Buckeyes keep giving Mandel ammo

[BayBuck]

Actually it's the general reputation of the school I care about. I don't care what Mandel thinks, but like it or not, a school is often judged by the athletic teams and fans that people see, hear, and read...not the physics department no one knows about. If your opinion is that you don't care what anyone thinks about Ohio State, that's fine. But poor behavior reflects poorly on the school and alumni...that's the point people are making.

That's a good point, and as an alum I absolutely agree that the reputation of the university is foremost. I just don't equate such "passionate" emailing with the post-game riots, MoC antics and JOB loans that have given us recent black eyes. Those things concern me and soil OSU's reputation: all the Mandel letters in the world do not.

 

[OilerBuck]

Dropping a sure TD pass that's put right in your frickin' hands with no one around you is a lot different than missing a 50-yarder after you've already hit 5 for 5 in the game, or our QBs being pressured, or any single call by the coaches, or even the missed safety by Antonio Smith on kickoff coverage. Hamby catches that ball, we win the game...period. No one on this board has said we'd still lose the game if he does, not even our Texas members.

You know what, forget it...it you can't comprehend that by now, you're beyond reason.

Some plays are bigger than others, but I've never seen a single play win or lose a game in itself.

The beauty of football is that it takes eleven guys acting as a unit for four full quarters. Hamby's play is easy to single out because everyone understands the concept of a catch and a touchdown. What most people miss are the blocks that need to be held for a tenth of a second longer to allow a back to get through a hole, or the quarterback that didn't step into his throw enough because of pressure and lofted the ball a bit too much on third down.

A lot of people say we deserved to win. My argument is that, there are a multitude of "small" plays that would have made a Hamby TD unnecessary. We missed a lot of opportunities. A team that deserves to win, finds a way to.

That being said...the Hamby drop stuck a knife in my heart at the time.

 

[Steve19]

Well, Mandel has said good things about us and he made some good points.

I can understand where Oiler and Dryden are coming from. We need to get over this and not be seeing conspiracy under every bush. I do not see one here but neither do I see a balanced column.

Let me be a bit more objective about the problems I have with Mandel's column:

• He has addressed this topic previously more than once,
• he attempts to prejudice the reader immediately by calling the message "disturbing",
• he seems oblivious to the fact that if he receives 20 messages from our fanbase, it's a much smaller proportion than 5 messages from supporters of some other smaller schools with major names,
• he uses the word "plenty" to make it seem as if every Buckeye in the country wrote him and doesn't quantify exactly how many letters he received,
• he is not open and transparent about how many letters that he received calling him out about other matters from fans supporting other teams (and he's had a few boo-boos in recent weeks),
• he makes it sound like Hamby runs a gauntlet fearing for his life every day and,
• he tries to paint our fanbase as a group of violent Neanderthals when he himself ends his column with aggressive statements toward him from Texas and USC fans that fit that bill quite nicely.

I think the myth of the rabid Ohio State fan that is like no other in the country is complete horseshit.

Let's be very frank about Stewart Mandel. He was pushing quite hard for Oregon to be the other BCS bowl game. Our game against Notre Dame must just gall his ass.

Stewart Mandel has said some good things about Ohio State and I have enjoyed reading many of his columns. However, while we need to move past this, he also has shown some bias against Ohio State in recent years. He called for Ohio State to shut down its entire athletics department for a year, alleging that it was so corrupt that was the only way to clean it out. He said some pretty ugly things about Ohio State in recent years and did his own share of presenting as truth the baseless allegations that he knew were already proven false.

I do not agree that the message Mandel finds disturbing has anything to do with hatred toward Hamby. It just says to me that the fan is pointing out that one play may have changed the entire outcome. The fan doesn't say it is the only play and Mandel builds a strawman to knock down by making it seem as if he did.

Conspiracy? No. A sports columnist that is our enemy? Probably not. Our friend? Certainly not.

Nevertheless, it is Mandel, not the Buckeye fan, who is wrong in this case.

 

[BB73]

I try to avoid knee-jerk responses to these website guys who frequently stir the pot in order to generate e-mails from outraged fans.

They do this in order to show their bosses that their articles generate fan interest, based on the number of e-mails they receive. The easiest way to get a lot of e-mails is to say "tOSU got lucky in 2002", or something negative about tOSU.

tOSU fans are not unique in this. Due to events of the last couple of years, however, our collective hackles as a fanbase were raised, and many fans have been quick to defend their beloved Buckeyes from any perceived slight. This has made it relatively easy for a columnist to get under our skin, and perhaps bait tOSU fans into a barrage of angry responses. And because of that tOSU fans have earned a reputation as having thin skin.

As others have said, it's time to try to relax, and not be quick to react to everybody who doesn't give tOSU the credit we feel is deserved. Let's enjoy our recent successes, and look forward to more championships in the future. If you're someone that wants to see negative reactions, visit the scUM boards for some schadenfreude.

The only time I've sent an e-mail to one of those columnists because of his slighting tOSU was a couple of years ago, when Ivan Maisel listed his top-10 all-time programs and listed Army but didn't include tOSU. Since his column was written in this century, and not in 1950, I felt obligated to give him a history lesson. I was appalled that a national writer for ESPN (and this was before the Clarett allegations), could list 10 teams and not include tOSU. I think this was based on ignorance (not malice or tOSU baiting), and his being too lazy to do 10 minutes of research to post a list with a little credibililty. I thus lost a lot of respect for his knowledge of college football, and his willingness to place such a list on an ESPN website without doing even a little research. But I didn't ream Ivan, my e-mail included a set of facts to educate him. And of course he didn't include my response in his next mailbag article, it would have made him look bad.

Everyone will respond to these online columnists as they see fit. But please realize that each response is part of an overall image of tOSU fans that is presented to members of the media.