|
|
|
Oh! Come, let's sing Ohio's praise, and songs to Alma Mater raise...
Columbus -- You are a Lima, Ohio native. And like most native Ohioans, you never forgot your roots.
You grow up in Pittsburgh and New Jersey in an era long before high technology would allow you to somehow be a surrogate resident of your true home state, and though you went to college out east and are loyal to a fault to your chosen alma mater, you never entirely shrug off your native state's football tradition.
If you live in the Pittsburgh South Hills suburb of Mount Lebanon today, you could pick up Ohio State football on Youngstown's 5,000-watt blowtorch, WKBN/570 AM. And you could watch via the ESPN-plus Big Ten hookup, if the mothership in Bristol, Conn., for some misguided reason, opted not to televise the Buckeyes on a particular Saturday.
If you live in Bernardsville, N.J., within 30-air mile eyeshot of the Empire State Building, with a couple of simple clicks of your mouse, you could erase your surroundings of fair-weather New York fans and college-football near-illiteracy and let Paul Keels and Jim Lachey take you inside the massive stadium they call "The Big Horseshoe" on the Columbus "Fan," WBNS-AM, the Ohio State flagship.
The world has truly shrunk, collegeBLITZ.com has learned not so exclusively.
Football Saturdays can be legendary in Penn State's breathtakingly gorgeous Happy Valley or mystical South Bend.
In tradition-steeped Ann Arbor, rural Champaign or West Lafayette, mad, mad Madison or Iowa City not to mention such heathen outposts as Tuscaloosa, Knoxville, Tallahassee, Austin, Norman, Eugene, Boulder or Colorado Springs or West Point you can behold classic slices of football Americana.
But something there is about that trip along High Street about two and a half miles north of downtown that to this day will give virtually any visitor golf ball-sized goosebumps.
The local pubs, full of revelers of all ages (legal, of course), let out periodic chants of "OH-H...EYE-OH!!!" Most have speaker sound systems, and on this day, no Backstreet Boys, Springsteen or Styx can be heard. Everywhere, it seems, is the sound of what Scarlet and Gray clad hordes from Portland, Maine to Portland, Ore. to Pago Pago to Pamplona declare loudly as "The Best Damn Band in the Land!"
"Ah well," 58-year-old Cleveland area native Don DiSanto says, helping his wife Betty don her huge Ohio State parka, "time to head to The Horseshoe!"
They have made the 142-mile trek down I-71 for more than a generation and the anticipation never changes. Only this year, with the Buckeyes 8-0 going into Saturday's key game against Penn State, the expectations certainly have.
"We were lucky a few times, kicked some butt a few others and had some in-between games," DiSanto says. "But you know what? We're undefeated and I think we're as good as anybody."
Folks in Miami and Norman, Okla. may cast a few dissenting votes, but in beating a very talented Penn State team that could very easily have been 7-0 coming into Columbus, the Buckeyes took their record crowd of 105,103 worshippers on a terrific little nostalgia trip to the three yards and a cloud of dust days of all-time legend Wayne Woodrow Hayes.
Woody. You don't ever go far in Columbus without seeing reminders of the fiery but brilliant guy who really inscribed O.S.U. football into the national conscious.
Woody Hayes Drive.
Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
Woody Hayes pictures still gracing restaurant windows.
Woody Hayes bobble head dolls.
Somewhere up on the Elysian Field sidelines, the crusty, dude in the black baseball cap with the red "O" and white shirt smiles down on his beloved Ohio Stadium.
And coaches since -- Earle Bruce, John Cooper and now Jim Tressel -- have spent more than a few moments on the emotional torture rack trying to live up to Hayes' impossibly high standards (two national titles, a .761 won-lost percentage and constant national ranking).
On this day, a spectacularly versatile athlete -- starting wide receiver Chris Gamble -- doubles as a cornerback, returning an interception for a touchdown, preventing another on a brilliant open-field tackle of Penn State's touchdown-bound Anwar Phillips, somehow willing the Buckeyes past a gritty Nittany Lions team, 13-7. His reward is a five minute postgame lovefest from the adoring crowd.
"Ohio Stadium is a special place," Joe Paterno had said during the week. "I love going to Ohio Stadium. The football atmosphere there is electric and you really feel it..."
The feelings run high from the moment the B.D.B.I.T.L. makes its cadenced, fast stepping entry from the north ramp into the stadium and the huge crowd rises as one -- save the 5,000 vocal Penn Staters scattered in four locations -- and joins in the rite, creating a staccato racket.
...While our hearts rebounding thrill, with joy which death alone can still.
Middle America. God, family, white frame house on Maple Street. Rotary Club, Knights of Columbus, P.T.A., weekday bible class teacher. Accountant. Homemaker. Car dealer. Defense attorney. East Cleveland. Chagrin Falls. Back of the Rhine. West Chester. Republicans. Democrats. Teachers. Preachers. From every imaginable ethnic background, neighborhood and lifestyle they come seven or eight weekends each fall.
Ohioans declaring their Ohioness. Renewing old friendships, building new ones...
Down comes the band at double-time, lining up in what best can be described as a funky formation looking a little like your shoelaces untying themselves.
In stunningly quick orderliness, they file with military precision to the west side of the field and form the school's signature formation, "ScriptOhio," where the Ohio I is dotted by a powerfully-built fourth-year sousaphone player.
The melodies are sacred rite -- "The Buckeye Battle Cry," a salute to the visiting team -- in this case "Hail to the Lions," Ohio State's world-famed "Across the Field" fight song, followed by the daunting "Carmen Ohio," the school's alma mater. Many fans' eyes well up...
It was into this intense backdrop James Patrick Tressel cast himself in the winter of 2000, knowing the expectations and pitfalls that gobbled up Cooper, who won 71.5% of his games in Columbus, but committed the mortal sin of going 2-11-1 against the guys Woody Hayes called "The Gang Up North," archrival Michigan.
During halftime of the Buckeyes' home basketball game against Michigan in January, 2001, Tressel declared "I want to make you proud of what our student athletes do in the classroom, off the field and what they do come Nov. 24 in Ann Arbor!" The home opponent that night — Michigan.
The nearly 20,000 Buckeye faithful nearly lost it. Gipper, shmipper. This was schmalz. But even though the Bucks endured a sub-standard 7-5 season that ended in a 31-28 Outback Bowl loss to South Carolina, Tressel's team made good on his promise and went into Michigan Stadium and beat the Wolverines 26-20.
Summer's heat or winter's cold. The seasons pass, the years will roll...
There are times Tressel can't believe his good fortunes. He had taken a struggling Youngstown State program and in his 14 years, turned the Penguins into a I-AA national power, winning four national titles and two other championship game appearances.
As he addresses over 160 media in a makeshift press area in a cramped room in the stadium's southeast tower, he seemingly still has the deafening sound explosion of the Scarlet and Gray hordes ringing in his ears.
"You can't discount the impact of the crowd here," he says. "It had to be hard to play offense in white jerseys. They really got after it...this was a group effort."
He pauses to extend his hand to any number of fans outside the stadium before and after the game, ever the good will ambassador. But the good will wasn't limited to all things Scarlet and Gray.
Before the game, the stadium PA announcer calls attention to the southwest corner of the field where former Penn State defensive back Adam Taliaferro stands in his generic white road 43 game jersey. He had suffered a crippling spinal injury two years before in a gruesome head-on collision with 240-pound Ohio State fullback Derek Combs.
"It was said he would never walk again, but Adam Taliaferro thought otherwise," the announcer says, "and he told the medical team at O.S.U. Medical Center he would walk into Ohio Stadium at sometime in the future...and here he is! Let's have a warm Columbus and Ohio State University welcome for Adam Taliaferro!"
The explosive display of affection is yet another touch of Buckeye hospitality.
The game evokes memories of Bob Ferguson or Pete Johnson slamming into a waiting wall desperate for that extra yard, of an unyielding Ohio State defense that simply would not allow Penn State's 35-point-a-game offense to function, holding it to an unbelievable 179 yards.
"There is something special about playing in the 'Shoe," DiSanto says finally. "I get to some of the road games and I know people who've been down south, out west and east and they all say the same thing. There's no place like our place."
...Time and change will surely show...how firm thy friendship O-hi-o. |
|
|
|
Lyrics to “Carmen, Ohio” courtesy of The Ohio State University
Paul Smith is the midwest correspondent for collegeBLITZ.com
|
|
|
|
|
