Ohio State Football: Confidence level against Michigan

After suffering through an entire year of listening to the most annoying fanbase in all of sports brag about winning The Game for a second straight year, the Ohio State football team finally gets their opportunity to right that wrong.

For the majority of this season, the Michigan football team has had to defend themselves against both NCAA and Big Ten conference officials who have been investigating the program for an advanced cheating scandal that has seen the removal of staffer Connor Stalions and linebackers coach Chris Partridge. Head coach Jim Harbaugh will also not be on the sideline come Saturday as he completes his final game of a second three-game suspension for this season.

Despite not having their head coach on the sideline, nor the advantage of Stalion’s laminated stolen sign charts, Michigan still believes they are going to win because they are the better team. Statistically, they may have an argument, but it’s hard to measure their statistical success from the beginning of the season when Stalions was still on the sideline to their more recent games since his departure and Harbaugh’s second suspension, which were not nearly as lopsided.

Despite the obvious unfair advantage Michigan enjoyed the past couple of seasons while instituting Stalion’s sign-stealing scheme, Harbaugh’s best teams while in Ann Arbor have undoubtedly been the teams he has coached the past three seasons. However, all of that success immediately becomes questionable if Ohio State can defeat them this weekend.

I for one hope that Ohio State can do what hasn’t happened since TCU stunned the Wolverines a season ago in the College Football Playoff, and quiet an obnoxiously loud fanbase by defeating Michigan and knocking them out of the CFP. In order to get a better idea if that is even possible, lets break down our confidence level by category and come up with an overall percentage for one last time this season.