OSU Football: Rivalry still burns even if its Maize and Who?

Who are these guys in the maize and blue uniforms?

And that is not a slam, not a case of kicking someone when they're down.

That is the amazed realization of someone who has paid attention to the Ohio State-Michigan game for a long time that for the first time in forever there is no marquee player on the Wolverines' roster.

Even the casual Ohio State fan always knew the names of at least a few Michigan players coming into this game.

There were Mike Hart, Chad Henne and Mario Manningham the last few years. Braylon Edwards only needed "Braylon" to be recognized. Before that there were names like Charles Woodson, Tyrone Wheatley and Desmond Howard.

Anthony Carter, Thom Darden and Jim Harbaugh were big names while they were still in college.

Brian Griese had a famous family name. Tom Brady's greatest notoriety came later, but it's not like he was an unknown while he was at Michigan.

And this year, you have ...

Well, you have names like Steven Threet, Nick Sheridan, Brandon Minor, Sam McGuffie, Michael Shaw, Carlos Brown and Martavious Odoms.

Michigan, which hasn't had a losing record since 1967 and last stayed home during bowl season in 1974, is 3-8 going into Saturday's OSU-Michigan game.

No Michigan football team ever lost more than seven games until this season. But the Wolverines played only nine games in 1962, so we'll never know how many that team might have lost with a 12-game schedule.

The last time either Ohio State or Michigan came into this regular season-ending classic with as few as three wins was in 1963, when the Wolverines finished 3-4-2.

So, will Michigan's struggles in coach Rich Rodriguez's first season subtract any passion, intensity or fan frenzy from this rivalry game?

Common sense says this year can't ever match a game like 2006, when OSU was No. 1 and Michigan was No. 2. It can't match 2003, when both were ranked in the top five, or the seven times in the 1970s both were in the top 10.

If it does lack the sizzle of those matchups, it won't be for lack of trying by Ohio State coach Jim Tressel and his players.

Linebacker James Laurinaitis became the first to repeat the old line that you can throw out the records in this game about 15 minutes after the Buckeyes beat Illinois 30-20 on Saturday when he said, "It doesn't matter what the records are."

A few minutes earlier Tressel said, "What's important about next week is that it's the Ohio State-Michigan game. BCS stuff and bowl stuff and Big Ten stuff is really second compared to the Ohio State-Michigan game. Usually at the end of that game you find out what you've earned for the season."

Wide receiver Brian Hartline said, "Right away as soon as we got back in the locker room there was no BCS talk, there was no Big Ten championship talk, it was all Ohio State and Michigan. As soon as we came off that field that was what we talked about."

OK, but what makes this game really important for Ohio State is that all those other things are tied to the result of Saturday's game.

Not to mention the embarrassment that losing to the worst Michigan team in decades after already coming up short of expectations this season would bring to the Buckeyes.

The payoff for Michigan if it would beat Ohio State is obvious. It would make a bad season look not nearly so bad.

After a 21-14 loss to Northwestern on Saturday, Rodriguez said that outcome "won't salvage the whole season but it will certainly make you feel a little bit better."

Mix all that with the tradition in this rivalry and it should be a good game. But it will have to produce something unexpected to reach the level of a classic.