"Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair, or fuckin’ beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man — and give some back."
Buckeye nation has had a little more time to digest the horror that was Monday night. Even after reliving each devastating sack, every uninspired drive and a full game of heartbreaking zone coverage, we've come to the following conclusion: there is no question that Ohio State was soundly defeated, but we still refuse to believe that the Florida Gators were 27 points better than the Buckeyes.
All the credit in the world goes to the Gators and coach Urban Meyer. They were hungrier, better coached and turned a very good Buckeye team into Molly McGrath's early season Wildcats. The layoff, hubris, underdog motivation factor and many other things contributed to this defeat. Big games like these, with so many marbles on the line, tend to get lopsided quickly and that's what we saw. The bottom line is the outcome is what it is, but Urban's Gators don't beat the Buckeyes 9 out of 10 times as the ESPN GameDay crew claimed after the game.
Of course, as this goes out, the 11W "Hometown Homer" statue is rising next to the LeVeque Tower, but the team we all saw on Monday night was not the team we saw dispatching foes all season long. A good portion of that is due to the Gators -- but not all of it. The Vest now has an opportunity to pull a lesson out of this mess, to be studied by himself, his staff, and future squads. (We're betting the double-bound set of "The Legend of BCS Hubris" and "The Tale of Maurice Gone Astray" will make excellent reading for incoming freshman.)
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The final polls were released and the Buckeyes snuck in at #2, slightly ahead of LSU in each major poll. We were thinking we could slide even further and that may, in fact, be reflected in the arguably more thought out BlogPoll once that is updated.
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Elsewhere..
About Last Night... [The Best Damn Blog in the Land]
Ouch [The Buckeye Expat]
National Championships - It's What We Do [Orange and Blue Hue]
Reader's Digest Version of the BCS Title Game [The Wizard of Odds]
Comments
"Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair, or fuckin’ beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man — and give some back."
The Bucks will be giving some back next year.......guaranteed. and the Gators beating us 9 out of 10 times....what IS that crew smokin?
I know I'm a little late on a game review. But I had pre-planned a day off from work yesterday to recover from what was supposed to be a celebration-laced hangover. After Monday night's debacle, yesterday was more of recovery from the blues...not only a hangover. I steered clear of the internet, tv, newspapaers, etc. because I just could not deal with it yet. But what became clear to me was that the Buckeyes became everything we hated about the '02 Miami Hurricanes. Cocky, overconfident, arrogant, & about a thousand other adjectives that I never thought I would use to describe a Tressel-led Buckeyes team.
I'm not going to make excuses. The lay off definitely hurt us…the drive wasn’t there. We were beat by the better team “that nightâ€. Not much to say about that game other than we need to put it behind us b/c that was a poor excuse of a Buckeye team. I haven’t felt this way since the 2004 game against Iowa and that wasn’t even a huge game for us….
Frosty, I know what you mean about avoiding media. I usually start my mornings with the SportsCenter loop playing in the background, but not Tuesday. Tuesday was a fine day for music... the cheer-you-up-so-you-don't-impale-yourself kind.
Boone - tell me the offensive line didn't remind you of the Sugar Bowl vs. FSU when Germaine was just tossed around all game.
OH man! On my way home last night I was chatting with a buddy and said those exact words! All I can see is that dirty front page of the Dispatch where it had big nasty Andre Wadsworth hovering over a cowering Germaine like he was getting ready to give him a welcome to the pin pretty boy love smacking!