Thursday May 28 Links and Banter
We're kind of phoning it in right now, if we're being honest.
In the first installment of this series, I chronicled my experiences as an Ohio State fan during the 1990s. During that decade, for all the program's many successes, pursuit of a national championship had a certain Charlie Brown vs. Lucy quality to it each year. Loaded Buckeye teams would steamroll through the majority of their schedules, only to slip on a (usually Wolverine-striped) banana peel and come up short. If you missed the first installment, it's available here:
One Night in the Life of a College Football Fan (Part 1)
To understand pleasure, one must first experience pain
Transient Buckeye
The Jim Tressel era kicked off in 2001, a season where Ohio State shambled its way to a 7-5 record and a bowl loss. But Buckeye fans came away from the season cautiously encouraged, because the team had managed to pull a significant upset over Michigan in Ann Arbor, something that had definitely not been a feature of the John Cooper era.
Ohio State was expected to be improved in 2002, but not a championship-caliber team. They were ranked in the mid-teens in most preseason polls. But a dominant showing in the nonconference season, including thrashings of ranked Texas Tech and Washington State squads, got the season off to a strong start. Ohio State got steady play from Craig Krenzel at quarterback, freshman Maurice Clarett was a revelation at running back, and the defense, once Chris Gamble was slotted in at cornerback and became a two-way starter, was a brick wall. Ohio State rolled through the first half of the season...and then Clarett suffered a shoulder injury that kept him out of action for most of the second half of the season, and severely limited even in the games he was able to play.
In Clarett's absence, the offense became an affront to the eyeballs. Somehow, though, the team kept winning, scraping out nail-biter after nail-biter against such noted Big Ten powerhouses as Northwestern, Purdue, and Illinois. Though the second of those did give us one of Brent Musburger's most memorable calls.
A fourth-quarter comeback and pair of turnovers forced by the defense gave OSU its second consecutive win over Michigan, and the team was 13-0 and headed to the national championship game.
But this was where the party looked like it was about to end, because Ohio State's opponent in the national championship game was a Miami Hurricane team that was riding a 34-game winning streak. Larry Coker's squad was the defending national champions, and featured both a loaded offense and a stacked defense. Miami was favored by 11.5 points going into the game, and a lot of national observers (and, famously, a lot of Miami's players) were treating the outcome of the game as a foregone conclusion.
Still, this was the first time in my OSU fandom that the Buckeye had gotten this close to the brass ring, so there was no chance I was going to miss the game. However, circumstances dictated that it was going to be a rather unconventional viewing experience. My wife was in the first year of her obstetrics and gynecology residency in 2002-2003, and the night of the championship game, she was on call. This meant that there were just three of us in the house that night: me, Transient Daughter (age 2), and an eight-month old Labrador Retriever mix named Rip.
A couple of facts are relevant here. Transient Daughter, at that age, hated sleep. I mean absolutely HATED it. Sleep was a mortal enemy, to be fought and resisted with every fiber of her considerable willpower. Getting her to sleep required one of us to engage in a lengthy pacification ritual, involving reading, snuggling, and storytelling. With the game kicking off at 8:00 pm (well before her nominal bedtime), there was no way I was getting her to sleep before the start of the contest. So, with my wife absent, and the house therefore empty of responsible adults, I made an executive decision. What better time to educate my eldest child about our glorious sport?
This came with certain risks. I was quite literally living and dying with every snap, and I had to mightily resist the urge to deploy certain, um...."vocabulary builders" while within earshot of an impressionable two-year-old. Rip, meanwhile, was curious about the break in household routine, and spent the first half exploring the living room and doing his best to get underfoot. Still, the evening offered some father-daughter bonding opportunities. When Ohio State cashed in on a short field after a Miami turnover to take a lead just before halftime, the following exchange occurred.
Me: Can you say, "touchdown," sweetie?
Transient Daughter (raising arms above shoulders, mimicking me): Touch-down?
Me: That's my girl!
At last, halftime arrived. And for once, I was grateful to ABC and ESPN for their insistence on padding out the halftime show during the national championship game, because it might....MIGHT...give me enough time to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Namely, getting my daughter to take the hint provided in the title of the literary classic Go the Fuck to Sleep.
As soon as the first-half clock hit "0:00," I swept up Transient Daughter, and carried her to her room. Commence the ritual of reading, snuggling, and storytelling. And then a miracle occurred. In approximately 18 minutes, her breathing regularized, her eyes closed, and I began the task of sloooooowwwwly easing my way out of her bed, onto my feet, and out the door. If you could make the hallway without her waking up, you were usually good, and fortune smiled upon me this night. I was back on the living room couch just in time for the final commercial break before the second-half kickoff.
The second half of that game was tense. Really tense. Both teams were giving it everything they had. Craig Krenzel throw a horrible interception on Miami's goal line...and Maurice Clarett ran down Sean Taylor from behind, ripping the ball away from him and stealing back possession for OSU. The Buckeyes cashed in a field goal, and led 17-7. Miami got a touchdown, and their offense seemed to be finding its rhythm. Then Willis McGahee's knee exploded in what is easily the most gruesome injury I've ever seen happen live--and then replayed in slo-mo.
I was waving my arms, jumping up and down throughout the second half...but NOT uttering a sound, because Transient Daughter was a light sleeper. So I settled for silently mouthing encouragement and obscenities at the television screen. This was sufficient to convince Rip that his person had lost his goddamn, ever-loving mind, and he fled to the kitchen, spending the rest of the game cowering under the kitchen table in fear of his life.
Miami tied the game on a long field goal at the end of regulation. The infamous Terry Porter flag (see below) has been litigated and re-litigated ad nauseum ever since. The only comment I'm going to make about that at this point is to say that if instant replay had been a thing in 2002 (*), that game never would've gone to overtime, because Ohio State would've won in regulation.
(*) It wasn't. Instant reply in college football debuted in 2003, pioneered, unbelievably, by the normally stodgy and tradition-bound Big Ten.
Overtime came. Miami scored a touchdown. Ohio State went backwards. Craig Krenzel converted a 4th and 13 pass to Michael Jenkins. Ohio State again faced fourth down. Krenzel's pass to Chris Gamble fell incomplete. Miami's players began celebrating on the field. I cursed. Fireworks lit the sky over Sun Devil Stadium. And then the flag came fluttering in.
I'll say two things about that flag. The first is that the only reason the call is considered "controversial" was because Terry Porter took forever to get the flag out of his pocket and throw it. Had it not been thrown two seconds late, a lot of the "controversy" about the call would never have arisen.
Second, it was the wrong call. Porter flagged Miami cornerback Glenn Sharp for pass interference, but the worst contact (a definite mauling) occurred before the ball was thrown. The correct call should've been defensive holding. Given where OSU was on the field, this was mostly a moot point, the difference would've only amounted to about half a yard. With new life, Ohio State punched in a tying touchdown on a Krenzel quarterback sneak. In the second overtime, Maurice Clarett dove into the end zone from about five yards out to put OSU up 31-24.
Miami still had a chance to tie. They wound up with 1st and goal from the OSU 2 yard line. A first-down run gained a yard. On second down, tight end Brett Romberg was wide, screaming open in the flat, but Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey, who had been getting the absolute shit kicked out of him all game and was clearly feeling it, missed the throw. A third-down run was stuffed for no gain. On fourth down, Miami opted to try to pass (probably smart, with McGahee out of the game). OSU linebacker Cie Grant came in completely unblocked on a blitz, and ragdolled Dorsey to the turf, Dorsey's desperation heave into the endzone was broken up by Donnie Nickey, and a decade of frustration for OSU fans was washed away in one glorious moment.
As the realization sank in, I broke into what was intended to be a victory dance, but probably looked like a flamingo suffering an epileptic seizure. I was jumping up and down on my carpeted living-room floor, fist-pumping the air, and (utterly silently, because again, light-sleeping child) mouthing "Yes! Yes! Yes!" The game ended at around midnight EST, and I think I probably didn't get to sleep until around 3:00 am. Totally worth it.
And that was the evening that, for a short span of time, caused all the pain and heartache of every one of those bittersweet 1990s seasons to fade from memory. At least until the next painful loss, because yeah, painful losses are the one constant in college football fandom.
Epilogue (courtesy of Mrs. Transient): Remember how I said earlier that Mrs. Transient was on call at the hospital on the night of the 2003 Fiesta Bowl? As it happens, she was assisting with a delivery shortly before midnight on January 3rd (i.e., during the two overtime periods). So as the contest was reaching its climax, she was sitting with her hands shoved between a woman's legs, waiting for the baby's head to come out. The father-to-be was in the delivery room. With his eyes locked onto the T.V. screen showing the second overtime, because honestly, it's important to have your priorities in order.
I'm not sure which one of us has the better story from that night. But perhaps you can help us settle that in the comments.
