Hang on Sloopy

Saturday was a B-E-A-UTIFUL day, was it not? To all the Buckeye haters out there, well, I don't even know what to tell you. If you didn't get a chance to see the amazing comeback led by Junior quarterback Troy Smith, it'll be re-aired as an "Instant Classic" Wednesday night on ESPN 8...."the ocho." Actually, ESPN Classic, but someday I hope to be running one of the 26 different ESPN channels.

Quick thoughts:

-Once again we saw young linebackers step in when we needed a lift. After Bobby Carpenter went down on Michigan's first offensive play from scrimmage, I thought we were in trouble. But the kids stepped up HUGE, just like when A.J. Hawk filled in as a freshman in the Fiesta Bowl in 2003 when the Buckeyes stunned "the other Miami" for the National Championship. Kudla and Patterson did a nice job of shutting down the ends in nickel packages and getting pressure on the quarterback. Hawk and Schlegel had monster performances, as always. Great job by the D to hold Michigan to 32 rushing yards and 255 total yards for the game.

-Is it just me, or should we have won this game by at least two touchdowns? I know this was an atypical game for Ohio State on special teams, but I think those miscues cost us about 130-150 yards in field position and at least 11 points. (UMs TD after the bad punt and the missed XP and FG.) "That School Up North" (this is the nickname Ohioans have unaffectionally given to Michigan, which will from now on be referred to as TSUN) did absolutely nothing all day long. They had three drives where we gave them the ball inside our 37-yard line that they promptly scored 18 points on. One was only a 5 play, 10 yard drive where we stiffened up at the 10-yard line and forced a field goal after turning it over on our own 20. Their two touchdowns came with the aid of pass interference calls in the end zone; one good call, the other a horrific one. Their final score of the day came on a legitimate 11 play, 69 yard drive early in the 4th quarter. Even here, the Bucks' D held at the 2-yard line to force a 19-yard field from Fat Boy Slim (but not actually slim,) Garrett Rivas.

-Looks like we may be headed back to Tempe for the 3rd time in 4 years. I would love a shot at the Irish. Seems to me, as always, Notre Dame is drastically over-rated. Seriously, 6th!?!? They have only played two teams that are currently ranked (#1 USC and #22 TSUN) and they went 1-1 in those games. The only road game they played against a winning team was TSUN, which had a horrendous start to the season. Yes, they played well at home against the Trojans, but they lost. They also lost their home opener to a Michigan State team that has seriously crapped the bed this season. Their schedule (which admittedly seemed difficult in the preseason) looks like this:

at Pittsburgh (5-5)
at TSUN (7-4)
Michigan State (5-6)
at Washington (2-9)
at Purdue (5-6)
USC (11-0)
BYU (6-5)
Tennessee (4-6)
Navy (6-4)
Syracuse (1-9)
at Stanford (5-5)

Hardly daunting. Are they the best 2-loss team in college football? Not likely. Let's ask the AP and Coaches poll voters to kindly remove their heads from their asses. Be honest. You have Notre Dame ranked that high because you all love Charlie Weiss. You have them that high because they almost beat the team that has been ranked # 1 for about as long as we've had troops in Iraq. You have them there because you get to see every game on national television and they have beaten up on inferrior competition. Because of the tradition of football in South Bend. Because of a great movie about a kid who wouldn't quit (that actually turned out to be a moron.)

From left to right (taken in fall of 2001): Cap, Rudy, Nick, KP.

But seriously, look at the teams ranked below the Irish in the AP poll. Do you think they could beat all of those teams? Georgia, Miami (FL), Oregon, Auburn, Alabama, West Virginia, THE Ohio State University..... Sure, maybe they'd win a couple games, but I can't believe they should be ranked higher than all of those teams. I just hope we get a shot at 'em to set the record straight.

-Back to the Bucks...is it just me or did Teddy Ginn, Jr. disappear at times this season? Wasn't that the quietest 9 catches for 89 yards you've ever seen? If it wasn't for the 3 consecutive balls thrown to him on the final drive and the 2 fumbles, I think I may have assumed he missed the bus to Ann Arbor. Don't get me wrong, he's obviously explosive, clearly one of the best athletes in college football, undoubtedly the fastest guy to wear the scarlet and grey (ever?) at least since I've been alive. But don't you think he's a little over-rated? We're talking about a guy that has fumbled a ridiculous amount of times this year. We need to get him some stick'em like Clifford Franklin. I'm telling myself that it was just a sophomore slump and that he'll be back with a vengeance in 2006, but I also hope Santonio Holmes comes back for his senior year so we have a receiver that makes his biggest plays in the biggest games, is willing to take a hit, and even throws a hell of a block.

-Say what you want about Jimmy T, but Sweater Vest boy gets the job done. Tressel has certainly made mistakes this year (namely the decision to take out Troy Smith during the Texas game and, conversely, the decision to leave Troy in during the Penn State game.) But, he's 4-1 against TSUN, far better than his predecessor John Cooper's record of 2-10-1. He's also 3-1 in bowl games including 2-0 in BCS Bowls. It's also been said time and again that OSU is a football factory and they don't care about the student in student-athlete. According to his bio, we had 47 players above a 3.0 in 2004. Not bad.

-I watched this game in the comfort of my own home with my buddy Hutch and my sister. A few years back I decided to stop watching these games at bars or with non-OSU friends. For one, I don't want any negative Buckeye energy near me. I even kicked out my roommate, Nash, because he hates OSU and his mom used to work for TSUN (she now works for Florida State, not much better.) Surely he wasn't sticking around anyways, but you get the point. He and our other buddy, Lizak, are Notre Dame fans. I just can't deal with that during the biggest rivalry in all of sports. The other reason I stopped going out for these games, I'm just not a fun person to be around if we lose. The night we lost to Texas, I felt like I had just watched someone run over my dog with a riding lawn mower. Thankfully I have neither a dog nor a lawn mower, so this could never happen. But you could imagine if it did.

-Hutch, or BNT as he is known by many a Chicagoan, promptly fell asleep late in the 3rd quarter or early in the 4th. I'm not so sure exactly when this happened because I was too involved with the game. He claims the Skyline dip "got to him." I think a second X chromosome got to him, but that's just me.

-Not too long after that, my sister disappeared into my bedroom to lay down. I'm not sure if she, too, was just being una punta gigante or if she legitimately couldn't handle the 21-12 score that we were behind by. Either way, she heard the touchdown to cut the lead to 21-19 and stayed put. Good girl. I am generally not a superstitious person. I've never knocked on wood. I walk under ladders like it's my job. I'm not afraid to break a mirror, in fact, I find any activity where I get to break things to be wildly entertaining. As far as black cats go, I punt them (to be fair, I would punt any cat that got in my way.) Let me make this clear though, had she come out of that room, I would not have hesitated to knock her out with a swift blow to the temporal lobe and put her back where she was. You just don't mess around when momentum has shifted our way in a big game. And if you think I'm joking about this, you just don't know me very well.

-The first touchdown TSUN scored was my fault. Let me say that again. The first touchdown TSUN scored was ENTIRELY my fault. On Friday, I came home from work and proceeded to play a game (or four) of EA Sports NCAA College Football 2006 on my PS2. I'm a couple of seasons deep in the dynasty mode and Maurice Wells (Ohio State's true freshman tailback) is a junior and one of my star players. I was playing the #3 Tennessee Volunteers in a rematch of the previous season's National Championship game. Maurice Wells fumbled SIX TIMES. Why didn't I take him out, you ask? Because I kept thinking to myself, "Self, the computer won't make him fumble again, will they?" The answer is a resounding, "Yes, they would." True to form, Wells coughed up the ball on our own 36-yard line with his only carry of the real game. I can only breath a deep sigh of relief that Tressel didn't stick with him like I did. This is my offical apology to all of Buckeye Nation and I am currently drafting a formal letter to Troy Smith and Jim Tressel to thank them for bailing me out. It's my fault. I will not argue about this.

Finally....
-ANN ARBOR IS A WHORE!