This is what I think happened at Ohio State:
1) Ohio State paid players under the table for decades, which gave them a huge unfair advantage against Big Ten teams, allowing them to dominate the conference for years.

2) Ohio State hired one of the most decadent, corrupt coaches in NCAA history in Urban Meyer, who took the paying of players to the next level, effectively buying multiple Big Ten championships for the Buckeyes, before leaving after yet another OSU scandal.

3) Ohio State fans, accustomed to having much more talent than the rest of the Big Ten teams (because they bought the best recruits) assumed that they owned the Big Ten conference and treated it as a piece of property.

4) Ohio State fans really never thought that any other Big Ten team would be able to match them on the field for obvious reasons. When you buy the best recruits and pay the best players, you will win against less talented opponents. No OSU fan believed that this would ever change since they would break any rule and compromise any principle, in order to win.

5) Michigan brought in NFL coaching talent and player development talent and over the course of 8 painful years, began to produce just as much talent and just as many NFL prospects as Ohio State, all with an actual team mentality and with more toughness. Also, Michigan was able to do this without blatantly "buying" this talent but did it through hard work and determination.

6) Ohio State fans have severe cognitive dissonance and just can't accept that Michigan is actually better than they are on the field, since they are like spoiled children who have always gotten their way, so they created this fantasy world where Michigan must have "cheated" to get better. In Psychology, this is called gaslighting when you accuse someone of doing something that you actually are guilty of doing. Ohio State is the program that cheats, not Michigan.