<poof>

Greetings, Deuce Decaders of the new millennium.

Do you see the looming portent of doom about to fall upon the college football landscape?

Well, did you?

I assure you, our study of ancient history revealed that many signs were made plainly obvious along the way for those discerning ones.  Perhaps you saw them.  Perhaps you did not.  You were tickled either way.

Sugar Bowl.  10:38 mark of the third quarter.  Action is stopped momentarily and a quarterback comparison graphic pops up:

Sims...confident and posing, and points as if to say, "We comin for ya, Buckeyes!"  And why not?  They are Alabama.  The gangsters of the previous seven years, and both the bully and the pride of every other SEC team.  They've been here before, and will be again, and if they're not, other things besides the tide...will roll. 

Expectations weigh heavy upon Nick Saban's diminutive head.  Throughout the game you can see his despair quietly building into realization, and then to resignation.  If you watch very closely at the end-of-the-game hug, you can detect his rush of inner relief, as he relinquishes the throne he has been so awkwardly perched upon for several years.  He is the best.  There is none beside him.  It is no more.

It's also no wonder that he was gifted with hemorrhoids for his troubles.

Urban Meyer.  Presumably a "year away" from this moment, yet here he is, crazy like a fox, in full-on chase mode, and with a team that has truly bought in...lock, stock, and smoking twelve gauge. 

Certain ideals are rarely ever challenged...unless, of course, it is a genuine Cinderella season like the one unfolding before the world.  It is a replaying of "The Miracle on Ice", which I happened to see while in the flesh.

These are the historical way markers, set in tablets of hallowed stone in my time...and recounted with wistful gazes back at the Buckeye Domination, as we have come to know it. 

These moments of the past...once gone from the present they become the history of the future.  Treasure them while in their midst, O Nation of Buckeye.

But I digress as I often do...did I tell you about the pretty bird in the window?

No?

Well, then, back to that quarterback comparison at 10:38:

Jones...playfully flipping the football and looking like a kid with a big bag of gooey chocolate chip cookies, and just wanting to get on the field and start eating.  Did you see it?  He is subconsciously spinning the ball delicately from hand to hand, feeling its weight, becoming intimate with its skin and with its seams, bonding with its spirit.

Romancing the leather stone was the only thing on his mind that night.

Then as the camera begins to pan off of him to return to the present action, a great big ole smile spreads across his face. 

At that moment, he symbolizes the passion of an entire team, a school, a state, and a fanbase...and the invincibility of knowing that everything...everything, is gonna get left on the field that night...and no matter the obstacles, they would get it done.

Any astute watcher of time would've noticed the subtle little hints that Dr. Fate and Ms. Destiny wove into the tapestry and rained upon that legendary year at Ohio State.

Loss to Tragedy, and back again.

Breathe it in, Buckeyes.  It is air that is rare...and sweet to the scent.  Remember its breezes and its storms, so that you might recount its swirls of intricacies to your future kinfolk...

And for those of you who reside duplicitly in my timeplane...who travel the cosmos stem to stern...remember with me, if you will, with fondness thee Ohio State of yore...and that hated bane of college football's new playoff era at the midpoint of the second decade of the new millennium...from Cinderella to King, with back to back to back national champions who did what the cynics said couldn't be done..."

And that was exactly how it should be.  We remember it well.

Ukudigada to you, my time-honored friends.

>poof<