Ah, the Irony

Well, it’s official. The Buckeyes are slow.

Of course, such a label has little to do with foot speed. Beanie Wells showed he could run with anyone when he sprinted 65-yards to paydirt on the first drive of the game. No, the Buckeyes aren’t slow on foot. They’re just a little slow in the head.

In last year’s title game, they showcased this stunning lack of wit by injuring their own star during an end zone celebration. How would they top such a performance in this year’s title game? By making sure they gave LSU as many free yards as possible—and at the most critical of moments. Brilliant.

When Ohio State committed two personal fouls in the span of three plays, giving LSU thirty bonus yards on the Tiger’s way to their first touchdown, well, I thought that was a special case of the stupid. But such a display seemed minor league in comparison to the dimwitted grandeur exhibited in the third quarter by Buckeye defender Austin Spitler, who roughed the punter on 4th and 23 to give new life to a stalled LSU drive.

“You think that was stupid?” teammate Cameron Heyward seemed to say. “Watch this.”

Heyward’s personal foul on the very next play moved LSU across midfield. Thirty seconds later the Tigers would be celebrating in the endzone. You just can’t script that kind of dumb.

As a direct result of Ohio State’s disciplinary letdowns, LSU scored fourteen points—the exact margin of victory in the ballgame. When one considers the timing of the infractions and the shifts of momentum that resulted, the difference was likely larger still. Consider:

The meltdown in the second quarter came when the Buckeyes still led 10-3. LSU went on to score on that drive, and never trailed again. The Spitler/Heyward debacle came on the opening drive of the second half, with LSU leading by 14. Instead of Ohio State getting the ball back early in the quarter with a chance to cut the lead to seven, LSU burned more time off the clock and increased the lead to 21, making it a three possession ballgame. Can I nominate that for a Pontiac Game Changing Performance? Such numbskullery would have to at least put us in the running for the $100,000 prize.

And the mental lapses didn’t seem to be confined to just the players. Am I the only one who wondered why Wells, who averaged 7.3 yards per carry and ran over LSU defenders like a teenage driver jumping speed bumps in the school parking lot (did you see that stiff-arm?), only carried the ball 20 times in the game? Were Buckeye coaches not aware that everyone from Les Miles to Urban Meyer to Kirk Herbstreit said that containing Wells had to be LSU’s main priority? McFadden ran the ball 32 times in Arkansas’s defeat of LSU. Wells ran the ball 39 times against Michigan. Both gained over 200 yards in their respective efforts. Why limit Wells to 20 carries in the title game, especially when LSU was failing to stop him? I’m no offensive coordinator. Just a very confused fan.

Of course, the end result was that the Buckeyes lost—handily—again. Whether their own gaffes or LSU’s prowess were the reason hardly matters. The announcers were already singing the old, tiresome tunes near the game’s end: “Ohio State receivers aren’t fast enough to get open.” “Ohio State’s line is being dominated by LSU’s faster, stronger line.” Well, maybe. Buckeye fans probably see it differently, recalling dropped passes in the endzone, silly missed tackles and a lot of knuckleheaded penalties instead. But for the next eight months, when we hear every sports analyst talking about how the Buckeyes aren’t fast enough to compete, we’d do well to just stay quiet and nod our heads in understanding. Maybe even offer up an ironic smile.

Better to let them think we’re slow than stupid.


Note (and slight change of tone):

After the game, Ohio State receiver Brian Hartline said he wished he could get every Buckeye fan into one room so that the team could apologize to us all. This struck me.

Brian, you don’t need to apologize to us. This was a rebuilding year. You made it to the national championship game, something nobody thought would happen (and critics will continue to say shouldn’t have happened). Regardless, you exceeded expectations just by getting there—and this in a year when other teams, who now claim they should have been playing for the championship instead, didn’t take care of business in the regular season to be in that position. Does this expose potential flaws in the BCS system? Probably. But those people need to blame the system, not the Buckeyes.

For Buckeye fans, our disappointment is simply two-fold: 1) The loss comes on the heels of last year’s much more embarrassing and inexcusable defeat, and 2) it always hurts more when stupid mistakes contribute to the loss—as I believe I adequately vented in my posting above. But you’ll be back next year, and older, and hopefully a little wiser. And you’ll likely have another crack at the national championship. There’ll be a lot of grumbling about that in the sports world. Expect it, and don’t try to refute it, except on the field. But you don’t need to apologize to Buckeye fans. We’ll still be cheering like mad. Like I said: we’re all a little slow in the head.

Giant Sloth Versus the Salad Shooter: A Divine Comedy

Here’s a bit of good news. Apparently there is a god. And get this: he’s a football fan.

More specifically, he’s a football fan with a bit of a prankster, stir the pot, stoke the flames sort of attitude. But just whether he’s a Big Ten fan or an SEC fan remains to be seen.

What we do know is that after a crazy ending to the craziest regular season in college football history—an ending that saw the number one and number two teams simultaneously lose for the third time this season—the stage is set to answer the following questions once and for all: Is the Big Ten slothful and weak? Is the SEC the greatest thing since the salad shooter? Is “sweater vest” or “baseball cap” the better fashion statement?

Yes, after Oklahoma beat up on Missouri and, more improbably, Pitt stunned West Virginia in a game that even the refs couldn’t win for the Mountaineers, Ohio State and LSU have landed in the national championship game—a game that will stand as the marquis match-up in a postseason promising either redemption for the Buckeyes and Big Ten fans in general, or assurance that we no longer need to defend ourselves to the media, because, well, they will have stopped caring.

For Ohio State, the scenario seems too good to be true. At the end of a rebuilding year, we get the chance to play for a national title…against the SEC champion…coached by a Michigan man. In a single sixty-minute span, we can expel the SEC demon while simultaneously delivering an extra blow to our archrival.

Predictably, the media can’t stand it. On ESPN’s Bowl Selection Special last night, Mark May couldn’t list enough reasons why the Buckeyes will get trounced by LSU. The Sporting News’s Matt Hayes dubbed the game the “Backed-in Bowl”, and Las Vegas has already made LSU a five-point favorite. Get used to it, Buckeye Nation. You’re going to hear this and much worse in coming weeks.

The good news is, after nearly a year of fending off belittling commentary, we now control our own destiny. If we beat LSU, any SEC fan or media pundit with a shred of sense will have to stop using the Florida game as the definitive statement on the Bucks. If we lose, well, get ready for another twelve months of hearing how Ohio State’s fastest player can’t outrun Dom Deloise.

But wait, there’s more.

Providence the Football Fan wasn’t content to let the drama play out on a single stage. Other postseason match-ups heighten the intrigue, from a Buckeye point of view, and with a little bit of luck—something on a parting-of-the-waters or endless-basket-of-fish scale—could revolutionize the way a critical nation views the Big Ten as a whole.

Consider:

Michigan vs. Florida in the Capital One Bowl
Remember my argument that, no matter how much you revile That School Up North, their success is good for Ohio State? Well, you can’t ask for a better example than this.

SEC fans, despite losing two out of three bowl games against the Big Ten last year, love to cite two examples as to why our conference is a glorified Pop Warner league: 1) Ohio State’s pummeling by Florida last year, and 2) Michigan’s loss to Appalachian State at the start of this season. Well, Mike Hart, here’s your final shot at glory. If you have an ounce of pride left in that diminutive body, you will rally your fellow seniors and send Lloyd Carr out with a final victory.

Can you imagine the irony? Florida getting beat by the team that got beat by Appalachian State? However would they explain that in Gainesville?

Illinois vs. USC in the Rose Bowl
That’s right. When the Buckeyes moved up to the title game, Illinois inherited our “consolation” prize. In Pasadena, they will have the unenviable task of facing a finally healthy USC team, a team that started the season ranked number one, floundered midseason amidst a sea of injuries, yet healed in time to become, once again, the media’s darling. Ask commentators who they think, regardless of ranking, is the best team in the country right now, and most will say USC.

On the surface this doesn’t seem like very good news for Illinois, and, let’s face it, it’s probably not. But what if, in this year of upsets that makes Hoosiers seem like a blasé movie, Ron Zook, Juice Williams, and crew—the only team to beat the Buckeyes this year—can pull it off? Well, that wouldn’t be so bad for conference credibility.

To this end, Buckeye fans should also be cheering for Wisconsin against SEC runner-up Tennessee in the Outback (eat a steak) Bowl, Michigan State against ACC runner-up Boston College in the Champs Sports (buy some gear) Bowl, Penn State against the Big 12’s Texas A&M in the Alamo (boys, I think we’re screwed) Bowl, Indiana against the Big 12’s Oklahoma State in the Insight (I don’t know what that is) Bowl and finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, Purdue against MAC champ Central Michigan in the Motor City (if we lose this, it’ll erase all the other ground we’ve gained in the other bowls) Bowl.

Now, naturally, none of this is a lock. Far from it. After all, we can’t control what other teams do. Not Illinois, nor—no matter how much recent dominance would suggest—Michigan. Heck, at 0-8 lifetime against the SEC in bowl games, Ohio State has enough on it’s own plate to worry about. So I’m not suggesting that the Football God, missing the glory days of Manifest Destiny, has chosen to smile upon the Buckeyes and is about to lead us into the promised land of national credibility, let alone approval. I’m just saying that, in a year when just about anything could have happened, somehow the pieces have fallen just right to make the path to the promised land visible. Even accessible.

And wouldn’t it be nice if a guy in a sweater vest, a diminutive, smack-talking running back, and a quarterback named after a beverage could lead us home?

A Buckeye Trip to New Orleans? Let’s see what Boomer Sooner, Lloyd Carr, and John Denver’s corpse have to say about that.

Can I state the obvious? The only thing more ridiculous than viewing the Rose Bowl as a consolation prize would be falling victim to such folly twice in the same season—or worse yet, twice in a matter of three weeks. Yet here we Buckeye fans are, guilty as charged.

Just as the Buckeye Nation was coming to terms with the idea that beating Michigan, clinching the Big Ten title, and earning a trip to “The Granddaddy of Them All” wasn’t too bad of an outcome for a so- called rebuilding year, the college football world turned upside down again. First Oregon and Oklahoma lost two weeks ago, and then LSU succumbed to Darren McFadden. Throw in the Kansas loss and suddenly the Buckeyes are ranked third in the BCS, just one little upset away from a berth in the national championship game. And, once again, anything less—even a trip to Pasadena—is simply unthinkable.

At the heart of this shake up, in its blundering sort of way, stands our old rival, That Team Up North. I never knew such drama was possible in a week when neither Ohio State nor Michigan took the field, yet a simple press conference by Lloyd Carr seems to have helped get the Bucks one step closer to the national title game—and perhaps to have doomed us to disappointment at the same time.

Immediately following Carr’s announcement to retire, the media began an all out blitz on the leading candidate to fill the position, LSU’s Les Miles. After being hounded all week as to whether he would take the Michigan job—a distracting situation to say the least as evidenced by Miles’s emotional plea to lay off and let him focus on, as he so eloquently pronounced, “Ar-Kansas”—the top-ranked Tigers let down their guard just enough to be toppled by that very Ar-Kansas team; and, in so doing, put the Buckeyes a hair’s breadth away from a trip to New Orleans. I guess we’ll have to wait for next weekend to see whether LSU’s fall from grace will stand as Lloyd Carr’s parting gift to the Buckeyes or his final revenge.

Enter Oklahoma. The very team whose loss on November 17 was celebrated wildly by Buckeye fans now holds our fate in its hands.
That’s right, our hopes are pinned to a team named after a musical.
If Oklahoma beats Missouri in the Big 12 championship game this Saturday, Ohio State moves up one more notch—and Expedia and Travelocity will be flooded with Buckeye fans changing their plane tickets from Pasadena to New Orleans. All of which means Oklahoma is, for the next few days at least, the second favorite team of Buckeye fans across the nation. I, for one, am now the proud owner of a Sooner foam combination set, complete with oversized cowboy hat, coozie and giant finger. The inflatable covered wagon should be delivered to my front yard later this week.

I would suggest cheering for Pitt to beat West Virginia on Saturday, as such a scenario would also land the Bucks in New Orleans— but unless Pitt brings back Tony Dorsett for the game and West Virginia replaces Pat White with John Denver’s corpse, I’m afraid this one may not go our way.

Unless…unless...

Would it be asking too much for Ol’ Lloyd to hold another press conference, stating that the short list for his replacement now includes West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez and Missouri coach Gary Pinkel? Could you do that for us Lloyd, for old time’s sake? It’s for the benefit of the Big Ten after all.

In all probability, we should prepare ourselves for the fact that the upset is simply not going to happen. We should expect that Missouri and West Virginia will both win next Saturday and Ohio State, despite coming unexpectedly—nay, ridiculously—close to playing for it all for the second time this season, will in the end have to settle for playing in the Rose Bowl. And we would do well to remind ourselves what a treat that actually is.

Really, we would.

Really.

Right?

Ah, screw it. Go Sooners!