In 2013 we were coming off a bowl ban from the dark years of Ohio State football. We all remember. It was the second year that the Big Ten featured a Championship game. So many of us placed losing that game on so many different factors without taking into account that Michigan State had been in the Championship game the year before while we sat at home Undefeated. They knew the stakes. They had felt the pressure.

       We came into 2013 with very few players on our roster knowing what a Championship/Bowl game was. The intensity, the pressure, the crowd noise, just the overall size, meaning, and hype of that atmosphere. As we all know we lost on a fourth and one play as Michigan State ran away with the game. That was also the first year we lost too Clemson, again in a Bowl game. Yes the defense needed a facelift just as the offense does this year. 

       2014 was a different story, by the time the Big Ten Championship game arrived we had a team that knew what it was going into. We had been there. You could see it in their eyes that they knew this time around what big time, big boy football was about. They were professionals, they new how hard they had to go and they rode that on a national stage to a National Championship. Pat Elfein brought up this year how the team was shown film of the last three games of 2014 to show how hard they went. How much they grinded, every last play. But like the title of this post, you just cant know until you've been there.

     2016 came and the exodus to the NFL was as large as there has been for one team. The players that had been there were now gone and those left made up the YOUNGEST team in all of College Football. Although talented and hungry to prove themselves they were missing one major thing. Something you just cant teach no matter how hard you try.. In the National playoff semi finals they ran into a team that possessed that one thing. A team of grown men. A team of players that knew far to well 9 units strong for this caliber of game. They had been there. They had been shaped by it. 

     Try and remember Taylor Decker wasn't our left tackle anymore a 3 year starter, replaced by a more than capable, however YOUNG Jamarco Jones. Isaiah Prince, a TRUE freshman Michael Jordan, A group of first year wide receivers no longer with Thomas or Devin Smith. A young redshirt freshman running back that may or may not of experienced some jitters in the size of this situation, this game, enough to let the ball slip, like he hadn't much at all, all season prior. Low and behold even as great of leader as he is, JT Barrett himself had never played in a championship game after being injured by our enemies the year before. Sure he played against Notre Dame but how over hyped has Notre Dame been in the last twenty years, in a bowl game that frankly doesn't matter to Ohio States standards.

     What I'm getting at is the offensive coaching staff has been takin care of. As far as the players go lets take this year for the great things we did accomplish with this very talented, very young team. At Ohio State its not okay to settle for average. Add the experience of playing in the biggest games to the constant strive for greatness and there's a storm coming in 2017. Whether its revenge for new offensive Coach Wilson Indiana week one, Oklahoma, Our Rivals, or even the king of College Football Alabama they should all be afraid of what's on the horizon. A pissed off, 9 unit strong, group of grown ass men on a tear to prove themselves. Now... They Know, They've Been There, and IT IS TIME!!!!!!!