1 vs.2

We can assume now that Ohio State will beat Michigan today in the biggest football game ever between the schools. With the death Friday of Bo Schembechler, it becomes clear.

There is no way that the departed Woody Hayes would be making room for his beloved rival on game day if he weren’t certain that his No. 1 Buckeyes would beat Bo’s No. 2 Wolverines.

If you think Woody has no influence on such things in the afterlife, think again. His wing of heaven is certainly populated with stumpy pulling guards and 250-pound fullbacks, all moving forward three yards in a cloud of dust. On the door, a sign calls forward passes mortal sins.

Once Bo gets settled, he will have players sent over in full gear so he can grab their shoulder pads and face masks and yell at them.

He can get a special room, call it the Dummies’ Den, and visit often to tell the sportswriters how little they know and how little that surprises him.

Woody and Bo. The two-headed monster, reunited.

It began in 1969, when new Michigan coach Bo Schembechler upset an unbeaten and top-ranked Ohio State team coached by the man he had played for and coached with, Woody Hayes. A legend was born.

Ohio State and Michigan had always been big. Now it was not only Ohio State-Michigan, but Woody-Bo as well. Even bigger.

They played 10 times; Bo won five and they tied once. It ended prematurely in the 1978 Gator Bowl, when a lineman from Clemson named Charlie Bauman intercepted a pass and was run out of bounds near Hayes, who slugged him. Quickly, Hayes was fired.

So enamored of Hayes were the Ohio State faithful that many blamed Bauman for getting in the path of Woody’s fist.

Bo had lost his foil, but not his fire.

He went on to coach through the 1990 Rose Bowl, taking 13 Big Ten titles or co-titles along the way, and somehow becoming beloved while remaining delightfully irascible.

There are so many stories, but Terry Donahue’s makes the top 10.

“We played Michigan three times in 366 days in one span,” the former UCLA coach recalled Friday. “They kicked our butt in the Bluebonnet Bowl [Dec. 31, 1981], and then we played them at Ann Arbor in the third game the next season.

“In that one, they get up on us in the first half, 21-0. Some sort of bad call by the refs happened right before the half, and so, when the gun went off, I’m right out there in one of the officials’ face. I’m yelling at this guy and I turn around and who is standing right behind me? It’s Bo.

“So I ask him what he’s doing there, and he says to me, ‘It’s my stadium.’ ”

UCLA rallied to win that game, 31-27, and then beat Michigan, 24-14, in the Rose Bowl, Jan. 1, 1983.

“I got to know him a little better before the Rose Bowl,” Donahue said. “You have to make a lot of appearances together, go to functions. He was calmer then.

“I remember after that Rose Bowl, somebody set up a deal here where he got to meet Bo Derek, I guess because of their mutual name. I remember thinking how that just wasn’t fair. I win the game, I live in L.A., and he gets to meet Bo Derek.”

Larry Smith’s story is top-10 too.

The former USC coach was a rookie assistant under Schembechler in 1969, and was sent off to scout the Buckeyes against Purdue the week before the big game.

“I was just kind of sitting around the press box at halftime,” Smith recalled Friday, “and a guy comes up to me and says something about Ohio State being awesome. People were calling them the best team ever in college football then. I replied that I thought they were really good, but not awesome, and that any team can be beaten.

“I don’t think anything of it, and I’m standing at the urinal before practice on Monday and in comes Bo, who says to me, ‘Smith, you’re fired. It’s all over the New York Times. You said Ohio State isn’t awesome and we can beat them. You damn well better be right or you’re out of a job.’

“Thank God we won.”

In the 1990 Rose Bowl, Schembechler’s last game, USC beat Michigan, 17-10. The Trojans’ coach was Larry Smith.

Schembechler intimidated his players, and also loved them forever. Over the years, one of his favorite targets was running back Leroy Hoard, the most valuable player of the 1989 Rose Bowl, won by the Wolverines, 22-14.

“My mom came up for the Ohio State game,” Hoard told the late Mal Florence of The Times, “and asked me why I had so many keys. I said, ‘This one is for my car and this one is for my apartment. This is for the mailbox and this is for Bo’s doghouse.’ ”

Schembechler often snapped at the press, but he also had a great sense for the perfect quip.

In the 1979 Rose Bowl against Michigan, USC’s Charles White had scored a touchdown in the 17-10 victory by diving into the end zone without the ball, having fumbled it back a few yards. Three years later, in a regular-season game against Notre Dame at the Coliseum, the Trojans’ Michael Harper scored the same way.

Asked to comment a few days later, Schembechler said, “Obviously, USC has perfected that play.”

As athletic director in addition to football coach in 1989, Schembechler responded strongly to a request by his basketball coach, Bill Frieder, to continue coaching the Wolverines through the NCAA tournament, even though he had accepted a job at Arizona State for the next season.

“A Michigan man will coach Michigan, not an Arizona State man,” Schembechler said.

Frieder was sent packing, the reins were given to assistant Steve Fisher, and Michigan went on to win the NCAA title.

“After the title game,” Fisher recalled Friday, “the press was asking my players if they thought I’d get the job next season. A couple of other coaches were saying they had never heard of an undefeated coach getting fired. Finally, they got to Bo, and he said I had done well enough to deserve an interview.”

Fisher got the job, of course, and now coaches the San Diego State basketball team.

Schembechler even spent a couple of years as president of the Detroit Tigers, and during those, he fired broadcaster Ernie Harwell, Michigan’s equivalent to Vin Scully. Perhaps the most definitive measure of the man is that Schembechler lived on and remained popular, despite that.

It is strange that today’s game would have to share attention with anything. Bo would have hated that, almost as much as Woody.

There will be a moment of silence, then the action will begin. There will be heated words, lots of yelling and screaming, clenched fists, neck veins protruding.

Down below, on the field, the football teams will be playing.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.