9 Arguments Ohio and Michigan Will Never Settle
Think the Ohio-Michigan rivalry begins and ends on a football field every November?
It doesn’t.
Some of these arguments started before either state had a governor’s mansion, and neither side has ever backed down.
1. Who Won the Toledo War
Ohio and Michigan drew their shared border from a line Congress wrote into law in 1787, based on a flawed 1755 map that put Lake Michigan’s southern tip too far north.
That error put the mouth of the Maumee River, and the future city of Toledo, on both states’ maps at once.
Both sides wanted it.
Ohio’s governor and Michigan’s territorial governor each called up a militia in 1835 and sent them to opposite banks of the Maumee.
Militiamen on both sides fired into the air.
Nobody died.
Congress settled it in 1836.
Ohio kept the Toledo Strip, and Michigan traded its claim for statehood plus the Upper Peninsula.
Michigan’s own gift shops still sell Toledo War Champs gear, betting that the resource-rich Upper Peninsula was the better prize.
Ohio kept the city.
So which state came out ahead?
What Ohio and Michigan Traded
Ohio and Michigan settled the Toledo War with a trade that looked lopsided from the start.
The Toledo Strip Ohio kept covered about 468 square miles.
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the consolation prize Congress handed over instead, covers more than 16,000 square miles of land alone.
That’s more than 30 times the size of the strip Ohio walked away with, which is exactly why Michigan still calls it the better deal.
2. Who’s Winning the Series
Ohio State and Michigan first played each other in 1897, and the series has run almost every year since.
Michigan leads the all-time count, 62-52-6 across 121 meetings.
That’s the number Michigan fans lead with.
Ohio State fans reach for a newer stat instead.
The Buckeyes have won 18 of 25 meetings since 2000.
Both fan bases call themselves the winner, and no single stat decides who’s right.
The game became each team’s season finale in 1935.
It’s stayed there ever since.
Nobody schedules around it.
3. What You’re Allowed to Call Each Other
Ohio State fans still won’t say the word Michigan out loud during rivalry week.
The habit traces back to coach Woody Hayes, who called Michigan “that state up north” for decades rather than use its name.
Hayes claimed he wouldn’t buy a drop of gas in Michigan, and would rather coast his car to the state line than hand the state a dime.
It stuck.
Ohio State fans took it further in 2011, crossing out every letter “M” they could find around Columbus and replacing it with a red X.
Even the city’s police department has joined in some years.
Michigan has its own way of getting under Ohio State’s skin: Dropping the word “State” entirely and just saying “Ohio.”
That single word bothers Columbus enough that Ohio State trademarked the word “THE” in 2022, so nobody could sell a shirt reading plain “Ohio State” again.
Ohio State treats the matter as settled.
Michigan treats it as background noise, and keeps saying “Ohio” anyway.
4. Michigan’s Mascot Animal That Isn’t There
Michigan calls itself the Wolverine State, and hasn’t had a confirmed wild wolverine living inside its borders for roughly two centuries.
A single wolverine turned up in Michigan’s Thumb region in 2004, the state’s first confirmed sighting in roughly 200 years.
It lived there until around 2010.
Then it died.
Michigan hasn’t counted another wolverine since.
Ohio fans lean on that gap every chance they get, joking that Michigan named itself after an animal that never bothered to show up.
Michiganders have their own comeback: The nickname traces back to fur traders, not a promise that wolverines lived across the whole state.
Both sides claim the higher ground.
5. Which State Builds the True Jeep
Toledo, Ohio builds every Jeep Wrangler sold anywhere in the world, and has since the plant’s current assembly complex opened in 2005.
That’s one city, one model.
Detroit answers with a different Jeep entirely.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee has rolled off the line at Detroit’s Jefferson North plant since 1992, with millions built there since.
That’s two cities, two Jeeps.
Ohio points to the Wrangler as the brand’s identity.
Michigan points to the Grand Cherokee’s sales numbers instead.
Toledo builds the identity.
Detroit builds the volume.
Psst! How much do you know about the Ohio-Michigan rivalry? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Ohio-Michigan Rivalry IQ
Answer these questions on the border war, the mascots and the rivalry’s own history. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
What’s the most lopsided score in the history of Ohio State-Michigan football?
6. Whose Auto Industry Origin Story Counts
Michigan built its whole identity around Detroit's nickname, Motor City, and many Americans accept the claim without a second thought.
Ohio has one particular rebuttal.
The Packard Motor Car Company built its first 400 automobiles in Warren, Ohio, starting in 1899.
That's three years in Ohio.
Investors then lured the company to Detroit in 1903, and Packard spent the rest of its history as a Michigan nameplate.
Ohio still gets to say the badge was born on its soil before Michigan ever touched it.
Three years is still a start.
7. Michigan's Left Turn That Ohio Hates
Michigan drivers make a left turn without ever crossing oncoming traffic.
Drivers heading left get sent straight through the intersection, into a U-turn median about 660 feet up the road, then back to a simple right.
It sounds backward.
Michigan's transportation engineers rolled the design out in 1960 to cut down on crashes at busy divided highways.
It works.
Studies credit the Michigan left with 20 to 50% more capacity than a standard intersection.
Ohio never adopted it.
Drivers who cross the state line still call it confusing and pointless, even with the numbers in Michigan's favor.
Ohio drivers keep turning left the old-fashioned way.
8. Which Island Getaway Wins
Ohio's Put-in-Bay pulls in about 750,000 visitors a year to a single island in Lake Erie.
Locals and tourism writers alike call it the Key West of the North.
Golf carts cover every street on the island.
Michigan's Mackinac Island makes its own claim to the title.
Travel + Leisure named Mackinac Island the best island in the continental United States in 2022.
Mackinac Island allows no cars, ever.
Horses do the work instead.
Ohio treats the visitor count as the number that matters.
Michigan treats the national award as the title that matters.
9. Whose City Shaped American Music More
Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan both claim a piece of the same bragging rights: Each says it shaped the sound of American music first.
Cleveland's claim traces to local radio disc jockey (DJ) Alan Freed, who coined the term "rock and roll" on the air and threw the first rock concert at the Cleveland Arena in 1952.
That's why the Rock Hall sits in Cleveland.
Detroit counters with Motown, the label Berry Gordy started in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family.
The label turned the Supremes, the Temptations and the Jackson 5 into the sound of a decade.
Detroit isn't conceding.
Cleveland has the museum on the water and Freed's name on a plaque inside it.
Detroit has the hit records still playing on oldies stations everywhere.
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