Okay, the Buckeyes just won their fifth straight Big Ten championship and earned their fifth straight trip to a BCS bowl game. So why am I not excited by this 27-24 win over Iowa? Maybe it's because winning the conference and going to a major bowl is becoming so damned ordinary. Yeah, I know that we're bound for the Rose Bowl - the Granddaddy of them all - but we've been to three national championship games (2002, 2006, 2007), three Fiesta Bowls (2003, 2005, 2008), and one Sugar Bowl (1998) since our last trip to Pasadena (1996), so it's not like we are long-suffering fans when it comes to meaningful post-season action. Maybe we're like the rich guy who finds a $100 bill in the street and doesn't even bother to bend down and pick it up - after a while, it's hard for the successful to get excited about even more success. Maybe we need a season like 2004 to get our priorities back in order ... but on second thought, I'd really rather not go there. Winning another Big Ten championship and going to another BCS bowl may be just a little bit boring and commonplace these days, but it's certainly better than the alternative.
A side note on the Rose Bowl.... I suppose that the Rose Bowl should still have a bit of special significance for us Ohio State fans, but we won't even get a shot at our traditional West Coast rival this year. With Southern Cal out of contention, we'll see Oregon, or Stanford, or Arizona, or ... who cares? It's just another more-or-less meaningless bowl game against another more-or-less meaningless opponent. Let's bring back the good old days (1967 to 1979), when the Rose Bowl was the de facto national championship game no less than seven times (1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1979). Today, the Rose Bowl is just another multi-million dollar pay out from the BCS slush fund, nothing more. Only the BCS championship game means anything anymore, and since we're not going there, I don't really care where we go ... at least, I don't care as much as I should.
Now back to Iowa.... Maybe my lack of excitement over the conference-clinching win comes from the fact that no season is truly a success until after we beat Michigan. Even if the Buckeyes would have played a great game yesterday and beaten Iowa 38 to 10, it still would have been a Taco Bell win ... you know what I mean, satisfying for about five minutes, but leaving you completely unfulfilled and hungry for more. Yeah, no one can take those Roses away now, but somehow they won't smell quite so sweet if the Buckeyes fall in Ann Arbor next Saturday. The Game should be another romp, the Buckeyes are more talented at every position (okay, maybe not punter), and the Wolverines have probably already quit on their lamebrain soon-to-be lame duck head coach ... but there's always a chance that the Weasels will summon that last ounce of collective courage, will muster that final dram of combined character, will don their mighty winged helmets ans superman capes, and finally play like the champions that they have always dreamed about. For the Weasels' entire season is on the line ... I know that they are trying to become the first Michigan team to post back-to-back losing seasons since 1962-63 ... that they are going for their worst Big Ten record since they were shut out (0-5) in 1936 ... that they are on the verge of their worst defensive season ever (they need to surrender at least 39 points next week to eclispe last season's total of 347 points allowed) ... that they are trying to become bowl ineligible yet again ... I know all that. But I also know that the Weasels might just forget about the record books, might put the accolades aside, might forgo their rightful place in history ... and actually try to win The Game. So, the season's not over yet ... still some work to do, still some business to accomplish. It's Weasel season!
Or maybe my lack of excitement over the Iowa game stems from the Iowa game itself, which was ... well, let me put it to you this way. There's no such thing as a bad win ... especially if it's over a ranked team ... especially if it clinches a Big Ten title ... especially if it sends you to a BCS bowl ... but last night was pretty damned close. Some people have said that Jim Tressel is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers ... but sometimes it seems like he is trying to win the game with just his pawns and nothing else.
From a fan's persepctive, last night's game was simply brutal. That was the kind of game where we should have been singing "Nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye!" to Iowa throughout the final minutes ... should have been counting down the final seconds in unison ... should have been setting our couches on fire before Terrelle Pryor took his final knee in the victory formation. But, noooooo! Our team, our beloved Buckeyes, had to turn a rout into a nail-biter with some incredibly ... unfortunate ... plays down the stretch.
You know, if the Buckeyes had begun their meltdown with ten minutes left in the third quarter instead of with ten minutes left in the fourth, then we might have had Michigan State 1998 all over again. Instead, we had Navy 2009 all over again. The Buckeyes take a two-score lead in the fourth quarter, they have their opponent on the ropes, 99 and 44/100 percent dead and buried, and then they give up a huge play (85-yard TD pass versus Navy, 99-yard kick-off return versus Iowa) to let the bad guys right back into the game. It's almost like watching a horror movie sometimes ... you know, Freddie Krueger, or Michael Myers, or Jason being shot up, hacked apart, burnt to a crisp only to return fully reanimated over and over and over again. But in any right and proper horror flick, the good guys always prevail in the final minutes and live happily ever after ... at least until the next sequel. And that's what happened again last night ... we survived ... just barely ... but we survived.
Okay, as far as the game itself, Pryor was okay, the running backs were pretty good, the ... oh, the Hell with it. You watched the game - you saw what I did. You saw the most vanilla defensive schemes possible against a rookie quarterback, making his first ever college start, who was 9 of 27 for 82 yards and an interception last week in relief ... and you saw that same inexperienced rookie quarterback look like Joey Elliot for most of the game. The only time that Vandenberg really looked like a kid with no clue was in the overtime period when he threw an incompletion, took a ten-yard sack, and tossed an interception on what amounted to a Hail Mary pass. Why the difference between regulation and overtime? Were nerves finally starting to set in? Or was Ohio State dialing up the heat a few degrees? (BTW, thank you Doug Worthington - you deserve a dozen roses for that effort). Maybe the Buckeyes should have pressured Vandenberg right from the start, blitzing him early and often and from every conceivable angle, instead of letting him sit back in the pocket and get his confidence early by completing easy tosses into a soft zone. But then again, maybe letting the dogs loose from the first play of the game would have been too checker-like....
And the offensive game plan really wasn't a whole lot better. Yes, the running game was working, and I'm all for that, but do you maybe think that it might have been a good idea to mix in a play action pass or two every now and then? Like once a quarter, perhaps? We all know the main tenets of Tresselball - strong running game, stout defense, win the field position battle, make no mistakes on offense - but one of the aspects of Tresselball that is often overlooked is making big plays on offense. To use a boxing analogy, Tresselball is a series body blows with a haymaker thrown in now and then ... and when the haymakers connect, there's a good chance that you can get a knock-out, just like at Penn State last weekend. But we saw no haymakers yesterday ... no shots downfield, no reverses, very little play action, nothing to keep Iowa from absorbing body blow after body blow until the final bell, nothing to make Iowa "tap out" and say "no mas". Maybe if Iowa's defense had been burned earlier in the game ... or even tested ... then maybe Ohio State isn't running into a pile of bodies in the fourth quarter trying to set up a game-clinching field goal.
And that brings me to my players of the game. No one really stood out on either side of the ball ... at least not for the right reasons ... but the offensive line did a very solid job under very difficult circumstances. When everyone on the Horseshoe knew what was coming on every single play, the OL still kept mashing and gashing and gnashing the Iowa front seven. Ohio State ran the ball 51 times for 229 yards (4.5 average) and 3 touchdowns against an Iowa defense that had been giving up only 119 rushing yards per game and 3.5 yards per carry, and had surrendered just 5 rushing touchdowns all season. Despite the fact that the box was stacked against them all night long, that a banged-up Pryor wasn't a threat to run outside, and that the offensive scheme was virtually devoid of any plays designed to loosen up the Hawkeye defense, the Buckeye offensive line kept grinding out the tough yards all night long. Kudos to them. To everyone else, there's always next week....
Now for some fun stuff....
1. Ohio State has won five Big Ten championships in a row. How far back does each other Big Ten team have to go to claim five conference titles? Well, here is your answer:
Pretty amazing stuff that speaks volumes about Ohio State's excellence ... and the Big Ten's lack thereof.
2. Is anyone still impressed with Jacory Harris and the Hurricanes' high-flying offensive attack?
Is anyone still impressed with Matt Barkley's poise and command of the Trojans' pro-style offense?
Does anyone still think that Tim Tebow is the greatest player in the history of college football?
Does anyone still want to trade Tate Forcier for Terrelle Pryor? Or maybe you're all on that James Vandenberg band wagon now....
The point is that the football media, just like the media in general, is all about hyperbole, because hyperbole is what sells to the attention-deficit, thrill-a-minute generation that has been raised on cable TV, the internet, video games, and iPhones.
Tony Pike for Heisman!!!1!!1!
Or is it Zach Collaros now...?
3. With the Buckeyes out of the national title hunt, I'm rooting for TCU, preferably in a show down against Texas. But unless something unforseen happens, it looks like the SEC champ will be in the mix yet again ... probably Alabama, who is playing the best football in the country right now.
4. Back to yesterday's game for a minute.... In 2004, the Buckeyes won a game in similar fasion, when Mike Nugent connected on a 54-yard field goal to beat Marshall 24-21 as time expired. Back then, it was a thrilling, exciting finish, one of the greatest finales of all time, and I was jumping up and down with sheer euphoria (okay, maybe that's a bit of hyperbole of my own, but you get my point) ... but six years later, I've had enough. I just want to win games the old-fashioned way, by pounding the living snot out of the opponent for sixty minutes, by running up the score, by going for two in the fourth quarter....
5. It's officially Michigan Week. 'Nuff said.
_____________________________
[sup]1[/sup] 25 years, if Iowa ends up with a co-championship this season.
A side note on the Rose Bowl.... I suppose that the Rose Bowl should still have a bit of special significance for us Ohio State fans, but we won't even get a shot at our traditional West Coast rival this year. With Southern Cal out of contention, we'll see Oregon, or Stanford, or Arizona, or ... who cares? It's just another more-or-less meaningless bowl game against another more-or-less meaningless opponent. Let's bring back the good old days (1967 to 1979), when the Rose Bowl was the de facto national championship game no less than seven times (1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1979). Today, the Rose Bowl is just another multi-million dollar pay out from the BCS slush fund, nothing more. Only the BCS championship game means anything anymore, and since we're not going there, I don't really care where we go ... at least, I don't care as much as I should.
Now back to Iowa.... Maybe my lack of excitement over the conference-clinching win comes from the fact that no season is truly a success until after we beat Michigan. Even if the Buckeyes would have played a great game yesterday and beaten Iowa 38 to 10, it still would have been a Taco Bell win ... you know what I mean, satisfying for about five minutes, but leaving you completely unfulfilled and hungry for more. Yeah, no one can take those Roses away now, but somehow they won't smell quite so sweet if the Buckeyes fall in Ann Arbor next Saturday. The Game should be another romp, the Buckeyes are more talented at every position (okay, maybe not punter), and the Wolverines have probably already quit on their lamebrain soon-to-be lame duck head coach ... but there's always a chance that the Weasels will summon that last ounce of collective courage, will muster that final dram of combined character, will don their mighty winged helmets ans superman capes, and finally play like the champions that they have always dreamed about. For the Weasels' entire season is on the line ... I know that they are trying to become the first Michigan team to post back-to-back losing seasons since 1962-63 ... that they are going for their worst Big Ten record since they were shut out (0-5) in 1936 ... that they are on the verge of their worst defensive season ever (they need to surrender at least 39 points next week to eclispe last season's total of 347 points allowed) ... that they are trying to become bowl ineligible yet again ... I know all that. But I also know that the Weasels might just forget about the record books, might put the accolades aside, might forgo their rightful place in history ... and actually try to win The Game. So, the season's not over yet ... still some work to do, still some business to accomplish. It's Weasel season!
Or maybe my lack of excitement over the Iowa game stems from the Iowa game itself, which was ... well, let me put it to you this way. There's no such thing as a bad win ... especially if it's over a ranked team ... especially if it clinches a Big Ten title ... especially if it sends you to a BCS bowl ... but last night was pretty damned close. Some people have said that Jim Tressel is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers ... but sometimes it seems like he is trying to win the game with just his pawns and nothing else.
From a fan's persepctive, last night's game was simply brutal. That was the kind of game where we should have been singing "Nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye!" to Iowa throughout the final minutes ... should have been counting down the final seconds in unison ... should have been setting our couches on fire before Terrelle Pryor took his final knee in the victory formation. But, noooooo! Our team, our beloved Buckeyes, had to turn a rout into a nail-biter with some incredibly ... unfortunate ... plays down the stretch.
You know, if the Buckeyes had begun their meltdown with ten minutes left in the third quarter instead of with ten minutes left in the fourth, then we might have had Michigan State 1998 all over again. Instead, we had Navy 2009 all over again. The Buckeyes take a two-score lead in the fourth quarter, they have their opponent on the ropes, 99 and 44/100 percent dead and buried, and then they give up a huge play (85-yard TD pass versus Navy, 99-yard kick-off return versus Iowa) to let the bad guys right back into the game. It's almost like watching a horror movie sometimes ... you know, Freddie Krueger, or Michael Myers, or Jason being shot up, hacked apart, burnt to a crisp only to return fully reanimated over and over and over again. But in any right and proper horror flick, the good guys always prevail in the final minutes and live happily ever after ... at least until the next sequel. And that's what happened again last night ... we survived ... just barely ... but we survived.
Okay, as far as the game itself, Pryor was okay, the running backs were pretty good, the ... oh, the Hell with it. You watched the game - you saw what I did. You saw the most vanilla defensive schemes possible against a rookie quarterback, making his first ever college start, who was 9 of 27 for 82 yards and an interception last week in relief ... and you saw that same inexperienced rookie quarterback look like Joey Elliot for most of the game. The only time that Vandenberg really looked like a kid with no clue was in the overtime period when he threw an incompletion, took a ten-yard sack, and tossed an interception on what amounted to a Hail Mary pass. Why the difference between regulation and overtime? Were nerves finally starting to set in? Or was Ohio State dialing up the heat a few degrees? (BTW, thank you Doug Worthington - you deserve a dozen roses for that effort). Maybe the Buckeyes should have pressured Vandenberg right from the start, blitzing him early and often and from every conceivable angle, instead of letting him sit back in the pocket and get his confidence early by completing easy tosses into a soft zone. But then again, maybe letting the dogs loose from the first play of the game would have been too checker-like....
And the offensive game plan really wasn't a whole lot better. Yes, the running game was working, and I'm all for that, but do you maybe think that it might have been a good idea to mix in a play action pass or two every now and then? Like once a quarter, perhaps? We all know the main tenets of Tresselball - strong running game, stout defense, win the field position battle, make no mistakes on offense - but one of the aspects of Tresselball that is often overlooked is making big plays on offense. To use a boxing analogy, Tresselball is a series body blows with a haymaker thrown in now and then ... and when the haymakers connect, there's a good chance that you can get a knock-out, just like at Penn State last weekend. But we saw no haymakers yesterday ... no shots downfield, no reverses, very little play action, nothing to keep Iowa from absorbing body blow after body blow until the final bell, nothing to make Iowa "tap out" and say "no mas". Maybe if Iowa's defense had been burned earlier in the game ... or even tested ... then maybe Ohio State isn't running into a pile of bodies in the fourth quarter trying to set up a game-clinching field goal.
And that brings me to my players of the game. No one really stood out on either side of the ball ... at least not for the right reasons ... but the offensive line did a very solid job under very difficult circumstances. When everyone on the Horseshoe knew what was coming on every single play, the OL still kept mashing and gashing and gnashing the Iowa front seven. Ohio State ran the ball 51 times for 229 yards (4.5 average) and 3 touchdowns against an Iowa defense that had been giving up only 119 rushing yards per game and 3.5 yards per carry, and had surrendered just 5 rushing touchdowns all season. Despite the fact that the box was stacked against them all night long, that a banged-up Pryor wasn't a threat to run outside, and that the offensive scheme was virtually devoid of any plays designed to loosen up the Hawkeye defense, the Buckeye offensive line kept grinding out the tough yards all night long. Kudos to them. To everyone else, there's always next week....
Now for some fun stuff....
1. Ohio State has won five Big Ten championships in a row. How far back does each other Big Ten team have to go to claim five conference titles? Well, here is your answer:
Michigan - 13 years (titles in 2004, 2003, 2000, 1998, 1997)
Iowa - 29 years[sup]1[/sup] (titles in 2004, 2002, 1990, 1985, 1981)
Michigan State - 36 years (titles in 1990, 1987, 1978, 1966, 1965)
Wisconsin - 51 years (titles in 1999, 1998, 1993, 1962, 1959)
Illinois - 57 years (titles in 2001, 1990, 1983, 1963, 1953)
Minnesota - 72 years (titles in 1967, 1960, 1941, 1940, 1938)
Purdue - 78 years (titles in 2000, 1967, 1952, 1943, 1932)
Northwestern - 79 years (titles in 2000, 1996, 1995, 1936, 1931)
Penn State - never (titles in 2008, 2005, 1994)
Indiana - never (titles in 1967, 1945)
Iowa - 29 years[sup]1[/sup] (titles in 2004, 2002, 1990, 1985, 1981)
Michigan State - 36 years (titles in 1990, 1987, 1978, 1966, 1965)
Wisconsin - 51 years (titles in 1999, 1998, 1993, 1962, 1959)
Illinois - 57 years (titles in 2001, 1990, 1983, 1963, 1953)
Minnesota - 72 years (titles in 1967, 1960, 1941, 1940, 1938)
Purdue - 78 years (titles in 2000, 1967, 1952, 1943, 1932)
Northwestern - 79 years (titles in 2000, 1996, 1995, 1936, 1931)
Penn State - never (titles in 2008, 2005, 1994)
Indiana - never (titles in 1967, 1945)
Pretty amazing stuff that speaks volumes about Ohio State's excellence ... and the Big Ten's lack thereof.
2. Is anyone still impressed with Jacory Harris and the Hurricanes' high-flying offensive attack?
Is anyone still impressed with Matt Barkley's poise and command of the Trojans' pro-style offense?
Does anyone still think that Tim Tebow is the greatest player in the history of college football?
Does anyone still want to trade Tate Forcier for Terrelle Pryor? Or maybe you're all on that James Vandenberg band wagon now....
The point is that the football media, just like the media in general, is all about hyperbole, because hyperbole is what sells to the attention-deficit, thrill-a-minute generation that has been raised on cable TV, the internet, video games, and iPhones.
Tony Pike for Heisman!!!1!!1!
Or is it Zach Collaros now...?
3. With the Buckeyes out of the national title hunt, I'm rooting for TCU, preferably in a show down against Texas. But unless something unforseen happens, it looks like the SEC champ will be in the mix yet again ... probably Alabama, who is playing the best football in the country right now.
4. Back to yesterday's game for a minute.... In 2004, the Buckeyes won a game in similar fasion, when Mike Nugent connected on a 54-yard field goal to beat Marshall 24-21 as time expired. Back then, it was a thrilling, exciting finish, one of the greatest finales of all time, and I was jumping up and down with sheer euphoria (okay, maybe that's a bit of hyperbole of my own, but you get my point) ... but six years later, I've had enough. I just want to win games the old-fashioned way, by pounding the living snot out of the opponent for sixty minutes, by running up the score, by going for two in the fourth quarter....
5. It's officially Michigan Week. 'Nuff said.
_____________________________
[sup]1[/sup] 25 years, if Iowa ends up with a co-championship this season.
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