I've been on a high since Curtis scored the game winner on Saturday (I think I've watched that touchdown from every available angle at least 30 times) and felt the need to put my thoughts down a bit.  

Last year was probably the least enjoyable experience I've had as a Buckeye fan, even including the Fickell year.  I bought in hard to the mindset that winning a national title was the expectation and anything less was a disappointment.  Because of this, even before the MSU game, I found myself barely finding joy from watching Ohio State play most games.  For whatever reason, we never really played up to our potential and I (along with a lot of other fans) let that bother me to a tremendous degree.  After losing to MSU, I found a little bit of solace from beating ttun and ND, but watching MSU get pounded by Bama reignited the same anger towards our unfulfilled potential.  

After the overall negative experience from last year, I came into this year determined not to let myself get so sucked in by expectations that I couldn't enjoy the ride and its been so much better.  Playing a more difficult schedule and having such a young team definitely helped to temper expectations, but I was able to enjoy great performances like the Oklahoma game or the comeback against Wisconsin without constantly worrying about how the committe would view it.  As infuriating as the Penn State loss was, I didn't let myself spend the next two months obsessing over how that impacted our playoff chances.

All of this brings me to the game against ttun.  I was lucky enough to be in attendance to watch possibly the best sporting event I've ever seen, maybe not in quality of play but definitely in emotional impact.  Running onto the field with my dad and brothers was an incredible moment that I'm going to remember for the rest of my life.  After the game, anytime I started to obsess over whether or not we would make the playoffs, I reminded myself of how it felt to watch Curtis break free for the game winning score.  Where last year I walked away from the game against ttun angry that we weren't playing for a Big Ten Championship, this year I just reflected on how damn great it feels to be a Buckeye fan.

As Tim wrote in his article this morning, we're in a golden age of Buckeye football right now.  I for one am very guilty of looking ahead to the future and, in doing so, missing out how awesome the present is.  I'm all for thinking about the playoffs and debating our chances to a certain extent, but I'll be damned if I let that get in the way of enjoying how good it feels to beat the piss out of ttun another year.  

Sorry for the word vomit, just wanted to throw out some of my feelings on what has been an awesome year as a Buckeye fan. Go Bucks!