As for my N.D. friend... think I'll let him live in his bubble a while longer... you should have seen the look on his face yesterday when I told him the early line had FSU up 10 points... today it's 10-1/2.
Ran into my Notre Dame friend in the copy room. We were chatting about this coming football weekend. He asked me "When Michigan plays a big game, do you like to watch it alone or with company?"
A resounding... "Alone!" "Especially if we lose, I do not want anyone around."
"My girlfriend wants to invite her friends over to watch the game. I don't want them there. I'll have to be nice to them and I can't throw things at the TV..."
:-)
Spoken like a true fan.
Hope he gets to watch the game alone or with just his girlfriend...
Man this is going to be a big one... I can hardly wait for 3:30... if you guys win... you'll be walking on air. I found this in the Times... G help me... I like the description of Tressel... dang... I was lucky. I was there in the golden years of Woody Hayes... the coach you loved to hate. LOL. One of my favorite yearbook pictures was one of a banner hung outside South Quad (the football players dorm) before an Ohio State game when Bo was our coach...
GIVE WOODY A BO JOB
Here's the article... GOBLUELONGHORNSLIONS... ksquared
BIG GAME ON CAMPUS In Columbus, It's That Perilous Time of Year By JERE LONGMAN
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 25 — While John Cooper won more than 70 percent of the football games he coached at Ohio State, he never won the favor of Buckeyes fans, who are as parochial as they are rabid.
They did not like his Tennessee roots, his Southern accent, his fondness for commercial endorsements or even the size of his house. They especially did not like his sodden 2-10-1 record against archrival Michigan.
When Cooper said goodbye, Columbus, two seasons ago, his successor was as homegrown as the famous script formation of the marching band. Jim Tressel was a native of Ohio, the son of a renowned coach, a former assistant at Ohio State and the winner of four Division I-AA national championships as head coach at Youngstown State. He even wears short sleeves and a tie on the sideline, evoking the sartorial preference of Woody Hayes himself.
"Whether it's fair or unfair, that comes with the territory — the coach has to have Ohio ties, or at least has to have played here," said Keith Byars, the former Buckeyes running back who finished second to Doug Flutie in the 1984 Heisman Trophy voting. "With John Cooper, some people never forgave him for that. That's not his fault. Just because he wasn't from here, and he didn't go to Ohio State. That's two strikes, and they were looking for the third strike."
After a 7-5 introductory season, Tressel has returned the Buckeyes (8-0) to their accustomed lofty position of fourth in the news media and coaches polls, and sixth in the initial Bowl Championship Series ranking and in the New York Times computer ranking. An undefeated season and hopes of a national championship can be prolonged with a victory here on Saturday against Penn State (5-2).
Yet a visceral dread exists alongside great expectations this time of year, when the leaves change and, often, so do Ohio State's fortunes.
The 1996 team was unbeaten and contending for a national championship until it lost to Michigan. A perfect 1998 season and a No. 1 ranking were scuttled by a defeat to Michigan State. It has been a maddening struggle for the Buckeyes to finish a season as dominantly as they began it.
This is a consuming place, like South Bend or Baton Rouge, that polishes the myths of college football as if they were trophies and buffs smooth the dented realities. Ohio State has won four national championships as voted by the wire services, and its players have been awarded six Heisman Trophies. Ohio Stadium throbs with 104,000 spectators. If Woody Hayes is remembered elsewhere for reckless indiscretion — he punched an opposing player in his final game as coach — he will always be revered here. Archie Griffin is the only player to win the Heisman twice. Perhaps there is a no more splendid tradition than the band's dotting of the i in Ohio. "Go Bucks" even flashes on the cash registers of local convenience stores.
But Ohio State's last national title came in the 1968 season. Fans have since chased elusive perfection, forever worried that the team's reach will exceed its grasp.
"It's like rooting for the Browns or the Indians," said Mark Doherty, 37, an engineer at a local hotel. "They get almost as far as you can go, and they always break your heart."
This season might already have unraveled if not for the calm demeanor of Tressel, who is a boyish-looking 49. Ohio State trailed in the fourth quarter at Cincinnati and Wisconsin but never panicked. "When the coach is as cool as a cucumber, that translates to the players," Byars said. And Tressel quickly defused two prickly issues that might have unnerved a more excitable coach.
When the precocious running back Maurice Clarett told ESPN magazine that he might explore jumping to the National Football League after his freshman season, Tressel did not blame the player for causing a distraction or chide the news media for luring a young player into saying words he did not mean. Instead, Tressel made a joke. Clarett had approached him during the summer, saying he planned to be at Ohio State for four years. "I hope I am too," the coach responded knowingly.
This week, when the B.C.S. ranking made it possible that Ohio State would not play for the national championship even if it went undefeated, Tressel handled the matter with aplomb. When asked if he would be outraged if that happened, he said, "I don't know that football is that important to be outraged about."
His sense of perspective came from his father, Lee Tressel, a former national coach of the year at Baldwin-Wallace, a Division III school in Berea, Ohio. There are no athletic scholarships in Division III, and at that level, the football tail does not generally wag the academic dog. Championships were great, Lee Tressel taught his three sons, but not at the expense of discipline and diplomas. Crosswinds would blow, he told them, but they should maintain a steady course.
Lee Tressel taught a class on coaching with a spiral-bound book called "Hotline to Victory," written by none other than Hayes, and won a national Division III championship in 1978. The boys still have the book and seem to have learned well. Dick Tressel won 124 games coaching Hamline University in Minnesota and was named the Division III national coach of the year in 1984. Jim won the honor four times in Division I-AA. No other father and son have won a national championship or a national coach of the year award.
In Berea, the Tressels lived next to the Baldwin-Wallace football stadium. The practice field was in their backyard and the gym was across the street. The high school was on another corner and the elementary school was behind the gym.
"Within two or three blocks, we had everything we needed," said Dick Tressel, who is now associate director of football operations at Ohio State. "Our mom could look out the back window and see practice, and know that after it was over, everyone would be there for dinner. If it was out of season, she had a bell on the back porch and she'd ring the bell and we'd come from the practice field or the stadium or wherever."
As a native, Jim Tressel learned a few things about Ohio State football not contained in a playbook. Fans do not want their coach to appear more interested in making a buck than in making the Buckeyes No. 1. While Cooper made commercials featuring himself and his family in a hot tub, Tressel has limited his television appearances to public service announcements for heart care and cancer research.
He also knows that no degree of hyperbole can overstate the importance of defeating Michigan. Upon being hired in January 2001, Tressel attended an Ohio State basketball game and told fans they would "be proud of their team in the classroom, in the community and, most especially, in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Mich., on the football field."
Tressel kept his promise, and last Nov. 24, the Buckeyes defeated the Wolverines on the road for the first time since 1987, 26-20. Asked by a reporter last summer how many days it was until this season's Michigan game, Tressel knew the exact number. It's as if he keeps an abacus at his bedside and moves a bead to the left each morning, joked Steve Snapp, Ohio State's director of sports information.
"If the team could go 10-1 and lose to Michigan, or 1-10 and beat Michigan, some people in town would prefer 1-10," Snapp said.
Michigan looms at home on Nov. 23, but Penn State is a more urgent concern. The Nittany Lions have been outscored, 135-28, in their last four visits here, all defeats, but Ohio State fans are hardly brazen. The Buckeyes blew a 27-9 lead last season at Penn State and lost, 29-27. Janein Slater, 22, a senior majoring in zoology, looked over the current schedule in a convenience store and said she was worried. This is what it means to be a Buckeyes fan. As the season progresses, so does the anxiety.
"When it's Penn State or Michigan, we freeze up," she said. "People start thinking, `Oh, no, we can't do it.' "
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