I turned the game off two times last night. First, with about 9 minutes left in the third, only to turn it on again a minute later,then again with just under 6 minutes left in the third quarter, and this time I left it off. I confess.

From the very beginning, from my seat at the computer some 8000 miles distant, this viewing of the game via a number of gambling sites was problematic, at best. The feed from each site I went to would start, freeze, start, freeze on and on. THe very act of actually getting the game stream involves wading through popups, clicking to close a popup only to find it closes the feed entirely, getting the stream and accidentally touching the volume and more popups happening, on and on ad nauseum. Not every game is like this, but last nights game was horribly frustrating to view from a streaming standpoint, and all happening in my vacuum of Buckeye world 8000 miles distant, where I can be pretty sure not a soul up here in the hinterlands of the holyland is up at 1AM watching my hometown football team shoot themselves in the foot on a live stream filled with porn shots and gambling come-ons. Not  any of my Israeli Jewish bretheren or my distant Arab Isreali cousins in neighboring villages.

The only thing that became clear to me while battling the gods of streaming this night is that the stream kept freezing on each moment PSU was scoring, or we were kicking a field goal, or when a long pass from McSorly was being intercepted by a Buckeye and then being taken away and being called atouchdown. It was eerie, this type of 'spearing me from the the harsh reality' of what was happening, and me doggedly closing all tabs in an effort to find out 'what just really happened'.I missed the opening kickoff return by Barkley because the stream on one site I normally use was just a blank screen, the next site closed when the game just started and I frantically reopened it but by this time Barkley had already scored. I missed the Hamilton touchdown pass, the OSU field goal, the first JK Dobbins fumble. I got everything up to these moments, but then the stream would just stop. The interception by Webb,overturned. The interception by Ward, overturned. 
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Believe me. by halftime,and well into the third quarter, going on 1 or 2 in the AM, I had stopped and started  my laptop 3 times, and had closed and reopened at least 15 streams from 4 different gambling venues. My head was throbbing, the Buckeyes has just managed to negate a first down throw by JT with a holding penalty, followed by their upteenth false start, and a delay of game to be sitting at first and twenty five in their own territory...

So I turned off the laptop. Silence up here where I live. Some wind chimes moving in the mediterranean breeze. I laid down, picked up a book, tried to focus but kept running through the scenario of the remainder of the season, 4 games with nothing to play for, vowing I would disappear from this site for the rest of the season, maybe forever. It wasn't the 'looking for the nearest cliff' scenario. Nah, just a sorta resignation. Between the gods of streaming fucking with me, the refs fucking with the Buckeyes, and just plain fatigue, I was finished. Hell, the very first game I watched up here was 3 years ago vs PSU and with Joey Bosa tackling two people in the backfield as the sun came up here, so, yea, just fatigue, unable to bear any longer the rollercoaster of emotions associated with watching 19 and 20 year olds playing their hearts out 8000 miles away from everything I once knew or know now. Was I also thinking I might be missing what could be the greatest comeback of all time? Yes. All night I kept going back to the game in Minnesota in 2014, a day in which the gods of streaming didn't mess with me at all, and I realized on each and every snap that JT took, that this is one cool customer at quarterback, playing in a blizzard but you'd swear he was oblivious to all the elements, the distractions,that everything was just alright, and this game was just one more game in a blizzard sans the snow. Yep, I confess, I missed it. Am I kicking myself now? Nah, I knew we had this all along.

Go Bucks!