Matt Hayes

Time again to prepare you for another weekend in college football.

1. The Game
Remember way back, when there was this nice, buttoned-down gentleman with the sparkling NCAA lower division record walking onto the basketball court at Ohio State to address rabid fans.

It took all of one sentence for Jim Tressel to ease the pain of The Game in the minds of the Ohio State faithful.

"I can assure you," Tressel said that day in 2001, "that you will be proud of your young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially, in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan."

Fast forward to 2008, when Rich Rodriguez was hired at Michigan, and his initial response to The Game was — and I'm paraphrasing — like all games, it's one you want to win.

Now, leading up to what Ohio State fans like to call "2,1xx (fill in the last two digits, people) days since Michigan beat Ohio State," Rodriguez was again asked about his perceived attitude toward The Game. He said he understands the significance of the rivalry, and that his perceived attitude by others toward The Game will, "pass in time, I'm sure. I'm just hoping that we can play a good game."

If that doesn't want to make you run through a brick wall, what will?

Make fun of Tressel and Ohio State all you want for their lack of big wins in big games the last three years. But he was hired to beat Michigan and win the Big Ten — and anything after that is gravy. In his nine seasons in Columbus, Tressel's teams have won or shared six Big Ten championships (five in a row) and are 7-1 vs. Michigan.

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Think Michigan, in the middle of one of the worst two-year stretches in school history, would embrace, I don't know, a Motor City Bowl bid right now? Bobby Bowden once said that his tombstone would read, "He played Miami."

On Tressel's tombstone, it'll simply say, "He owned Michigan."

And that won't "pass in time."

That's etched in stone.

2. The Game, part II
So I flip on the television the other day as background noise while doing a jigsaw puzzle with my daughter, and I hear a bobblehead on ESPN talking to an "ESPN reporter" buried in Palo Alto investigating "the fallout of Stanford running up the score on USC."

I almost puked.

It's bad enough that we have to — and I can't believe I'm writing this — feel sorry — for USC and its hiccup of a season. It's worse when the network that televises more college football than any other panders to the Trojans like they're an innocent altar boy in a land of heathens.

Just to recap, everyone:

• Aug. 30, 2008: Leading 45-7, USC throws a touchdown pass on Virginia with 2:33 to play.
• Sept. 13, 2008: Leading 28-3, USC throws a touchdown pass on Ohio State with 1:33 to play.
• Oct. 4, 2008: Leading 37-10, USC throws a touchdown pass on Oregon with 1:50 to play.
• Oct. 18, 2008: Leading 62-0, USC scores a rushing touchdown against Washington State with 2:16 to play.
• Sept. 5, 2009: Leading 49-3, USC throws a touchdown pass on San Jose State with 4:13 to play.

We can go back over the rest of the decade if you'd like, but it's fairly clear who has been running up the score on whom.

So my question to Pete Carroll now is, "What's your deal, man?"

Oh yeah, Stanford vs. Cal, The Game. Classic letdown game: Stanford won't have a chance to run it up.

Maybe ESPN can investigate that, too.