Ohio State is ranked No. 4 in the Big Ten in terms of blood drive donations in the Big Ten blood drive. Credit: Lily Pace | Managing Campus Editor
Ohio State currently stands at No. 4 in the We Give Blood drive competition, and they are trailing That Team Up North (No. 3) — a statistic the Buckeyes aren’t proud to see.
However, there’s a solution for Ohio State to beat Michigan and climb the ranks: rallying together to get Buckeye students, alumni and fans to donate blood.
In the competition, presented by the Big Ten conference and Abbott, all 18 of the Big Ten teams go head to head to see who can donate the most blood before the 2025 Big Ten football championship game on Dec. 6, where the winner will be announced.
The winner will receive $1 million for student or community health, according to the Big Ten’s website.
At the time of publication, Nebraska is in the lead with over 12,400 donations. Wisconsin is not far behind with just over 12,310.
One blood donation unit equals one point scored for the team. Ohio State has 5,844 donations, which puts them in fourth place.
With the Ohio State vs. Michigan Blood Battle ending Nov. 26 and Ohio State trailing Michigan in the We Give Blood drive, Shohaan Singh, a fourth-year in consumer and family financial services and on the We Give Blood drive Ohio State campaign team, said the university needs to rally together to beat Michigan.
The Blood Battle, which began on Oct. 22, is a competition between Ohio State and the University of Michigan to see who can collect the most blood donation units, per prior Lantern reporting.
In the 2024 Blood Battle, Ohio State defended their championship title by taking victory over Michigan for the third year in a row, according to Versiti’s Blood Battle webpage.
This year, Michigan is putting up a fight and causing the battle to come down to single digit numbers, Heidi Seitz, regional manager of donor recruitment at Versiti Blood Center of Ohio, said.
“Michigan is giving us our biggest fight that we’ve had in the last three years,” Seitz said. “We won the last three years, but as of [Wednesday], based on what we’ve collected and what’s still on the schedule, if we maxed out collections and they did as well, they could beat us by two units.”
The Blood Battle hosts donation locations all over Ohio State’s campus until its end date, Nov. 26. Versiti’s website has the locations, times and a place to schedule a donation.
Blood donations given outside of the Blood Battle can also be submitted to We Give Blood drive.
The We Give Blood webpage on Big Ten’s website allows people to search for local donation centers using their city and state, zip code or exact location.
During the span of the We Give Blood drive, Abott and the Big Ten host mini competitions, called Weekly One-Up Challenges, in which two Big Ten schools go against each other to see who can earn the most donations or points for that week.
Week 12’s One-Up Challenge is between Ohio State and Michigan, from Nov. 22-28. The winner will be announced on Nov. 29, the day of the rivalry game.
The We Give Blood drive began in 2024 as a way to combat a blood shortage in Chicago, where they ran out of blood completely for a few days, Singh said. With a critical need for blood in the healthcare field, Abbott partnered with the Big Ten to start a campaign for a competition that encourages blood donations.
By partnering with the conference, Abbott’s plan was to use the rivalry and school spirit to fuel the first college conference-wide blood donation competition, according to Abott’s press release.
In the competition’s first year, Nebraska took first place, while Ohio State came in third.
Singh said this competition helps get those at large campuses to show up and donate.
“We’re trying to get the younger generation to get involved and give back to their community, especially like this is a really easy way where you don’t have to spend too much of your time, effort or money,” Singh said.
Singh said they are trying to get more alumni to donate, an area that they haven’t been as successful as Michigan has been.
Each donation can save three lives, according to its website. Under the leaderboard, alongside the teams’ rank and total donations, lists the number of lives saved.
With Ohio State’s almost 6,000 donations, it has saved about 17,800 lives according to the website’s statistics.
Across all 18 of the Big Ten teams, almost 70,000 donors have saved around 250,000 lives.
Seitz said the Blood Battle really encourages Buckeyes to come out because there is no substitute for blood other than a blood donation and one out of seven people entering the hospital needs a blood transfusion.
The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center uses 60,000 units of blood a year, which means there’s a need for donations each and every year, Seitz said.
“Every blood donation can help save three patients because we separate it into platelets, plasma and red cells so it can go to three different patients,” Seitz said. “And you’re giving these patients another holiday with their families, another birthday and moments that are cherished by them and all their loved ones.”
Singh said knowing that his donation can save up to three lives is powerful and a lot of people should be able to be proud of that as well.
“If this is one way to save someone’s life through just me donating 15 minutes of my time for my blood that’s going to come back anyway, I think that’s just a no brainer for me,” Singh said.
