I have a rule that when I write something for the book...it gets laid aside for a while to cook. I then go back and read it cold, to see if works, if it makes sense, and if I really got it right. Is it baked, or half baked? One seldom gets it perfect on the first go around of course and it can always be improved. Usually it's slightly, but often, one reads it and thinks What was I thinking?

Judging from the new hits on my website, some of you saw my email that Bob Hunter printed in his column The Daily Hunter. I broke my own rule on that email, not expecting to see it in print. As I reread what I wrote in haste to Bob, I realized it was half baked. Not that I don't believe what I wrote. I do feel it is going to be a major difference when The Game changes Saturdays. And everything I wrote is going to complicate things.

It wasn't what I wrote, but what I didn't add, that was the missing ingredient. Like a fine cream pie, I had cooked the ingredients, and baked the crust, but not put the meringue on the top. And that creamy whipped topping, the inviting face on that pie, is just like the face on future games of The Rivalry....

It's still that school up north, it's still that team with the funny helmets, it's still the team we hate to loose to from the very depths of our soul. And wherever they play The Rivalry, whenever they play The Rivalry, we will do whatever it takes to be there and relish the chance to clean their clocks one more time. Right now as I write this, I can actually hear the Tick Tock of that big Michigan Clock on the wall of the Woody Hayes Center. It is up there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, counting down the days, hours, and seconds until we get to tee it up and do it to them again. It's there today. It's there tomorrow. It will be there 50 years from now.

Tick tock. Tick tock.