11. two weeks.

From now through Nov. 28, one state will occupy an inordinate amount of my time and energy.

One week from today, Ohio State plays its final home game of the season against Michigan State. In recent years, the game against Sparty has been the biggest one on the conference schedule, at least in a practical sense; there are teams I want to beat more every year — hello, Penn State — but this one has become the game of year. Besides being good, there are some losses to State bad enough — and recent enough (B1G title game two years ago, and the 1998 Reason Why I Hate Nick Saban Game) — that this one will always have my attention.

Plus, it’s fun to see we can make Mark Dantonio look even grumpier than usual.

The annual game against that other school from that state — The One Up North — has lost some luster recently, because TTUN has been, well, bad. It turned down the intensity of the rivalry a bit and, worse, it damaged the reputation of the conference, because one of it’s marquee schools wasn’t playing up to standard.

I want cake now!

And then this guy came back. And he has his team playing … better.

Why do I hate Jim Harbaugh? It goes back to this, a thing that even colored my opinion of him when he coached my 49ers:

I’ll tell you more about what I think about Jim Harbaugh and that team he coaches when the time comes. Until then, let’s all be sure we remember this:

That’s where the bar has been set, boys and girls. And that’s a thing for the schools in Michigan to keep in mind.