The Battle of Ohio: TWTW's Bengals vs. Browns Preview

Danville, Kentucky -- As of this Sunday, it will have been 364 days since the lowly Cleveland Browns prevailed in a game of football. The 0-12 Browns are on a 15 game losing streak dating back to week 15 of last season. Although the Indians and Cavaliers have improbably brought a winning mentality back to that city on the burning river, the Browns remain hapless. To those loyal fans faithfully rooting for the Browns during this winter of discontent, the mere thought of a Cleveland Browns victory seems as distant as the warmth of spring, the touch of sunlight in May, or the scent of freshly-bloomed flowers in the Hocking Hills forest.

The Browns have had their share of close, nail-biter losses this season. Four of their losses have been by less than a touchdown: a 28-26 loss to the Tennessee Titans and a 31-28 loss to the New York Jets stand out as particularly heart-breaking. Yet, telling a Browns fan that his team has been just a few lucky breaks away from a win or two this season is cold comfort; like offering a pair of hole-ridden mittens to a man about to plunge into the chilly depths of frozen Lake Erie.

But small flickering embers of hope can be found even amidst the deepest, darkest winter. The beauty of football is that on any given Sunday, no matter how unthinkable or improbable, any team can win if its players are willing to dig deep enough and put their bodies on the line for their city. This weekend the Browns of Northeast Ohio will square off against their rivals from the South: the Cincinnati Bengals.

Neither team is very scary. I'd bet my big green John Deere tractor that Ohio State's football team could beat both the Bengals and the Browns handily. Ohio State would probably beat the Browns 42-15. Ohio State's margin of victory against Cincinnati would be narrower, perhaps requiring over-time and some crooked officiators like Ohio State's win against the University of Michigan.

Cincinnati has a few more victories than Cleveland, but football fandom is only marginally less depressing down south. The Bengals are having a disappointing season of their own. They are the owners of a 4-7-1 record thanks to the NFL's unwillingness to take a stand against European nonsense like "ties." The Bengals have their own dubious streak, as they have not won back-to-back games in more than a year. On Sunday, these mostly inept teams will battle for dominance over the great state of Ohio.

Many pundits, including yours truly, have written that the 2016 election was decided by the Forgotten Man. According to this narrative Donald J. Trump won because he improbably inspired millions of weary, downtrodden, ignored folks across this country to cast their vote in favor of change. If the 2016 election was about the Forgotten Man, then Sunday's Bengals vs. Browns match-up is primarily a football game about the Forgotten Rivalry. All the biased national media ever wants to talk about is the Dallas Cowboys and whoever they are playing that week, but wise football fans know the intensity of the Battle of Ohio, a tradition that dates back to the Nixon Administration.

You won't hear Skip Bayless or the talking heads at ESPN discuss the Forgotten Rivalry much. But the passion is real, as is the cultural divide between urban Cleveland and "practically-in-Kentucky" Cincinnati. The Bengals have more talent, but the winless Browns are hankering for a W like I hanker for spaghetti lovingly topped with magisterial cinnamon-chili sauce.

These teams are more evenly matched than they look. I predict a narrow Bengals victory over the win-starved Browns. Cleveland's athletic quarterback-turned-wide-receiver (and former Ohio State Buckeye) Terrelle Pryor will continue to impress, burning the Bengals defense. The Browns will have the element of surprise on their side, as they keep the Bengals off-guard by liberally rotating their four different quarterbacks in and out of the game. However, when push comes to shove the red-headed menace Andy Dalton will lead Cincinnati to victory. The pale-skinned ginger is at his best when the sun is obscured by grey wintry clouds and flurries of snow.

The Browns will play better than you'd expect a winless team to play, but will ultimately fall to 0-13 and inch another game closer towards solidifying their place in the NFL history books alongside the 0-16 2008 Detroit Lions. The bitter winter of Cleveland's discontent may end someday, but not this Sunday.

Harbaugh vs. Urban Meyer Part II: Head-to-Head Wins Matter

Danville, Kentucky -- Once upon a time, when a man beat a man, he beat a man. Achieving victory --- whether it took place in the bowling alley, the ballot box, the football field, or the baseball diamond --- used to designate the superiority of one competitor over the other.

Once upon a time, I used to regularly whoop my brother-in-law at golf. I'm not much of a golfer; I've never been the type to hang around country clubs or obsess over the PGA championship. Yet, when I would play golf with my accursed brother-in-law as a gesture of goodwill towards my sister, my golf skills felt transcendent. Maybe it was the burning resentment; maybe it was my boiling blood; maybe it was the Fireball I'd pregame with. My putts were immaculate and I would drive the ball across the field with majestic precision. The defeats were so humiliating for my poor brother-in-law that he became too embarrassed to show his face around the greens. With each consecutive loss that I handed him, my dominance over him became clearer and clearer. 

These days, winning is not considered winning. Though Donald Trump prevailed over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, Clinton's supporters refuse to concede and instead demand that the election be audited. NCAA football rankings are similarly indecisive, failing to reward victories and punish defeats. If only the NCAA football rankings appreciated the unambiguous glory of a head-to-head win. College football is broken. Most polls and rankings are too reliant on murky metrics like "strength of schedule" and "quality wins and losses," downplaying the importance of mano-e-mano triumphs over rivals.

Luckily there is one game this rivalry weekend where winning the head-to-head match-up will mean something. That game is perhaps the greatest rivalry of all: Michigan vs. Ohio State, the second confrontation between Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer. Folks, there is so much on the line. Harbaugh is fighting to prove Michigan's renaissance is real, and that his Wolverines can hang with the big boys. The milk-drinking, steak-eating Harbaugh is a throwback to the classy days of Bo Schembechler. Urban Meyer is a throwback to mercenaries like King George III's Hessian hired guns. The stakes could not be higher.

The Wolverines-Buckeyes showdown will not only be fought for vengeance over the Toledo Border War of 1935: it will determine the competitors in the Big 10 title game. If Ohio State beats Michigan and Pennsylvania State beats Michigan State, OSU and Penn State will vie for Big 10 supremacy and a playoff berth.

Yet, if Michigan beats Ohio State, there is no guarantee Pennsylvania State will get to vie for the Big 10 title and a playoff spot, in spite of Penn State's stunning 24-21 victory over the #2 ranked Buckeyes earlier this year. Folks, that's a grotesque miscarriage of justice. Does Penn State's head-to-head victory over the Buckeyes mean nothing?

Unfortunately, this injustice is all too common in college football. Look at the travesty that befell the Baylor Bears in 2014: in their head-to-head regular season match-up, Baylor beat TCU 61-58. And what a victory it was, folks. Baylor was down 21 with 9:30 left. Baylor, through sheer force of will, scored 24 points in those last 9 minutes and thirty seconds to pull a stunning victory from the jaws of defeat. Both Baylor and TCU finished 11-1. TCU's only loss was to Baylor. Some nerds said TCU should be ranked higher than Baylor despite losing the head-to-head match-up. These folks could not be more wrong. 

Look, nerds. I have no horse in this race, even though I'm from Kentucky, where people race horses a lot. I don't have a college degree and thus have no strong affiliations to any particular college team. I just want to see the right champion crowned. Advanced stats don't crown our champions. Winning does. In any sport, it is exceedingly rare that the consensus best team becomes the eventual champion. Winning is the only metric we care about: that's why we have a playoff instead of declaring the team with the best adjusted efficiency margin the winner beforehand.

A few pieces of advice for all college football rankers, voters, and pollsters: stop sleeping on Western Michigan, an undefeated team with a compelling case to be the #2 team behind Alabama. 

the one true #1 seed is on ESPN 2 right now. Liberal media sleeping on undefeated #WesternMichigan like they slept on '13-'14 Shocker bball. pic.twitter.com/BFRVVKQlbE

— The Will To Win (@TWTWsports) November 25, 2016

Here's some more advice: if two teams are directly vying for a playoff spot, the head-to-head win should be the tiebreaker, not some nebulous and arbitrary standard like "strength of schedule." It's time to go back to that "once upon a time" where winning mano-e-mano meant something. It's time to make wins matter again.