Zongguang "Will" Li is a Shanghai native who attended Ohio State because it ranks among the top 20 public U.S. universities for its academics. He had almost no knowledge of American football while growing up in China, but he became an enormous Buckeyes fan at Ohio State. So much of a fan, in fact, that after moving back to Shanghai after college, Li returned to Ohio in September 2014 for the express purpose of attending some Buckeyes football games.

There was just one problem. Li says a U.S. border agent at O'Hare airport where his flight landed was skeptical about his reason for flying to America.

"I basically told him that I wanted to stay in the U.S. to watch the football games," Li says. "He thought that I was joking with him, so that's why he took me to an inspection room, which we call a little black room. He took me to that room and for two hours, no one asked me any questions."

And some people think they had a long time getting through airport security during Thanksgiving week?

Li says there was suspicion that he was not coming to see Buckeyes football but rather was planning to illegally overstay his visa. It took time, but a more understanding agent eventually accepted that, yes, Li was indeed back for the football games. After all, he's an Ohio State alum! He was allowed in and was able to watch the Buckeyes beat Rutgers, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan in Columbus before he returned to Shanghai, where he works consulting with students and families on education. He has traveled back to the U.S. several times since and has had no trouble at customs, though he always brings those 2014 Ohio State tickets along with documentation of that border interview just in case.

"The first officer, I don't know where he graduated from," Li says. "Maybe he didn't like Ohio State."

Well, perhaps the agent simply was a Michigan fan.

Ohio State alum Zongguang "Will" Li, far left, of Shanghai and Wees Abraham, founder of Michigan's Middle East alumni association in Dubai, are among the fans around the world who will be watching the Buckeyes and Wolverines battle Saturday. Courtesy Zongguang "Will" Li, Wees Abraham

The Ohio State-Michigan rivalry is one of the most intense in college football, but it is not restricted to Columbus and Ann Arbor or their home states. Or the United States, for that matter. There are Ohio State and Michigan alumni around the globe. In addition to their vast alumni clubs in the U.S., Michigan has at least 50 clubs worldwide, ranging from Abu Dhabi to Vietnam. Ohio State's alumni association doesn't list as many global clubs, but they exist everywhere from Argentina to Nigeria to Indonesia.

Michigan vs. Ohio State: The Game No. 3 Michigan faces No. 2 Ohio State meet for the 113th time Saturday.

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So does Shanghai have a fan as passionate about the Wolverines as Li is about the Buckeyes? Alumni club member Ivan Pan responded that no, there isn't just one passionate Michigan fan in Shanghai -- "We have a bunch," he says.

Pan included a list of several who met at least one of the following criteria: "One, flagged five times or more by bar owners for taunting at Ohio State-Michigan State or Notre Dame fans; two, rejected by blood donation centers due to wrong blood color (maize and blue); three, wear only khakis every day since 2015."

Members of the Michigan alumni club in Shanghai are passionate about Wolverines football. Courtesy Ivan Pan

Wees Abraham, who was born in Michigan (but grew up in Texas), is the founder of UM's Middle East alumni association in Dubai. Abraham is such a Wolverines fan that he once waved and planted a UM flag on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. He travels the world for his engineering job and always wears a Bo Schembechler-style Michigan cap. "It sparks a lot of conversation," he says. "I have, like, 15 hats in my closet, and when I travel I end up giving one away because it's interesting to them. It's cool. They send you emails, and you're basically building more fans than you would expect."

Abraham says there are at least a thousand Michigan alumni in the Middle East. Not that there aren't Ohio States fans in that region as well.

Spencer Schaffer is the Ohio State alumni ambassador in Kuwait. Because he also is a first lieutenant in the Marines, he is currently stationed in Iraq, where he has run into a few additional Buckeyes fans. While he tries to get back to a game each year, he couldn't swing it this season. Nonetheless, he says, "I can't wait to take it to 'that team up north.'"

Kelvin Day, who attended Michigan in 2008-09 as part of an overseas studies program at the University of Essex in his native England, says there are so many UM alumni in Britain that 80-100 fans will gather at a Belushi's bar in London for Wolverines games. Meanwhile, Tony Holmes says the Michigan club is small in Paris, but enough Wolverines have carved out a space at the Au Caveau Montpensier pub near the Louvre that it's "a bit of a home away from home here."

Spencer Schaffer, right, is a Marine currently stationed in Iraq who also serves as Ohio State's alumni ambassador in Kuwait. Courtesy Spencer Schaffer

Living in South Korea to research the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Ohio State alumnus Nick Hill was wandering the Gangnam District of Seoul when he saw a Korean couple in Ohio State gear. He shouted "O! H!" to them, and they yelled back, "I! O!" Hill also was in Sokcho, near the border with North Korea, where he was learning about a section of the city with North Korean refugees. While there last month, he listened to Ohio State-Wisconsin game on internet radio. When Ohio State won in overtime, he danced in the street while pumping his arms. This drew the attention of the locals, one of whom was a woman wearing a Cleveland Indians shirt.

"They learned just how serious this American is about his Buckeye football as I frantically cheered our way through overtime," he says.

Late nights and early mornings

Wherever the teams' fans are -- Shanghai, London, Paris, Dubai, Iraq, Seoul or perhaps even Antarctica -- most of them will be watching Saturday's Michigan-Ohio State game, although the timing can be as inconvenient as an 8 a.m. class after pulling an all-nighter studying for a final.

For instance, the scheduled noon kickoff in Columbus will be at 4 a.m. in Sydney, Australia, where Jeff Froster will be watching with two dozen or so fellow Michigan alumni at a casino bar. Froster, who will fly in from the other side of the country in Perth, has been setting up these annual gatherings throughout Australia to unite the alumni (he says there are more than 400 in the country). Last year's meeting was in Melbourne. Next year they'll probably gather in Brisbane, and in Perth the year after that. Consider Froster "Wolverine Dundee."

Kelvin Day studied at Michigan through an overseas program and continues to follow the Wolverines as part of an alumni club back home in Great Britain. Courtesy Kelvin Day

"It's our Thanksgiving," Froster says of the November get-togethers. "And I want the alumni to watch the game together because I remember how lonely it was watching it just by myself."

Not that the viewing is always as atmospheric as they'd like, such as with last year's party at a Melbourne casino when the game was scheduled to start at 4 a.m.

"At that time of morning, heaps of people were watching European soccer," Froster says. "We had 12 people, so they put us in a corner. And we watched the game without audio."

Dubai is nine hours ahead of Michigan's time zone, which means the game will start there at 9 p.m. That sounds much more convenient -- except for one thing. In the Middle East, the workweek starts on Sunday. That means this year's game will start in prime time, but there will be no recovery time the next morning.

"People [on Saturdays] are either running errands at the last minute before the week starts, or they're having family time because their kids are getting ready to go to school the next day," says Abraham, who is planning to host a gathering at his residence. "Everyone is either recovering from partying the weekend or running last-minute errands. Because there is work the next day, not everyone is as ambitious to go out and have a tailgate party. ...

"It's definitely not like in the States. They don't want to get wasted because the next day they have to get to work and be up at 5:30."

Abraham spread his love of the Wolverines by planting a Michigan flag at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Courtesy Wees Abraham

Daniel Leung is an Ohio State alumnus in Hong Kong, where the game will start at 1 a.m. He proposed to his wife near the goalpost by the south student section at Ohio Stadium before the kickoff to the 2004 Buckeyes-Wolverines game. It must have been a great day. She said yes, and the Buckeyes upset Michigan.

Leung says his wife loves watching Ohio State play, but because of the time difference "it's very difficult to wake up in the middle of the night just for the game. ... Sometimes I went out to watch the game at a bar with other Buckeyes in Hong Kong, but for the Michigan game, my wife will make sure I wake her up for The Game."

Bindi Dharia is a Michigan alum in Mumbai, India, which is 10½ hours ahead of Columbus this time of year, so the game is scheduled for 10:30 p.m. there and will probably run past 2 a.m. Dharia, who often wears a Wolverines T-shirt, will be meeting with fans from both Michigan and Ohio State at a bar for Saturday's game. She expects there to be at least 40 people, with half from each school.

Hopefully, things won't get out of hand.

"It's not as crazy as it would be happening on campus, where people are burning cars," she says humorously. "It's more civilized. But I'm sure there will be a lot of booing and screaming. I'm hoping they don't break anything in the bar."

Ohio State alumnus Daniel Leung keeps a framed Ohio state flag on the wall of his home in Hong Kong. Courtesy Daniel Leung

The game also will be shown in India at Bangalore's branch of the Arbor Brewing Company, a downtown Ann Arbor brewpub. ABC India was started by Gaurav Sikka, who grew to love craft beer while going to school at Michigan. His bar in Bangalore has some Michigan posters and a No. 1 jersey hanging up.

Saturday's kickoff is convenient in London -- 5 p.m. -- but Day, the Englishman who studied for a year at Michigan, says that when the game time is much later, he'll just stream a replay on his computer the following morning. To keep from learning the score, he says with a laugh, "I'll avoid human contact -- or at least with Americans."

Technology to the rescue

Despite the time differences, at least now it's possible to see the games from abroad. A quarter-century ago, it basically was impossible to watch games on another continent (and if you go back a bit further, games weren't always available in the States, either). Even a decade ago it wasn't that easy. Froster, the Aussie Michigan man, recalls streaming the 2006 Michigan-Ohio State in Brisbane.

"The feed was spotty. I would see Michigan score and then lose the feed for 20 minutes. Then Ohio State would score -- bloody hell!" Froster says, adding that the Buckeyes would score every time he lost the feed (which apparently was too often for the Wolverines, who lost 42-39 in a battle of unbeatens vying for a spot in the national championship game). "I just remember that was the most depressing morning. Just leaving the office at 6 or 7, completely disheartened."

Abraham says he used to have to watch in Dubai via a computer connection with a Slingbox that connected to a TV back in the States. Now he is able to watch via the internet through ESPN.

A group of Michigan alumni in Australia gathers in a different city each year to watch the Wolverines play Ohio State. Courtesy Jeff Froster

Leong says that he could follow the game in Hong Kong only via the ESPN.com GameCast or a Buckeyes internet forum on which fans would provide updates. A local pay-TV network shows games on one channel, but Ohio State isn't always available.

ESPN now has a relationship with Chinese internet provider Tencent, which allows easier access to games. Still, Li says only two or three college games are shown each weekend, so he often has to use a friend's U.S. cable account and a VPN connection to access the ESPN app. "It takes a long process and some really good computer skills to connect with the college football games," Li says.

Michigan alum Nick Kabcenell is in Budapest, Hungary, where NCAA games aren't available on TV. Fans can only stream games on their computers and tablets, which, Kabcenell says, "is not very conducive to group watching." One of his best friends in Budapest is an Ohio State alum, and they will sometimes watch the annual game together, "with me becoming increasingly sulky as the game progressed."

That's because the Buckeyes have had the upper hand recently, winning 11 of the past 12 matchups, including the last four. This year, Ohio State and Michigan were both unbeaten and ranked Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, in AP poll until the Buckeyes were upset by Penn State on Oct. 22. "It's good that they lost," Abraham says, "but at the same time it's not good because they're going to come at us with vengeance."

And then the Wolverines were knocked off by Iowa three weeks later.

The way things have turned out, however, the one-loss teams are back to Nos. 2 and 3 and are very much in the race for a spot in the College Football Playoff. Which means the stakes will be extra high at this year's game, and the fans will be even more intense in their passion.

Thus, not only will there be more than 100,000 fans crammed into The Horseshoe in Columbus on Saturday, but there will be many more fans just as excited and tuned to their screens all around the globe. As Hill says from South Korea, his fandom knows no borders, "with the exception of one. That state up north of Ohio."

Wolverines fans no doubt feel the same way about that state south of Michigan.