On Tolstoy and Hating Ohio State
In recent weeks, Kyle Whittingham and Bryce Underwood have both emphasized that Ohio State is just another game for them, and that their preparation for “The Game” is not unique.
“Do we have a better chance of winning if I hated them?” Asked Whittingham.
Yes, according to Leo Tolstoy.
In his Russian epic “War and Peace,” Tolstoy explains why the Russian army successfully pushed Napoleon’s French forces out of Russia in 1812 using guerrilla tactics. According to Tolstoy, military strength depends on the size of the force and an “unknown x.” “Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it … That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all men composing an army, quite independent of whether they are, or are not, fighting under the command of a genius. … The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass given the resulting force.”
For Tolstoy, then, the answer to Whittingham’s question is obvious: yes, the Wolverines will have a better chance at winning The Game if they hate Ohio State. It is not enough to train, to prepare, to calculate. The spirit - the elan - of the team will rise when fed a potent brew of hatred and ill will. Only then, to quote Nick Saban, can you “throw out the star rankings, the stats, and all that.” So long as spirit prevails, “none of it matters once you step on the field.”