FRIDAYYYY MAY 21 LONG WEEKEND Links and Banter
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Weekend.
The night in question was January 3, 2003, the night of the first-ever BCS National Championship game, which pitted heavy underdog Ohio State against the Miami Hurricanes. But before we get to that night, we need to go back in time--all the way to 1994.
Trigger Warning for Michigan Fans: Kordell Stewart Reference Incoming
I came to my Ohio State fandom quite late. I was born and raised in Michigan, and my own father is a University of Michigan graduate. So I grew up rooting for the Wolverines, something that is now a source of both confusion and retroactive repulsion for me. Upon finishing my undergraduate education in 1994, I set off for my first tour of graduate school--in Columbus, Ohio. I still felt a certain degree of attachment to Michigan in 1994, so much so that I felt genuine pain when Kordell Stewart hit Michael Westbrook to lift Colorado to a win over the Wolverines in Ann Arbor. That first year, I wasn't sure where my sympathies were going to lie when The Game occurred.
But by late November, it was no longer a question. I was Scarlet and Gray all the way. Ohio State actually prevailed in that year's matchup--probably saving John Cooper's job in the process. Ohio State was good, but not great in 1994. They went 9-3 in the regular season, losing a nonconference road game at Washington, getting obliterated by the death machine that was 1994 Penn State, and losing at home to Illinois, a team that caused almost as much misery for John Cooper during his tenure as Michigan. They played Alabama in the Citrus Bowl to end the season, and since it was pre-Ryan Day Ohio State playing an SEC team, they lost.
The next four seasons were the peak of the John Cooper era, and they provided a lot of highs. In the four-year stretch from 1995 to 1998, Ohio State went 43-7. To put that in context, from 2022 through 2025, a period in which OSU was a perennial national title contender, Ohio State went 48-8. So Cooper's four-year run in the mid-1990s, in an era when seasons were shorter, was pretty damned impressive. Highlights in that stretch included knocking off Washington in 1995 to avenge the previous year's loss (the first Ohio State game I ever attended, and the game that launched Eddie George's Heisman campaign), pummeling Lou Holtz's Notre Dame teams in 1995 and 1996, beating Penn State in Happy Valley in 1995 and walloping them in Columbus in 1996 (a 38-7 game that was not nearly as competitive as the score indicates), the thrilling last-minute comeback win over Arizona State in the 1997 Rose Bowl, and John Cooper's second and last win against Michigan in 1998. By any rational standard, Ohio State had just completed one of the best four-year runs in the program's history.
But....fandom isn't rational, is it?
For all the highs during that span, every single one of those seasons came with moments of heartache. In 1995, Ohio State was powered by an electric offense, featuring Bobby Hoying, Eddie George, Terry Glenn, Orlando Pace, and Rickey Dudley--paired with a defense that definitely would've been among the best in the MAC that season. That formula worked until the last game of the regular season, when Tim Biakabutuka almost set a Michigan single-game rushing record against said MAC-caliber defense. A deflated OSU team again wound up in Orlando for bowl season and lost to Tennessee in a monsoon.
Despite losing Hoying, George, Glenn, and Dudley, Ohio State's offense was surprisingly good in 1996, riding the quarterback platoon of Stanley Jackson and Joe Germaine. But the real difference was on the other side of the ball, where new defensive coordinator Fred Pagac had transformed Ohio State's defense into an aggressive, blitz-happy, quarterback-eating monster. Ohio State rolled to an 11-0 record to start the season, and then the John Cooper curse struck, as Michigan knocked Ohio State out of national title contention. At least the Rose Bowl victory over an undefeated Arizona State squad quarterbacked by Jake "the Snake" Plummer offered some consolation. An obviously relieved John Cooper committed what is known as a "Kinsley gaffe"--when a public figure tells the truth without meaning to–during the postgame interview with Jack Arute, declaring that his team was "going to take a victory lap for all the great fans that we had come out with us, they've been behind us win or tie...." He wasn't wrong.
1997's frustrations didn't have a lot to do with Ohio State itself. The Buckeyes' two regular-season losses came on the road at Penn State and Michigan. They stung, but both games were competitive, and both of those teams were better than Ohio State that year. Getting firebombed by one of Bobby Bowden's better Florida State teams in the Sugar Bowl sucked. But the worst thing about 1997 was that Michigan ran off an undefeated season and claimed a share of that year's national championship.
Ohio State had ZERO players taken in the 1998 NFL draft (I believe the only year in my entire OSU fandom where the Buckeyes haven't placed at least one player in the NFL). But this wasn't because the post-1997 roster was barren of talent; it was because all of OSU's key pieces from 1997 had been underclassmen, and therefore draft-ineligible. 1998 Ohio State was shaping up to be a monster of a team. And they were. Of the 12 teams they faced that season, they beat 11 of them by at least 10 points, including Michigan, whose Tom Brady-led team was overwhelmed in Columbus. But even the Michigan victory felt a little hollow, because two weeks earlier, Ohio State had lost to a 6-6 Michigan State team at home, as a four-touchdown favorite.
I've seen a lot of losses to Michigan in my time as on Ohio State fan, and each of them has been bad in its own way. But the worst I've ever felt after a sporting event was in the wake of that utterly inexplicable 1998 loss to the Spartans. Despite playing up to perhaps 10% of their talent level, Ohio State still led 24-9 late in the third quarter, only to let it slip through their fingers. I've seen teams beat Ohio State plenty, but that game truly felt like a game that OSU lost. The Spartans and Nick Satan Saban kept OSU out of that year's national title game, in a year where they would've been a HEAVY favorite against any of the other contenders. The loss was doubly painful because it meant that Ohio State hadn't been able to close the deal--in a year where they definitely should have been able to do so--just one year after Michigan had hoisted a championship trophy.
Conventional wisdom, even among a lot of Ohio State fans, is that John Cooper was fired primarily because of his record against Michigan. But I have always maintained that this is incorrect. Cooper's record against Michigan gave him a lot less grace with the athletic department than he would've had if he'd gone .500 against them. But it's not what sank him. What sank him was a massive slump in the team's results in 1999 and 2000. In the 1998/99 recruiting class, Cooper took fliers on several talented players who had not come to play school--even when they were still in high school. That gamble crapped out when OSU lost something like a quarter of its incoming freshman class to academic ineligibility. Ohio State struggled with a badly talent-depleted roster and a brutal Big Ten schedule (the two teams not on their Big Ten schedule in 1999 were Indiana and Northwestern, who finished 9th and 10th in what was then an 11-team conference), finishing 6-6 and missing a bowl game. The 2000 team was a little better, going 8-4, but they again finished the season with a loss to Michigan before getting embarrassed by South Carolina in the Outback Bowl. The next day, Ohio State pulled the plug on the Cooper era.
Ohio State hired some obscure (to me) guy I'd never heard of from Youngstown State to replace John Cooper, and the new era in Ohio State football began. Not right away. Ohio State was thoroughly meh in 2001, going 7-5 and losing to South Carolina in the Outback Bowl for the second year in a row. But...things felt a little different. Because in November, Ohio State had done something they hadn't done in literal decades. They went into Ann Arbor as a heavy underdog and beat Michigan on their home field. A Michigan team that was significantly better than that year's OSU squad spent the first half of that game punching itself in the dick in every way imaginable. Ohio State was able to build a big halftime lead and then hold on for dear life down the stretch.
By Ohio State standards, 2001 was still a pretty bad year. Going 7-5 isn't going to keep you employed at OSU for very long. But the win in Ann Arbor, coupled with generally low expectations going in 2001, had given him some runway to work with.
The next year, he and his team made the most of it. And in the process, they set the stage for one of the more unique nights of my adult life. But we'll get to that next time.
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