The Morning after on TSE - 1.8.2008

Here we are again.  A year later and everything has changed.  But nothing has changed.

There are some things in this world that I, now, know are completely true.  The SEC is full of incredibly hot women and depressingly fast football players.  Ohio State is full of mildly retarded coaches, Jim Kelly wannabes and a football team that, for the second year in a row, couldn't even get to the base of the thing, let alone get over the damn hump.

Sure, it was nice to see the Beanie TD early in the game, but everyone in the Superdome, hell, everyone in the world, knew that as soon as LSU held the Buckeyes to their field goal, this thing was over.  Ohio State needed to play it's best game if they wanted to keep it close.  That means efficiency in all things including in the red zone.  Yes, they scored, no it wasn't enough.  The aftermath:  A closer game but the same result.  Again, an Ohio State Buckeye team is embarrassed and, certainly, overmatched, by and SEC champion in the only game that really matters.  

Did we really expect anything different?  I have been saying since the Michigan game, that it would take the best game in order to win any bowl: Rose, BCS, Capital One or otherwise.  If Todd Boeckman played like he did at Washington, there would be another crystal trophy at the Hall of Fame Cafe in Columbus.  Anything less and all of Buckeye Nation (and, yes, I hate using that phrase) will politely turn the game off before the forth quarter starts and see what has been DVR-ing while we sat and had our hearts broken.  Again.

To their credit, this team overachieved like no other Buckeye team in recent years.  How was a team that lost so much supposed to come close to New Orleans in January?  Troy Smith and Ted Ginn and Anthony Gonzalez and Antonio Pitman - all making big bucks on Sundays now.  How do you replace that?  But they fired out of the gate at 8-0 and then it was a week-to-week showcase of "which top-2 team will lose this week?" that spring-boarded the Buckeyes to number 1.  How ironic (or maybe not, I'm about as good with that word as Alanis Morrissette) that in a year of cock-teases in college football, the overmatched Big 10 team that should have, given the nature of this crazy season, won the whole thing, lost according to the normal plan.

There are 1,000 more paragraphs I could write on the subject but it really isn't worth it.  My team - my Grandma's team - was humbled by a better squad last night for the second straight year.  It's the kind of thing that makes every part of you ache, yet you feel nothing because you've become numb to such a sensation, and have been for over a year now.  Compulsory congrats to LSU on their win.  They had a wild year themselves and capped it pretty well.  But this one still hurts the next morning and I don't think that going away for some time.