Well, having been a Buckeye and Brown's fan all my life, I've gotten used to it. This same crap always seemed to happen in the Rose Bowl - not putting the game away when you had a chance and giving them one too many chances to beat you. And that's not even going into the '69, '73, '88, '93, '95, '96, '97 scUM games. Or the '77 OK game. And, of course, after 'The Drive' and 'The fumble', and the '69(?) NFL Division Championship game loss to the Vikings, and 'red right 88'.........well, you get the point.
I even told Nightmare, on the drive where we tried the 50 yard FG, that we need to go down and punch it in, but I doubted aggressive enough plays would be called. When the FG just missed, i said (in my optimistic way) "well, that's it. There's too much time on the clock and they will go right down and score. happens to us every time" I know I'm not a very good Buckeye fan for saying that (out loud) but anyone who has been around sports for a long time knows the sound of the drums of doom - and i had heard them many times before.
Then when Zwick fumbled, Nightmare cried on the couch for the rest of the game with his face buried in a pillow. I watched the end of the game hoping against hope like you do when you watch a war movie and somebody gets shot and they are bleeding to death and you can't do a thing about it, you just wait for the inevitable.
After the game nightmare crawled up into my lap and we talked about how hard the buckeyes had played, and about how everybody makes mistakes and that some are acceptable and even expected, while some are not acceptable and cost you games. And then we joked around and I put him to bed - but it was damn hard for me to think about anything else other than that when they started their final TD drive, we should have already been ahead by AT LEAST 13 points, but more realistically 17.
