Revelli
11-21-2009, 09:52 AM
For those who don't know how this all got started....
The deep and abiding enmity between Ohio and Michigan is certainly nothing new.
When teams from No. 10 Ohio State and Michigan meet on Saturday to play football for the 106th time, it’ll just be the latest skirmish between two states and their residents who have despised each other for almost two centuries.
“We understand how important it is, not only here as a football squad, but the state as a whole, to get that victory against Michigan for the bragging rights for the year,” Ohio State linebacker Austin Spitler said.
The first offsides call took place early in the 19th century.
A disagreement over widely divergent surveys called into question the location of their border. Was Toledo in the new state of Ohio? Or in the territory of Michigan?
Ohio Gov. Robert Lucas, sounding a bit like a certain grumpy football coach, refused to even negotiate the line of scrimmage. In defiance, Lucas named the county in which Toledo was located after himself and appointed a sheriff and a judge.
Michigan’s territorial governor, 22-year-old Stevens T. Mason, was outraged. He assembled a 250-member posse and marched south, initiating what was called the Toledo War.
It really wasn’t much of a war. There was only one casualty, when an Ohioan named Two Stickney stabbed a Michigan sheriff in a tavern brawl.
Eventually, Michigan was forced to concede Toledo was in Ohio, but was pacified by a gift of 9,000 square miles of rich mining and timber land in the Upper Peninsula.
A Michigan government Web site sniffs, “In retrospect, it’s obvious who won the War.”
The two universities first met in football in 1897. They started playing annually in 1918, and since 1935 have renewed acquaintances in the final game of the season.
The deep and abiding enmity between Ohio and Michigan is certainly nothing new.
When teams from No. 10 Ohio State and Michigan meet on Saturday to play football for the 106th time, it’ll just be the latest skirmish between two states and their residents who have despised each other for almost two centuries.
“We understand how important it is, not only here as a football squad, but the state as a whole, to get that victory against Michigan for the bragging rights for the year,” Ohio State linebacker Austin Spitler said.
The first offsides call took place early in the 19th century.
A disagreement over widely divergent surveys called into question the location of their border. Was Toledo in the new state of Ohio? Or in the territory of Michigan?
Ohio Gov. Robert Lucas, sounding a bit like a certain grumpy football coach, refused to even negotiate the line of scrimmage. In defiance, Lucas named the county in which Toledo was located after himself and appointed a sheriff and a judge.
Michigan’s territorial governor, 22-year-old Stevens T. Mason, was outraged. He assembled a 250-member posse and marched south, initiating what was called the Toledo War.
It really wasn’t much of a war. There was only one casualty, when an Ohioan named Two Stickney stabbed a Michigan sheriff in a tavern brawl.
Eventually, Michigan was forced to concede Toledo was in Ohio, but was pacified by a gift of 9,000 square miles of rich mining and timber land in the Upper Peninsula.
A Michigan government Web site sniffs, “In retrospect, it’s obvious who won the War.”
The two universities first met in football in 1897. They started playing annually in 1918, and since 1935 have renewed acquaintances in the final game of the season.