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Quick Facts

  • The Rivalry: Michigan-Ohio State
  • Location: Columbus, Ohio
  • Date: Nov. 18, 2006
  • Result: No. 1 Ohio State 42, No. 2 Michigan 39
  • Attendance: 105,708 at Ohio Stadium
  • Vantage point: Hineygate, at the Holiday Inn on the Lane parking lot

Every few years, college football produces a Game of the Century, a regular-season contest – often among rivals – that will rattle the landscape of national title contenders. You’d be hard-pressed to find a matchup more titanic than the 103rd renewal of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. These teams’ fans love to hate each other, as evidenced by the profane T-shirts for sale on nearly every Columbus street corner near the Ohio State campus. Throw in the fact that both schools entered the game undefeated, and that legendary Michigan coach emeritus Bo Schembechler had passed away a day before the game, and the game seemed to be the center of the Universe. (Some onlookers estimated the crowd in the streets and parking lots was at least as large as the crowd inside Ohio Stadium.)

Nowhere was the center-of-the-universe experience more visceral than at Hineygate, a Buckeyes pregame staple for the past quarter century. Each Hineygate, upwards of 10,000 fans pack the parking lot at the Lane Avenue Holiday Inn, a tight square space with a makeshift stage in front of the hotel. Beer flows freely, along with food from the midway-like stands set up at the edges of the tailgate. The Danger Brothers, a Columbus-based covers band (Mike Thompson, Tom Smith, Dave Hessler, Bill Bendler and Tom Beougher), has been riling the crowd since Hineygate started, playing two-hour sets pre- and postgame. During the game, the action switches to a giant jumbo screen that broadcasts the contest, as some of the Dangers repair to a hotel room and students and alumni without tickets find seats wherever they can, including on stage. The Danger Brothers, now in their 40s and 50s, can still find a raucous groove in classics from the Beatles, Stones, Squeeze and more—and that’s not even counting “Hang On Sloopy”, the unofficial OSU fight song. If you go, just be on the lookout for flying brassieres. If you go for the Game of the Century, prepare for the end of the world as you know it. (Don’t worry, you’ll feel fine.)