Nick Saban takes shot at how Ohio State fans feel about Michigan months after he said Buckeye Nation needed therapy

When the Ohio State Buckeyes lost to the Michigan Wolverines last season, it sparked quite the reaction from fans. More importantly, the team itself had the perfect response.

Ohio State went on to beat Tennessee, Oregon, Texas, and Notre Dame on its way to capturing a national championship. Still, the one major hurdle Ryan Day has yet to clear is consistently beating Michigan. With the expanded playoff format, however, that game carries slightly less weight in the bigger picture. In the past, a loss to Michigan usually knocked Ohio State out of title contention. With the new 12-team format, that’s no longer the case.

After last season’s loss to Michigan, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban had some blunt words for Buckeye Nation.

“You know, these Ohio State fans? You know, they’ve got a psychotic obsession with Michigan and they need to go get therapy or something to try to get it fixed,” Saban said months ago. “They have a chance to win the national championship and here you are and nobody’s excited about their opportunity to play because they lost to Michigan, which was a tough game and they lost the game, probably, by some of the mistakes that they made. Those are correctable things.”

Saban ended up being right. The Buckeyes regrouped, held a tough players-only meeting, put egos aside, and fully bought into each other—fueling their championship run. Looking back, Saban said the loss may have been exactly what Ohio State needed.

“You’ve got to replace that hunger that’s created by not having success. Like, Ohio State getting beat by Michigan last year probably had as much to do with them winning a national championship as anything,” Saban said on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday before the opener against Texas.

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Ryan Day and several Buckeyes players have also admitted that the Michigan loss likely played a role in sparking their turnaround. The team looked noticeably different after that setback.

Saban doubled down on his comments about how Buckeye Nation views Michigan with another shot.

“They needed [me to yell at them]. They needed it. They got this psychological disposition about Michigan that’s just killing them, killing them.”

That may be a tough pill for Ohio State fans to swallow, given that the program’s identity is deeply rooted in hating the Wolverines.