It's hard to overstate the stakes of No. 2 Ohio State's game at No. 3 Michigan on Saturday.
On the field, the game will help determine the potential Big Ten champion and effectively serve as a College Football Playoff elimination game. Off the field, this 119th meeting between the teams offers perhaps the most controversial backdrop yet. This is the 13th time the programs have met with both in the AP top 5, but it's hard to imagine similar circumstances.
Ohio State enters Ann Arbor facing a referendum on the program's toughness, as the Buckeyes' consecutive losses to the Wolverines have come after getting crushed by a combined 56-17 in the second half. With those late folds have come questions about the program's grit, which clearly resonated at Ohio State if you consider the tone of coach Ryan Day's postgame comments after winning at Notre Dame.
Day is a remarkable 40-0 against Big Ten programs that are not Michigan, and 1-2 against the Wolverines. They account for one-third of his career losses, as he's 56-6 as a head coach.
Michigan enters with its entire program under the microscope, as coach Jim Harbaugh will be missing his sixth game of the season, the absences tied to a pair of unrelated suspensions that bookended the season.
Interim coach Sherrone Moore will again be on the sideline as Michigan serves out the rest of the Big Ten-mandated punishment for Harbaugh, which called for him missing the final three games of the regular season.
Michigan is under additional NCAA investigation for an advanced scouting scheme using electronics, which has swallowed up much of oxygen of the past month of the college football season. It was run by a former staffer named Connor Stalions, and the Big Ten deemed it "extensive," "impermissible" and "extraordinary." His resignation is one of four high-profile Michigan staff departures under unflattering circumstances in the past year.
The tumult off the field has yet to tangibly transfer onto it, as Michigan has been a paragon of efficiency. It has the nation's top scoring defense (9.0 ppg) and No. 11 scoring offense (38.3 ppg), despite five different head coaches being on the sideline.
A win for Michigan offers a path to the program's first national title since 1997. A loss would mean the end of the regular season and the fast-forwarding of the decision making surrounding the future of Harbaugh, who openly flirted with the NFL the past two seasons.
Harbaugh faces additional NCAA scrutiny from the Stalions case, which is expected to include an additional potential suspension next year for head coach responsibility. (Harbaugh was already expected to be suspended to start next season because of the NCAA investigation into Michigan's alleged dead period recruiting violations.)
The only certainty is that it will be a long winter in the losing team's football building.
Who will win? A majority of the coaches and assistants we polled picked Michigan, a change from the past two years. A poll of six NFL scouts yielded an even split -- three for Ohio State and three for Michigan. Few felt strongly about those picks or saw a large scoring gap.
What will matter on the field? The coaches and scouts broke things down for an edition of The Game that promises to be unlike any other in the rivalry's storied history.