Ohio State moves football senior day to Week 1, away from Michigan rivalry game

It’s a tradition for most college football teams to honor seniors with senior day ceremonies around the last home game of the regular season. That won’t be the case for Ohio State when it hosts rival Michigan in its season-ending rivalry game Nov. 28.

Ohio State announced Friday that it is moving senior day to Week 1, when it hosts Ball State in its Sept. 5 opener. Instead of honoring seniors before their final game in Ohio Stadium, the program will do it to start their final season — on the same day former coach Jim Tressel, the current lieutenant governor of Ohio who led the Buckeyes to the 2002 national title, will be enshrined in the team’s ring of honor.

Senior day isn’t the first tradition Ohio State has moved away from Rivalry Week. Last year, after four consecutive losses to the Wolverines, Ohio State coach Ryan Day moved the marching band’s annual practice in front of the team to help “normalize” the rivalry game. Ohio State also flew to Ann Arbor instead of taking a bus.

“I know the past four years hasn’t worked,” Day said then. “You’ve got to look at these things and try to figure out how to make them better.”

Ohio State beat Michigan 27-9 in Ann Arbor last November. This year’s matchup will be the first in Columbus since Michigan’s massive upset of the Buckeyes in 2024, after which Ohio State recovered to win the national championship. Ohio State also lost at home to Michigan in 2022.

Day isn’t the only one trying to make the rivalry game feel more normal.

When asked about the rivalry, Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood recently told NBC Sports: “It’s just another game. Just, we’re guys in a different color. That’s how I see it.”

Comments this summer from new Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham, who worked with former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer at Utah, have also drawn scrutiny.

“Based on what Urban has told me about it, I just think that a rivalry can be intense and emotional without the hatred factor,” Whittingham said at Big Ten media days. “I don’t think there’s any place for that, personally.”

Whittingham added that Meyer is welcome at Michigan practice anytime except during Ohio State week.

“I’m not trying to downplay (the rivalry) at all,” Whittingham said this week. “It’s a huge game. Gigantic. It’s something that we all have in the back of our mind 24/7. I probably should have worded it differently, but that game is of the utmost importance.”

Ohio State isn’t the first team to hold senior day ceremonies earlier in the season, but it feels like an obvious effort to take pressure off the Michigan game and make it feel more routine. But one thing about the Ohio State-Michigan game will continue to be true: The Athletic’s No. 1 college football rivalry is anything but normal, no matter what anybody tries to do.

What other college football rivalry dominates the news cycle in August?