl loss to South Carolina. Athletic director Andy Geiger’s search for his replacement included high-profile candidates such as Oregon’s Mike Bellotti, Stanford’s Tyrone Willingham and Minnesota’s Glen Mason. Even Oakland Raiders coach Jon Gruden was asked about the job.

So it alarmed some Buckeyes fans when Geiger ultimately selected Jim Tressel, a 48-year-old Division I-AA coach at Youngstown State (where he’s now the university’s president), despite having won four national championships there. In addition to being an Ohio native, Tressel had been an Ohio State assistant under Earle Bruce from 1983-85. He had a pulse for the fan base, and he knew how incensed they were at the one-sided nature of the Michigan rivalry.

On the evening of his Jan. 18 hiring, Tressel was introduced at halftime of the Buckeyes’ basketball game against Michigan. One line, in particular, would soon become immortalized in Ohio State lore.

“I can assure you,” he told the crowd, “that you’ll be proud of our young people, in the classroom and in the community — and most especially, in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Mich., on the football field.”

The building erupted.

“I really didn’t preplan saying anything at the basketball game,” Tressel says now. “I thought I was just going to wave and live happily ever after. But when they handed me the mic, I guess I said what I was thinking, and I wanted them to know we felt that was important.”

He said he’d counted up the number of days until the game while preparing for his job interview.

“He let us know that day, this rivalry is going to be different,” said running back Jonathan Wells, who’d just finished his junior season. “When he came in and said that in the basketball game, he planted that subconsciously in our mind.”

Dustin Fox, a highly regarded high school defensive back at the time, watched the speech on television from his home in Canton. He’d decommitted from Ohio State when Cooper got fired and was now leaning toward signing with Penn State, where his brother Derek had played. “I watched that on TV, and then two minutes later, my phone rings,” Fox, now an ESPN analyst, recalled. “(Tressel) calls me from the arena, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’ He’s like, ‘I need you to be my first Buckeye.’ ‘OK, I’m in.’”

Fox and his future teammates would soon find out just how much Tressel planned to emphasize the Michigan game. Clocks went up around the Woody Hayes Center counting down the days and minutes until kickoff Nov. 24. Film sessions in the team meeting room often began with a random play from the 2000 loss. And practices always included a “Maize and Blue” period — five minutes of something rudimentary like strip tackling, but yet another subconscious reminder of The Game.

“The entire approach that Coach Tressel brought to living out that rivalry was having it on your brain — even the back of your brain — at some point or another, all year long,” linebacker Matt Wilhelm said. “Not just the week when it becomes Michigan week.”

Like most on the roster, Wilhelm, a third-year sophomore, signed with Ohio State expecting to compete for Big Ten and national titles. But so far he and classmates like Krenzel had only experienced a 6-6 season in 1999 with no bowl berth and an 8-4 season in 2000 that ended in a blowout bowl loss to South Carolina.

The 2001 team, adjusting to a new coaching staff amid a season disrupted by the Sept. 11 tragedy, was itself just 6-4 heading into Michigan week. The Buckeyes began the year ranked 24th but fell out of the polls after a 13-6 loss at UCLA in their second game. They briefly returned to the Top 25 after a 38-20 win over No. 14 Northwestern in early October, only to cough up a 17-0 lead and lose 20-17 the next week at Wisconsin. They also blew a 27-9 lead to lose 29-27 at Penn State.

But what the Buckeyes didn’t realize was that they’d started to figure out the formula for TresselBall. Their offense wasn’t flashy, but Wells, a backup for most of his first three seasons, had broken out for more than 1,128 yards through 10 games. A young defense led by future All-Pro safety Mike Doss was giving up yards but forcing turnovers (2.4 per game). And punter Andy Groom was among the best in the country.

“We had a feeling that we were a better team than what our record showed,” said Krenzel, a backup for the first 10 games that season.

Michigan, meanwhile, had won at least a share of three of the past four Big Ten championships and would go into Ohio State week in line for another. Its only losses had come on the road at reigning Rose Bowl champion Washington in Week 2 and on a controversial walk-off touchdown by Michigan State when it appeared the clock should have run out first. Most importantly, the Wolverines had handed a surprise Illinois team its only loss and thus held the tiebreaker for a BCS bowl berth.

Sophomore quarterback John Navarre — who’d become the starter a year earlier than expected when two-sport star Drew Henson signed a $17 million contract with the New York Yankees — had been up and down throwing 15 touchdowns and eight interceptions. But senior receiver Marquise Walker was on his way to AP second team, All-American honors, and the Wolverines defense, led by future 13-year NFL linebacker Foote, ranked in the top 10 nationally against the run.

“We had a really good defense that year,” senior linebacker Eric Brackins said. “Most of us were all returning starters from the year before.”

That defense would be going up against an Ohio State offense suddenly beset by controversy. Quarterback Steve Bellisari, a three-year starter and team captain, was arrested on charges of drunken driving the day before the Buckeyes’ penultimate regular-season game against 8-1 Illinois. Tressel suspended him for the game and started sophomore Scott McMullen, who completed just four of 13 passes before Tressel pulled him in the second quarter. The third-year sophomore briefly put Ohio State on top, but pinned at his own 2-yard line with 5:23 left, he threw a dagger pick six to lose 34-22.

The next day, Tressel summoned his seniors to the team meeting room to seek their advice on how to handle the quarterback situation against Michigan. Their response: Bellisari should be allowed to travel to the game and be on the sideline, but, “We don’t think Steve should have the privilege to play,” recalled Tressel. “They had ownership in the decision, they knew the consequences, that we’d be playing with a less experienced quarterback.”

So Tressel named Krenzel the starter, news that was well received in Ann Arbor, where the Wolverines were also still smarting about Tressel’s January speech. Many viewed it as a guaranteed victory.

“We were talking about it the whole year, we couldn’t wait,” Foote said. “We had it in our mind we were gonna show this new coach. … But in that game, you know, if he came out there and said all ‘Kumbaya,’ we were still going to want to kill him.”

Nearly every newspaper story about the game that week focused on the “third-string” quarterback from Michigan who’d be making his first career start at the Big House. Krenzel, the future national championship quarterback and a fifth-round draft pick, says he didn’t realize it at the time but would have found the storyline amusing.

“I was ready to play. I was confident,” he said. “I had sat there and waited 2 1/2 years for that opportunity. If someone told me that you’re the reason Ohio State doesn’t have a chance to win, I would have laughed at him.”

After 310 days of elaborate motivational tactics, Tressel’s plan for the game itself was fairly unsophisticated. Ride Wells on offense, limit the number of times Krenzel would have to throw and keep things as simple as possible on defense.

“Tress walked in that whole week to the defensive room, three times a day, and would say, ‘Did I tell you guys I really like Field Cover 8?’” Snyder said. “Just basic one-on-one football.”

Tressel wanted guys flying around and playing fast on defense, and from the earliest moments, that’s exactly what they did. On third-and-9 on Michigan’s first series, Doss raced in to intercept a deflected Navarre pass, returning it 35 yards to the Wolverines’ 4-yard line. Wells scored from one yard out to go up 7-0. A sack by future New Orleans Saints star Will Smith ended Michigan’s next series. And on a third-and-10 from the Ohio State 49 later in the quarter, Wilhelm delivered a crushing hit on Walker that elicited a collective groan throughout the Big House.

“That’s a hit,” ABC announcer Terry Gannon said, “that’s indicative of this rivalry.”

Wilhelm said when he saw Michigan’s formation, he recognized the route concept from film study and knew exactly where the ball was headed.

“Between my four years at Ohio State and my eight years in the NFL, there are only about five, 10 times where exactly what you see on film actually happens in the game,” he said. “I had an opportunity as a linebacker to blast the receiver and really send a message that we’re here, that we’re prepared and we’re not going to get walked over.”

After that stop, Michigan punter Hayden Epstein pinned Ohio State at its 15. Wells broke a 20-yard run on the first play, and as the second quarter began, the Buckeyes kept driving all the way to the Michigan 46, where they faced the fourth-and-1 from that letter.

The call, coincidentally, was 46 Power, a “student body right” play, with Wells lined up behind fullback Jamar Martin in the I-formation. Michigan put nine defenders in the box, seemingly expecting an inside run. Instead, left guard Alex Stepanovich pulled right and blocked two defenders, while Martin kicked out and crashed an oncoming Foote.

In the same game two years earlier, Wells had broken a run for 76 yards but got caught at the 6-yard line. Ohio State, up 17-10 at the time, missed a short field goal, and Michigan rallied to win 24-17.

This time, Wells took the handoff, hit the hole, burst past strong safety and future Pro Bowl selection Cato June and raced 46 yards untouched into the end zone. “All the stars aligned. It parted like the Red Sea, and once I saw that crease it was over,” Wells said. “I had waited for that opportunity for two years. This time I wasn’t getting caught.”

Twenty years later, Wells’ long touchdown is the one play from that game that everyone interviewed for this story still vividly remembers — on both sides.

“I should have tackled him in the backfield,” Brackins said. “I shot a gap and I missed him because I took the wrong angle.”

“That was my fault,” Foote said. “I was supposed to send the ball to our free hitter, which was Cato June, and I didn’t do it. I still blame Cato, because he should have had the speed to catch him.

Ohio State, a nine-point underdog, now led 14-0 on a scoreboard where it had not finished on top in 14 years.

For a guy making his first start, Krenzel looked surprisingly comfortable. Flushed all the way to his right on a third-and-9 in the second quarter, he completed a throw 25 yards on the run down the sideline to leaping tight end Darnell Sanders. He converted another third down by rolling to his right, turning back and throwing a screen pass to Martin on the left flat.

Conversely, Navarre, making his 15th career start, was a nightmare. Midway through the second quarter, shortly after a missed Buckeyes field goal, Ohio State defensive end Darrion Scott tipped a Navarre pass at the line, which teammate Tim Anderson picked off at the Michigan 32. Four plays later, Wells ran 11 yards for his third touchdown of the half.

Ohio State 21, Michigan 0.

And then, on the Wolverines’ next series, Kenny Peterson stripped Navarre from behind, recovered by Smith at the Michigan 21 with 1:21 left.

“You could just feel it on the sideline, we were in our mojo,” Snyder said. “I remember even feeling pretty comfortable.”

A Krenzel interception in the end zone gave the Wolverines a temporary reprieve. But at that point, Carr opted to pull Navarre, who’d led the Wolverines to just 72 yards of offense with three turnovers, for redshirt freshman Jermaine Gonzales. On the backup’s second snap, the ball sailed past his head into his own end zone for a safety.

Ohio State 23, Michigan 0.

“You really couldn’t believe it,” Brackins said. “It was just, wow, is this happening right now? So you go into the locker room, and as a defense, we’re like we can’t let them score any more points. We still believed we could come back, but we knew the task was taller.”

In fact, in its entire history, Michigan had never come back from a 23-0 deficit.

But this time, the Wolverines very nearly did.

In his career, Wells had never carried the ball more than 27 times in a game. At halftime, he’d already run 23 times for 122 yards. But early in the third quarter, after his 25th carry, his entire body started cramping up. He was carried off the field and did not return.

“I’m still disgusted about it,” he said, 20 years later. “I know I could have put my name in the record books that day, but for whatever reason, my body wouldn’t allow me to do it. It was going to be something special because they had no one who could tackle me. I was out to punish that day.

“I truly feel if I’m in that game, we blow them out of the water.”

Instead, he spent most of the third quarter in the locker room hooked up to an IV, watching on TV as Michigan began chipping away at the Buckeyes’ lead. Navarre came back in to start the second half and led the Wolverines on a 65-yard touchdown drive, sparked by a 30-yard Chris Perry run and capped with a 21-yard touchdown pass to Walker, who would finish the game with a school-record 15 catches for 160 yards.

But it was a rare drop by Walker late in the third quarter that Carr would later call the “major turning point” of the game. On third-and-7 from the Ohio State 10, Walker blew past Buckeyes cornerback Derek Ross on a quick slant to the end zone. Navarre put it right on his number, but it fell through his hands. And then Epstein, an All-Big Ten kicker, hooked a 27-yard field goal right.

“That was an opportunity to get back in the game,” Carr said afterward. “When you put yourself in that position (down 23-0), you can’t make any mistakes.”

Meanwhile, Tressel’s offense had gone even more conservative than usual in the second half. In addition to the loss of Wells, right tackle Shane Olivea had suffered a broken ankle in the second quarter, and Wells’ backup, Lydell Ross, couldn’t get anything going. Yet Krenzel threw just eight passes, and the Buckeyes gained just one first down after halftime. But Groom, who punted a career-high 10 times, kept flipping the field, most notably with a massive 66-yard punt from his own 15 in the third quarter.

“You guys used to tease me about (saying) the punt is the most important play in football — and it is,” Tressel said. “It can devastate all the good work you’ve done, or it can devastate your opponent if you return a punt or block a punt.”

With 10 minutes left in the game, the wrong kind of devastation struck. Michigan’s Anthony Gordon blocked a Groom punt that teammate Roy Manning recovered at the Ohio State 9, setting up a quick touchdown drive to cut the score to 23-13 (the Wolverines’ two-point conversion failed).

“They’re back in it!” Gannon said on the broadcast.

But Navarre’s mishaps continued. Doss stepped in front of an overthrown pass to Walker on the sideline and returned his second interception of the day 36 yards to the Michigan 9. A 36-yard Mike Nugent field goal made it 26-13 with 5:58 left.

“Michigan being Michigan, they were a good football team,” Snyder said. “They stuck to their game plan, and here they came, man.”

With 2:26 left, Navarre patiently waited for Walker to break free from safety Donnie Nickey, hitting him for an 11-yard touchdown to get within one score, 26-20.

“Just try to hang on, baby,” Fox remembers thinking. “Michigan’s comeback, it scared us a little bit. We lost a lot of close games that year.”

Ohio State recovered Michigan’s subsequent onside kick. Yet again, the game seemed over. But first, Groom would have to come through with one more clutch punt, pinning the Wolverines at their own 20 with 9 seconds left.

Navarre heaved a Hail Mary that traveled more than 60 yards in the air. Fox, the freshman backup who’d become Tressel’s first Buckeye, came down with the interception to seal the Buckeyes’ first win in Ann Arbor since 1987.

“Most people were like, just knock it down,” recalled Fox. “No! I’m going to have my first (career) interception against Michigan to win the game.”

Navarre finished the day 21-of-47 for 206 yards and five turnovers. Foote said he gave him a big hug after the game. “We should have helped John Navarre out more than we did. Even with the turnovers, we should have made them kick field goals as opposed to touchdowns.”

After Ohio State’s coaches and players shook hands with Michigan’s, they raced over to the sizable contingent of visiting scarlet and gray fans to sing the alma mater. Many could also be heard expressing other thoughts.

“They were disrespecting us at an all-time high then,” Wells said. “That’s why you could hear me (on the field) shouting, ‘It’s a rivalry now!’”

Ohio State finished the 2001 season a modest 7-5, but the Michigan win planted the seeds for its stunning 14-0 national championship season the next year.

With Doss, a two-time All-American, opting to return for his senior year, he, Darrion Scott, Will Anderson, Kenny Peterson, Cie Grant, Donnie Nickey and Dustin Fox all became cornerstones of the 2002 defense. Meanwhile, Walker’s dominance that day prompted Ohio State’s coaches to try an offseason experiment and turn receiver Chris Gamble into a two-way player. He would earn All-American honors as a cornerback and go on to start nine seasons with the Carolina Panthers.

Krenzel became the unquestioned starting quarterback, and though Wells had graduated, freshman Maurice Clarett emerged as the star running back. Groom and Nugent became All-Americans.

That 2002 team, mockingly referred to for much of the season as the “Luckeyes,” won five games by six points or less and two others in overtime, most notably their double-overtime upset of No. 1 Miami in the BCS championship game in Tempe, Ariz.

“I think we sent a message by going into the Big House and winning that game, and playing a specific brand of football that was tried and true,” Wilhelm said. “We were going to control the football on offense and use the play action, and on defense, we were going to limit what you do best on offense and force you guys to beat us — and nobody really did that (in 2002).”

But 20 years later, the bigger-picture legacy of that 2001 game was its profound effect on the rivalry.

“It’s kind of like they flipped the switch,” Foote said. “What we were doing to them in the ’90s, they did to us starting the (next) decade.”

The second-ranked Buckeyes beat ninth-ranked Michigan the next year in a 14-9 nailbiter in Columbus to clinch their trip to the Fiesta Bowl. That game ended on another last-second Navarre interception, only this one came within 3 yards of the end zone. The oft-maligned Michigan quarterback finally got his revenge over Krenzel and the Buckeyes as a senior, beating Ohio State 35-21 to send his team to the Rose Bowl.

But now it was Ohio State that would pull the surprising upsets — like in 2004, when another 6-4 Buckeyes team played spoiler against a 9-1 Michigan team already headed back to Pasadena.

“I didn’t feel as if we had really gotten to the point where it was an even-steven thing until after we beat them in ’04,” Tressel said.

There have been 19 meetings between the rivals since the 2001 game. (Last year’s game was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic). Michigan has won just twice, in 2003 and then in 2011, against a 6-7 Ohio State team playing under interim coach Luke Fickell after Tressel’s shocking resignation over the infamous TattooGate scandal.

Asked whether he could ever have imagined in 2001 that Michigan would win just twice in the next two decades, Krenzel replied with a laugh: “I’m pissed off that I was on one of those teams.”

The rivals were fairly evenly matched through the end of Carr’s tenure in 2007, most notably playing the famous No. 1 vs. No. 2 game in 2006, which Ohio State won 42-39. “And then, quite honestly, since 2008, I don’t know that we can say that Michigan has been in the same talent pool as Ohio State has,” Tressel said.

Not to mention the Buckeyes, first under Urban Meyer and now Ryan Day, have become the program turning out NFL QBs, most recently first-rounders Dwayne Haskins and Justin Fields, like Michigan did when it had the upper hand in the rivalry.

“Ohio State has always been leaps and bounds more talented than us, just because of the talent pool in Ohio, but we had NFL quarterbacks, so that neutralized everything,” Foote said. “So if I had to figure out like, what’s going on, we’ve got to get some Sunday quarterbacks playing there.”

The Buckeyes’ stars on offense that day in November 2001 went on to have modest professional careers. Krenzel was a fifth-round pick by the Chicago Bears; he started five games as a rookie in 2004 and played four seasons with the Houston Texans. Krenzel, Doss and the others who returned in 2002 are forever etched in Buckeyes lore for the national championship run. But Wells and the other few senior starters from the 2001 game have been largely overshadowed.

“The 2001 team should be saluted,” Wells said. “We’re the team that got up there (to Ann Arbor) and got it done, and we’ve never looked back since.”

Forty players from the 2001 Ohio State-Michigan game went on to become NFL draft picks — 27 from Ohio State, 13 from Michigan. Ohio State’s Mike Doss and Michigan’s Cato June were teammates together for the Indianapolis Colts’ Super Bowl XLI championship team. Mike Nugent, a freshman kicker that year for the Buckeyes, is listed on the Arizona Cardinals roster for what will be his 17th NFL season.

Ohio State assistants Mark Dantonio (Michigan State), Mel Tucker (Colorado and Michigan State) and Mark Snyder (Marshall), and Michigan assistants Brady Hoke (Ball State, Michigan and San Diego State) and Stan Parrish (previously Kansas State, later Ball State) became head coaches. Numerous players from that game are now in coaching, including Michigan’s Larry Foote (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Roy Manning (Oklahoma) and June (Bowling Green).

Ohio State’s Will Smith, who had two sacks and a fumble recovery in the 2001 game, played 10 seasons for the New Orleans Saints. In 2016, he was shot and killed in an altercation stemming from a vehicle collision with another driver in New Orleans.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic)

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