SYLVANIA, Ohio — Sue Broz knows her old next-door neighbor isn’t dropping by just to chat.
Not with the Ohio State-Michigan game just a day away.
“I had to come back and tell her she had some trash hanging from her house,” says Paul Patterson, pointing toward a blue Michigan flag.
“It’s better than that flag with the big zero you used to have,” she answers, referring to his Ohio State “Block O” flag.
And so it begins as most conversations seem to this week. Nowhere else, perhaps, is the rivalry more intense than in Toledo and its suburbs.
The city is sort of the dividing line. Michigan Stadium is just 45 minutes away, and the fans are evenly split between the Buckeyes and Wolverines.
The game parts neighborhoods and families. It pits bosses against employees and husbands against wives.
Broz’s neighborhood is just a short punt from Ohio-Michigan state line. On Saturday, flags from both schools will be lining the block.
“They just keep crawling across the state line,” says Patterson. Broz, a Michigan season ticket holder, plans a big party at her house. She’ll even pull out a framed photo of Ohio State fans mourning a loss a few seasons ago.
“I get it out every year,” she said.
Not even politics are immune from the rivalry.
Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner is a Michigan fan. Current Mayor Jack Ford played briefly under coach Woody Hayes at Ohio State.
Students at Highland Elementary in Sylvania will be decked out in scarlet and gray or maize and blue on Friday.
“I have a great big ‘Block O’ in my office,” said Dale Wiltse, the principal. “If you drive by the school, you can see it in the window.”
At the end of the day, one of the teachers is sure to play the Ohio State fight song on the building’s public address system.
“It’s never planned, but it always happens,” Wiltse says. At the Buckeye ‘ Wolverine Shop in Toledo, the merchandise and loyalties are split down the middle, too.
“I’m not coming over there,” Ohio State fan Michael Monica yells out to his girlfriend, Christine Crawford, who is shopping for a Michigan jersey.
The jersey is part of a bet she has with his father. The loser has to wear the other team’s jersey every Saturday for the rest of the year.
On the other side of the store, James Skelding is loading up on Buckeye music and buttons. His wife, Dina, is a Michigan graduate.
“It’s a pretty violent time of the year,” he said.
There’s always a battle over which flag goes up the pole in the front yard and who gets control of the music on the stereo.
