My OSU Memories

Even now, even after yet another decisive road victory, I still do not believe. Even with the fortunate location of the Michigan game and the apparent collapse of Michigan State, I still do not believe.

Not yet.

There is no one in the history of the program I'd rather have behind center than Troy Smith and only Paul Brown would supersede Jim Tressel as my surveyor of the sideline. I might also add that there is no kick returner I'd rather have than Ted Ginn Jr. Those are three positions of consequence, yet I wonder...

I wonder because I can recall 1998, another year launched by the preseason #1 ranking, a far more veteran group that opened on the road with a doubling up of a ranked opponent and skillfully negotiated its way through all comers, including a good PSU team in the rain, until it all went up in smoke in one fateful third of a ballgame just a few weeks from the end. Despite the Silver Football recipient, the Big 10 leading rusher, three NFL first round draft choices, and the winningest senior class in school history, one ignominious grey evening turned the partisans a deep scarlet. Nor was it like last time, when a stout Michigan defense stymied an inconsistent offense, made a huge play to score their only TD, and hung on after overcoming a 9-0 halftime deficit at the Shoe to #3 (1996). An All-America corner slipped, those things happen.

When senior safety Damon Moore returned an interception for a touchdown, a pick-six in modern parlance, the crowd roared its thunderous approval: 24-9, yet another spread nearly covered. After all, the opponent did not have a number next to their abbreviation on the television screen nor an esteemed New Year's trip in their future.

24-28.

This loss, as much as any other, served as John Cooper's epitaph. Legitimate national championship contenders simply do not lose late season contests 1) at home 2) against unranked teams 3) when their lead is fifteen points with the halftime band safely returned to the stands. Not much more over a quarter, that's all it took.

To their credit, the Buckeyes upended a previously conference-unblemished Michigan group (first time since my attendance in 1994) 31-16 on an emotional senior day. David Boston in particular had a great game, yet the die had been cast. Even the stunning losses of both UCLA and (especially) Kansas State gave little solace to the fanatics that had waited thirty years, none after learning OSU finished #4 in the final standings, had Tennessee lost their SEC finale, KSU still had the inside track to Arizona. The supreme talents bade goodbye with an utterly unmemorable Sugar Bowl victory and a second #2 in three seasons whilst Tennessee bagged the Weinke-less 'Noles and munched on the chips.

Yes, many will tell you matters are different today. Tressball has fashioned a 4-1 mark against the much-despised (for one real reason only) Wolverines and aside from PSU's emotional win for Joe Paterno in 2001 has not presided over a self-destructive effort. In 2003, OSU missed the national title game by virtue of a 35-21 beating in Ann Arbor; well, Michigan had a very good team (Perry and Edwards in particular) and hadn't lost to OSU two straight at the Big House since 1981. In 2005, Tress's men lost to the eventual national champions in an extremely hard-fought game not decided until the last minute. Each example destroyed BCS championship game hopes, with the plurality of the blame for both falling at the stall of a player's locker, one who achieved a measure of redemption and one, who, sadly, still struggles to achieve his own.

Aside from the disastrous conclusion in 1974, OSU has generally had good fortune on the banks of the Red Cedar, clearly better MSU teams (1999, for instance) won and mostly the Buckeyes did, even easily, such as 1997. Yet... OSU needed a miraculous Spartan malfunction prior to halftime last year to even remain in the game and a bevy of timely Smith passes to eventually slide past Drew Stanton's offense, none of this happens in East Lansing, luck of the schedule, one supposes. Particularly if MSU is flattened in Ann Arbor, nearly the case every occasion since 1990 (call it, Desmond Howard's Revenge), Sparty will have nothing to play for except pride and a desire to thwart another Buckeye title run. One suspects John L Smith may call in Sedrick Irvin, Plaxico Burress and the rest of the available '98 crowd to send that not-so subtle message: the college football world may not remember you, but some almost-great team surely will.

We conclude thus with The Game, as it is known throughout much of the Midwest. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, Michigan may travel to Columbus bearing its strongest team since at least 1999, if not 1997 or 1985, and only the coaches have won at the Horseshoe. For most sports fans, Yankee fans are an exception, the defeats are remembered and thus self-chronicled to a greater degree than even the grandest triumphs. The signature game in all of OSU history, from a truly objective viewpoint, is not the 2003 Fiesta Bowl outlasting of Miami nor the first Rose Bowl win (1950) nor any of the other national championship or Big 10 conference title-clinching gridiron tales.

It is 1969, it is 12-24.

In the wondrous history of college football, I cannot recall a more devastating loss for a program on par with Ohio State's, many some others can. Other schools have lost potential titles to rivals in bigger upsets than to a team with just one conference defeat (read: OU '01, 13-16, in Norman, 0 rushing yards), yet there is a critical difference, or rather, several. In the first place, OSU rode a 22-game winning streak, few teams had even threatened the Buckeye machine, none in 1969. The team, as talented as any W. W. Hayes ever coached, had stars at virtually every position with an all-timer at rover. Now, other teams have possessed longer streaks, but I'm not finished. Woody's sublime carried a national championship banner and consecutive victories over Michigan, in the best decade ever for the program against the school that had humbled them until WWI. Others have had that too, most notably Miami's two thuds in their House of Horrors against the hungry Tide and the starving Poisoned Nuts. We have only one more factor left to consider: the Big 10's special rule about not only repeat conference champions, but bowl teams in general. One team, the conference champion, that's it (until 1975) and never in consecutive seasons (until 1971).

In effect, OSU needed only to win that bleak November 22, and the whole Beano Cook-contrived and Richard Nixon-accompanied chapter in Fayetteville need not have meant a thing beyond the regions of the SWC, would the score have even finished as 15-14, hard to say of course. Rookie coach Bo Schembechler, formerly of OSU in the late 1950s, rallied his troops into shape and a fabulous defensive effort dropped the mighty Buckeyes, a mere sixty minutes from immortality. That's all, sixty minutes. As you see, OSU had no game left on the schedule and did not suit up again until 1970, when they exacted some revenge in the form of 20-9 in the last home game for the (eventual) 27-2 Super Sophomores.

One can argue the point: Texas, with Jimmy Street running the wishbone may have whupped the Bucks on a neutral field somewhere, maybe All-America Mike Reid's team does too. Still, it cannot change the realities of the day, with no Alabama '66 clouds hovering around, one simply could not see OSU dropping their top-ranking after another win over Michigan and twenty-three straight overall. More importantly, OSU fans have never forgotten it, even if the game is as taboo as Maurice Clarett. Michigan had a decent team, to be sure, but not as formidable as the 1970-1974 editions which lost only four games, three to Ohio State. This epochal moment in Buckeye lore, which began a series of almost-title seasons, cannot replicate itself in today's game. No team, whether NEB '95 or BYU '84 can clinch a national title prior to a bowl date; it just cannot happen (aside from ESPN's ridiculous and most premature coronation in 2005, snicker, snicker).

Besides even if an unbeaten OSU falters to Michigan, assuming Smith is off against the blue-and-yellow helmets for the first time in his career and the turnover-creating defense forces no mistakes, odds are very good the Buckeyes have a Rose Bowl date or another BCS locale, even better given the extra slots now available (particularly with TCU's abrupt dismissal). Now, OSU fans will find the Rose Bowl a most wanting consolation prize indeed, bitter fruit reeking of that Woodstock smell. Should OSU perform at sufficient and suitable strength for the remainder of the campaign, a second championship in five seasons (a first for the school, though some still grumble, quietly, about 1944), coupled with the first three-game winning streak over Michigan since 1963, a time prior to, oh yes, 1969... the ghosts of the '69 campaign may yet vamoose for good.

Yet, those boys were unbeatable in Columbus, this current edition, as the PSU game adequately demonstrated for all to witness, is not. Not to conclude with pulpit polemics, but Troy Smith, and likely he alone if the last two efforts are any indication, must exorcise the decades-old demon of Paradise Lost, and awash the Original Sin of a long-ago ballgame played out not far from the stomping grounds of Fielding Yost.

Otherwise the sirens shall remain, ready and willing to test the next victim, say, Chris Wells, as yet another desperate cycle to prove Buckeye inferiority a discarded falsehood commences next autumn.