Jim Harbaugh won his first Big Ten Championship as Michigan's head coach last season.AP

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It’s Game 12 in the breakdown of Ohio State’s 2022 football schedule, as Ohio State hosts Michigan with a shot at revenge after the Wolverines won The Game last year for the first time since 2011.

Michigan at Ohio State, Nov. 26, Noon, Fox.

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This could be a 10, with the Wolverines coming off their best season since their 1997 national title. At 61-24, Michigan has the ninth-best winning percentage among Power 5 programs since Jim Harbaugh took over in 2015, trailing Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Georgia, Notre Dame, Wisconsin and Oklahoma State.

At 46-42 the previous seven years, Michigan was tied for the 43rd-best record among Power 5 teams.

So this is Michigan near the top of the second tier of college football -- behind the regular playoff teams -- and coming off its first College Football Playoff appearance ever, and its first win over Ohio State in more than a decade. Harbaugh has talked about four team goals coming into this season -- beating Michigan State, beating Ohio State, winning the Big Ten and winning a national championship. The Wolverines hit two of those last year, but by suffering their only regular-season loss to the Spartans, and then falling to Georgia in a playoff semifinal, they left two other goals to chase.

Will Michigan ever reach the place where trying to compete regularly with Alabama and Georgia is the goal? That may be a tough ask. If not, then beating Ohio State led by top-level talent like Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo; destroying Iowa 42-3 in the Big Ten Championship; and making the four-team playoff may be a peak Michigan season.

Then Harbaugh interviewed with the Minnesota Vikings in the offseason and looked ready to leave for the NFL had he been offered the job. He called it a one-day story, and while it may have slowed Michigan momentum in recruiting, it may not have had an effect on this roster for this season.

“I don’t apologize for staying at Michigan,” Harbaugh said. “There was the one day I think, February 3, where I was doing the interview. And we talked to the players, and I said, ‘Here’s what’s happening,’ and they don’t have any control over that. We’ll know by tomorrow. And a lot of them told me, ‘I knew you wouldn’t go, Coach, knew you’d stay here.’

“So that was the only day, one day out of the entire offseason, where there was a little uncertainty, but we we’ve been grinding, we’ve been working. And that was so long ago, it’s not even relevant anymore. Everybody knows where everybody’s at, and whatever his intentions are.”

If that’s true, then they know Michigan, off its first Big Ten title since tying Iowa for the conference crown in 2004, is feeling good. Give the Wolverines a 9.5.

Everything? As always? But there’s more on the line for the Buckeyes than usual. For the first time since 2004, after Jim Tressel’s only loss to Michigan in 2003, an Ohio State head coach is back to seek revenge against Michigan after a loss.

No Ohio State fan liked losing to the Wolverines for just the third time in 21 years, but one loss can be viewed as a bump. Two might be seen as a trend. Our Ohio State text subscribers (sign up for a free two-week trial of getting OSU info in your phone by texting 614-350-3315) were asked to rate on a scale 1-10 how important this game is for the health of the OSU football program, and for the career of fourth-year head coach Ryan Day.

They called it an 8.54 for the program, and an 8.63 for Day, and about half of those answering gave the full 10 (that this game couldn’t be more important) to both answers. Maybe the right answer is that Ohio State vs. Michigan is always a 10.

But last year’s win for the Wolverines could be like 2003 -- a brief hiccup in a run of OSU dominance. Or it could signal a turn toward a more competitive rivalry, maybe not an equal split, but something far more balanced than Ohio State’s current 17-3 edge in the last 20 games, or Michigan’s 12-3-1 advantage in the 16 games before that.

Multiple national college football observers are predicting two Big Ten teams in the playoff. I’ve done that in the past, thinking both the Wolverines and Buckeyes could make it, though I won’t pick that this season. But Michigan has a pretty easy schedule, and the Buckeyes are viewed as national title contenders, so a matchup of 11-0 teams isn’t impossible.

Don’t quite expect the No. 1 vs No. 2 matchup of 2006 all over again. But with the stakes and the talent on both sides, and revenge in the air for the Buckeyes, the 118th edition of The Game could be one of the best.

Donocan Edwards gained 439 yards from scrimmage last season on 55 touches. Jacob Hamilton | The Ann Arbor News

Michigan’s offense should take a jump, as losses on defense mean the Wolverines will have to be more dynamic offensively to win big games. Former Ohio State linebacker Joshua Perry, now an analyst at the Big Ten Network, ranked three Michigan skill players among his top 30 players in the conference: Running back Blake Corum at No. 5; receiver Ronnie Bell at No. 19; and tight end Erick All at No. 22. (Ohio State had four skill players on Perry’s list: C.J. Stroud and Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the top two spots; TreVeyon Henderson at No. 4; and Marvin Harrison Jr. at No. 21.)

Corum averaged 16 carries and 97 yards through the first eight games last season before an ankle injury slowed him down. Bell was lost for the season in the opener, a game in which he caught a 76-yard touchdown. All had 38 catches for 437 yards on the season, but just one catch against the Buckeyes.

Corum broke off a 55-yard run in the third quarter against Ohio State last season, but the Buckeyes haven’t seen the best of Michigan’s best offensive players. That includes maybe the most interesting option, sophomore running back Donovan Edwards. Fox analyst Joel Klatt had called Edwards a darkhorse candidate for Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year. Michigan doesn’t have the same level of offensive talent as Ohio State. But it’s pretty good, and better than it was a year ago.

D.J. Turner should be Michigan's best cornerback this season.AP

Hutchinson, Ojabo and safety Daxton Hill are gone, all taken in the first 45 picks of the NFL Draft. (The first OSU defender, Tyreke Smith, went at pick No. 158 in the fifth round.) Michigan may find it difficult to match last year’s defense, which ranked 11th in the nation according to Football Outsiders.

But Mazi Smith, at 6-foot-3 and 337 pounds, is a unique athlete at defensive tackle who could cause problems with his explosiveness. And the Wolverines feel good about their corners, which will come in handy against the OSU passing game.

* D.J. Turner is a senior who made eight starts last season and has the eye of NFL talent evaluators. He’s Michigan’s fastest corner and could be one of the best secondary players in the conference.

* Gemon Green at 6-2 is two inches taller than Turner and the type of corner who might have a chance to hang with Ohio State’s 6-4 Harrison. He lost snaps to younger players at times last season, but this will be his third season as at least a partial starter, and Michigan coaches have praised his strong offseason.

* Will Johnson is a five-star true freshman who was on Ohio State’s recruiting radar for a time. The Detroit native is 6-2 and could play right away. He’s the fourth-highest rated recruit of the Harbaugh era, behind edge rusher Rashan Gary; Browns receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones; and Hill, the safety who went in the first round in April.

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Michigan leads the all-time series 59-52-6, though with Ohio State’s 2010 wins vacated by NCAA sanctions, it’s recorded as 59-51-6 in the record books. The Buckeyes are 17-3 in the last 20 matchups. In the last 50 games, Ohio State’s edge is 27-21-2.

On scales of 1-10, our Ohio State text subscribers were asked to rate their excitement for the game, and their worry about an Ohio State loss. (Sign up for a two-week trial of the texts by texting 614-350-3315 or here.)

For many, nothing ever tops Ohio State-Michigan. But if rivalry feelings were waning at all, Michigan’s win fixed that. The buildup for Nov. 26 will be huge, and hugely fun. And for worry level, this game is also the highest.

I pegged this at 76 percent for the Buckeyes, with a one in four shot of the Wolverines coming to Columbus and making this back-to-back wins.

There’s a psychological component to this, as I’m assuming the Wolverines broke through a mental block last year that now allows The Game to mostly be about the football. On the other side, we have some proof of how the Day Buckeyes handle revenge. After losing to Clemson in a playoff semifinal in 2019, the Buckeyes had their eyes on the Tigers all season, and when they got back to a semifinal rematch, they played arguably their best game of the Day era and rolled to a 49-28 win.

Michigan has the second-best talent in the Big Ten, but Ohio State still holds a clear edge there. The Wolverines won last year because their elite defenders, led by Hutchinson, changed the game, and because the Ohio State defense couldn’t stop Michigan’s physical and varied run game.

Michigan lost both coordinators -- Josh Gattis on offense and Mike McDonald on defense -- and a program legend in Hutchinson. Meanwhile, the Buckeyes paid nearly $2 million a year for new defensive coordinator Jim Knowles to fix the defense.

Ohio State is better, one of the three best teams in the country. Michigan is competitive, with top-10 talent. Michigan hadn’t beaten a full strength OSU team since 2003, but in 2013 and 2016, the Wolverines came as close as they could, losing on a failed 2-point conversion in the closing seconds, and then dropping a double-overtime game.

What you know Ohio State won’t do is take a win for granted. That should mean some great football on the last Saturday in November.

OSU chance to win: 75 percent, Fan excitement level: 9.58, Fan worry level: 5.19.

OSU chance to win: 99 percent, Fan excitement level: 4.33, Fan worry level: 1.39.

OSU chance to win: 99.5 percent, Fan excitement level: 5.51, Fan worry level: 1.95.

OSU chance to win: 82 percent, Fan excitement level: 8.78, Fan worry level: 5.44.

OSU chance to win: 99.9 percent, Fan excitement level: 5.24, Fan worry level: 2.58.

OSU chance to win: 88 percent, Fan excitement level: 7.86, Fan worry level: 4.86.

OSU chance to win: 95 percent, Fan excitement level: 7.56, Fan worry level: 4.68.

OSU chance to win: 85 percent, Fan excitement level: 9.07, Fan worry level: 6.56.

OSU chance to win: 98 percent, Fan excitement level: 5.21, Fan worry level: 2.49.

OSU chance to win: 99 percent, Fan excitement level: 4.86, Fan worry level: 2.2.

OSU chance to win: 91 percent, Fan excitement level: 5.77, Fan worry level: 3.65.

OSU chance to win: 76 percent, Fan excitement level: 9.93, Fan worry level: 6.91.

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