In the Great Lakes State, there is only one rivalry that matters: Spartans vs. Wolverines. While this heated rivalry literally spans three centuries and all sports, the most visible way that these two great universities measure themselves is on the gridiron every fall, where they compete for the Paul Bunyan trophy.
As usual, Michigan alums and fans love to talk about this rivalry. One of the first things that they will mention how they don’t really consider it a rivalry at all. That’s weird, because, they sure love to give their opinion about MSU, pretty much all the time. I imagine that they talk a lot more about their other non-rivals, such as Western Michigan, Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin, etc. when I am not around. Yeah, that must be it. They probably also talk about how they didn’t have a crush on that girl in the second grade whose pigtails they used to pull. Sure.
When the topic of the MSU-UofM football rivalry does come up, your average UofM fan is certain to point out several “facts.” First, they will probably mention the overall record in the rivalry, which (as they can recite from memory) UofM leads by a tally of 71-36-5. They will probably also mention their 11 total claimed National Titles and maybe something about the all-time number of wins.
On its face, that sounds amazing, unless you dig a little deeper.
Regarding the overall rivalry record, while the numbers don’t lie, they also don’t tell the whole story. Prior to 1950, MSU wasn’t a member of the Big Ten. In fact, MSU wasn’t even “MSU.” Prior to 1955, MSU’s official name was Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science and before that it was Michigan Agricultural College.
For this reason, MSU’s admittance into the Big Ten in 1950 marks a clear change in the history of MSU, as a well as a clear change in the dynamics of the rivalry. Prior to 1950, Michigan’s record against M.S.C./M.A.C. was 33-6-3 with all but five of those games taking place in Ann Arbor. If you need any other proof of the pointlessness of worrying about games played before 1950, I present to you the University of Michigan football team photo from 1949:
Michigan’s coach at the time was Bernie Oosterbaan and not as I originally thought from the photo, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I rest my case.
Since 1950, the record in the rivalry currently stands at a very competitive 38-30-2. Just as a point of reference, in the same time span, Michigan’s record against Ohio State is only 28-40-2. That’s right, MSU has two more wins over Michigan since 1950 than UofM has over Ohio State. So, if MSU isn’t Michigan’s real rival, I suppose Michigan can’t be Ohio State’s real rival, either.
As for National Titles, once again, ten of UofM’s eleven claimed titles happened before 1950, and Michigan can only claim one (in 1997) since. For comparison, since MSU joined the Big Ten, the Spartans claim a total of six National Titles (in 1951, ‘52, ‘55, ‘57, ‘65, and ‘66). That is a ratio that even makes Scott Bell’s Twitter account blush.
Does MSU only Beat “Bad” UofM Teams?
Now, if the above facts don’t dissuade your typical Michigan Man, they might revert to perhaps my favorite #WolverineExcuse of all time, “MSU only beats ‘bad’ UofM teams.” It is this statement that has always intrigued me and one that we can use a little data analysis to clarify.
In order to test this “theory,” I decided to plot the win percentage of each team historically against each other, starting in 1950. Furthermore, since the winner of the MSU-UofM game has an automatic advantage of having won that game, I subtracted this game out of the calculation. Figure 1 below shows this result, with the data points labeled with the year and color-coded to indicate the winner of each game (green or blue).
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| Figure 1: Comparison of the season winning percentage of MSU and UofM, not counting the result of the MSU/UofM game, with an emphasis on the team with the better record |
For this first plot, I set a dividing line on the diagonal. The area to the right and bottom represent those years when MSU had an equal or better record than UofM. As you can see, this area is almost completely green. Basically, in the years when MSU had an equal or better win percentage (outside of the rivalry game itself) MSU wins at an 86 percent clip. In this region, UofM’s only wins came in 1955, 1975, and 2012. Only UofM’s win in 1955 would have been considered an upset, in retrospect.
The opposite corner of the figure (to the left and top) is certainly more blue. But, it is less blue than the opposite corner is green. Quantitatively, Michigan is 35-12 (74 percent) in years when their non-rivalry winning percentage is better than MSU’s. In years when MSU record is only 20 percentage point worse than UofM (the area between the solid and dotted line) Michigan wins only about 65 percent of the time.
In order for UofM to dominate the rivalry to an extent even close to that enjoyed by MSU in the lower right hand portion of the graph, Michigan needs to have a non-rivalry record at least 20 percentage points better than MSU (the area above and to the left of the dotted line). Even then, the Wolverine’s win percentage (81 percent) is not as good as MSU’s record in the cases where MSU simply has an equal or better non-rivalry win percentage. Basically, Michigan needs a little boost in order to be competitive, sort of like a stool to help them reach the top shelf at the grocery store.
While certainly enlightening, Figure 1 does not necessarily answer the core question, which is whether MSU only beats “bad” UofM teams. This question is perhaps best answered by looking at the same data set, but partitioning it differently, in this case, based just on the raw win percentage (vertical and horizontal lines). This visualization is shown in Figure 2.
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| Figure 2: Comparison of the season winning percentage of MSU and UofM, not counting the result of the MSU/UofM game, with an emphasis on the raw win percentages |
This figure allows us to see more easily how each team does when they are having a “good season.” That begs the question as to what qualifies as “good?” For this purpose, I selected a non-rivalry percentage of 73 percent. (One could easily select any winning percentage over maybe 60 percent, but the message is essentially the same).
If it were true that MSU only beat “bad” UofM teams, the vast majority of the data points above the horizontal line would be blue. While the majority of them are, a full 31 percent of them are green, as UofM’s record in this region is only 22-10. A full third of MSU’s wins over Michigan since 1950 came against “good” Michigan squads.
It is informative to look at the portion of the graph to the right of vertical line. As is plainly obvious, this section is almost entirely green, as MSU has a 16-1 record (94 percent) against the Wolverines in the years when MSU has been “good.” Huh, that’s weird, it seems like it is actually Michigan that only seems to beat “bad” MSU teams. It should also be noted that the upper right hand corner of the plot, where both MSU and UofM are “good” is also almost completely green as well. MSU is 6-1 (86 percent) in those years.
What is also interesting to note is the bottom half of the graph, which represents the years where UofM was “bad.” There are very few blue dots below the 60 percent line and none below the 50 percent line. In fact, we we dig deeper into the history books we find that no UofM team with a win percentage under 54 percent (corrected for the rivalry) has beaten MSU since 1928. In this regard, I will give Michigan fans partial credit. It does appear to be true that MSU always beats bad UofM teams. It is just isn’t true that MSU only beats bad UofM teams.
So, what does this tell us? In looking at both Figure 1 and 2, several things are clear. MSU has a significant number of wins over Michigan in all part of the graph. Good MSU teams almost always (94 percent of the time) beat Michigan and even “bad” MSU teams still beat Michigan about 28 percent of the time (14-37).
But, when it comes to Michigan, the story is quite different. All but one of Michigan’s victories over MSU since 1950 are located in the upper left part of the graph. In other words, in order to beat MSU, the Wolverines have to be pretty good (win over 54 percent of their other games) and MSU has to not be good (win less than 73 percent of their other games). Even with these extremely favorable constraints, Michigan’s record against MSU in these years is still only 37-9 (80 percent)
A Brief History of Michigan’s Struggles with Reality
As we look back at the full history of UofM football, this should really come as no surprise. After all, is there any other school in NCAA history whose fans yap so much, yet achieve so little on the gridiron? The history books (and most Michigan fans) will tell you that the Wolverines also hold the current record for the most wins of any Division One team. But, what do they have to show for it?
National Titles?
Only half of one since 1950
Big Ten Titles?
Not since Lloyd Carr was in town
High Profile Wins?
I count only three wins over Ohio State and five Bowl wins this century. Even with the Bobby Williams and John L. Smith years, MSU has the same number of wins over Ohio State and two more Bowl wins. Furthermore, Michigan is a shocking 2-21 (nine percent) on the road against Top 25 teams since 2006. MSU is 6-14 (30 percent).
Going back farther in history, even the “glory days” of Bo were perhaps not that glorious. In fact, let’s compare the first 13 years of Bo’s career at Michigan to Mark Dantonio’s 13-year run at MSU:
Top 25 wins:
- Bo: 20
- Mark: 21
Top 10 wins
- Bo: 9
- Mark: 10
Outright Big Ten titles
- Bo: 2
- Mark: 2
Bowl Record:
- Bo: 2-7
- Mark: 6-6
If I didn’t know any better, I might just suggest that Coach Dantonio had a more successful 13-year run and did it in an era when the conference was stronger and more competitive. (The Big Ten’s miserable Bowl record in the 1970s bears that out.) Speaking of Bowl wins, here’s a fun fact for the water cooler: for the 1970 to 1979 seasons, Purdue and Indiana have more combined Bowl wins (three) than Michigan and Ohio State combined (two... both by OSU.) Ouch!
So, what exactly is Michigan football good at? I present to you, dear reader, the following hypothesis. The one (and only) area where the Michigan Wolverines truly excel is their ability to avoid losses to mediocre and bad teams. The MSU data above hints at this, but the trend seems more general. That is pretty much the only way that they have been able to rack up so many with so little real success, especially recently.
Leaders and Best? How about: “Consistently Above Average.” Michigan football in many ways mirrors the experience of your average University of Michigan alumnus: they are reasonably competent, extremely confident (dare I say... arrogant?), no where near as talented or successful as they think that are, vaguely frustrated about it, and therefore tend to lash out at the neighbors and colleagues for no apparent reason. Perhaps they should all seek some sort of group therapy.
History has shown that for the foreseeable future, Michigan’s trajectory will look like this. They will win seven to 10 games every year, lose the big road games, lose to Ohio State, and then lose their bowl game. If MSU is good, they will lose that game too. But, they are sure going to be proud that they avoided that loss to Army or Indiana in overtime, and they will be sure to bring up MSU’s 2016 3-9 season at odd and inappropriate times. Rinse and repeat.
Like clockwork, every February through August, the Wolverine fan base will get all fired up over recruiting rankings and convince themselves that this will be the year that they will finally breakthrough. (It won’t be). If they repeat it to themselves often enough (much like the idea that MSU only beats bad UofM teams) it eventually sounds like the truth.
At the end of the day, perhaps Michigan’s biggest rival isn’t Michigan State, and perhaps it isn’t even Ohio State. Michigan’s biggest rival is simply Reality, and their record in that match up is the worst of all.
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