…[poof]…

Greetings, Warriors of the Eleventh Realm.

Yes, it is the Time Traveler. 

The need was great for a stop-in, and since I was in a nearby time-line, and trailing plasmafluid out the port vent, good a time as any, figured I.  Nothing serious, but a short stop over will give the old lady time to self-repair and rest.  I don’t want her depositing me on the edge of a wispy film nebulae on the cusp of some uncharted event horizon.  Crap, don’t get me started…

But enough of me.

I feel your pain.  I read it in your words.  I read it in the passionate responses from passionate fans of differing views, but nearly every single one a fervent fan of their Buckeyes.  If you were all in one room together over pizza and beer, there would be harmony.  Sad harmony at this time, but still you would show a greater respect to those with different opinions on the same things you care about.

But I come with a purpose to your pages today…for I know that overwhelmingly, you are good people.  I have monitored these pages daily for many years, as the 11W owners could attest…but can’t make comments from across the cosmos or from a parallel plane.  And yes, there are trolls in every known continuum, but without them, what purpose do we have for bridges?  Trolls need homes, too.  So I ask that you simply bear with me for a few of your moments, and I will be on my way (Time-Line 6239M is in need of a closer inspection).

It’s funny how the year of “perfect vision” became a vision of despair for so many earthlings of your time-line.  But I will not dwell on that. 

As most of you “old-timers” know (I'm looking at you, Hovenaut--perhaps the only human who may know my true identity), I time-bounce onto your plane of existence every couple of your years since discovering the ancient Buckeye Chronicles on your dwarf planet Pluto.  We believe a future (to you) explorer hid them at the old Hayes Monument in a storage cylinder found near the abandoned Plutonic Relay Station established there in two-hundred and twenty-three years.  But here on the earth of your time, most of the recorded files of this particular year in history (2020) were fuzzy at best because of the divided writings about the happenings you currently are witnessing.  

So, yeah, you guessed it…the Time Traveler was sent back to make a visit today (your today, of course--in my timeline, there are eight “weekdays”, today being Fensday for me).  Anyway, I’m here to “drop a bomb” (as your phrasing might interpret):

Ready?

The abundance of ancient scroll-files pertaining to what I once told you was the “Golden Buckeye Era”…DO continue!  They haven't yet been written, but I just wanted to assure and comfort those of you on the edge of abject panic…step away from the ledge..please!  If you jump now, you will miss the best part of this new era of Buckeye greatness!  Don’t fear-sweat your way into a heart attack (easily reversed in my time line with a tickle swab, but if I’m not mistaken, heart attacks can still be lethal to you folks).  But yes…THEE survives!  And not just survives…THEE thrives!  Saddened be not!  Glad be!

I know those of you who love that Thee also understand that this present football squad is something very special…historically so, that is true.  But being potentially denied an opportunity to prove it on the field against the best in the country has created a broken heart across all of Buckeye Nation.  But I gently manipulate your memory to those broken hearts of your past…all the adversity…all the heartbreak and pain…that was your year of 2014.  That year was of particular anguish, when the very life of one of your beloved Buckeyes was lost on the way to a National Championship.  The pain of that loss in the midst of glory has not been forgotten…but it made the final victory so much more precious.  History found that the tenacity and togetherness of that team was only strengthened by the many tears that were shed in the months leading up to the glory.  Suffice it to say that no other team at that time could have survived that kind of pain. 

It was a special time.

In the linear cosmic year of 28-OH, we time historians dubbed that 2014 Buckeye football year as the “Murphy Year”.  I believe your time-line uses a phrase called “Murphy’s Law”.  Everything that could go wrong for the Bucks…did go wrong.  Nobody…and I mean nobody in any of the time-lines I travel to…could have predicted that your third-string quarterback would pick up where the second-string quarterback left off, and somehow just accelerate from there!  It was like one of your ancient gasoline engines had been infused with plasmafluid!  The resulting Golden Buckeye Era Chronicles were replete with exclamatory praise for those Bucks. 

And it was well deserved because it was earned.

But guess what?  And please…don’t go blabbing this to the rest of the sports world…but a funny thing is going to happen well within the futures of you all.  Every single salty-teared hater believes that this current situation is definitely going to cripple the Ohio State football program...and yes, many are salivating over that very thought.  In some of the conference's darkest and dankest corners, the fronts of entire shirts are saturated with said saliva.  In fact, many years from now, one of the shirt-owners is going to write of this period in his famously sad memoirs that “in the depth of my own personal misery, humiliation, and despair, I was gleefully anticipating the leveling of the Ohio State football program back to the place the rest of us were, and especially me…at the University of…”. 

((For the sake of preserving the privacy of history yet to come, I cannot tell you the exact person who writes this, but he is currently the head coach of the…wait a minute…hey, you thought you were slick, huh?)) 

All I can do is give you a cleverly veiled clue you may or may not decode:

But like all those that are now wishing and hoping Ohio State is humbled to the point of making the Big Ten competitive again against the Bucks…he had to stand back and watch in stunned horror as Ohio State became even more sought after by high-grade elite recruits (I think you call them “five-stars”?),  and the juggernaut just kept rolling against all the odds and crushing the opposition with unrelenting excellence.

Why?  Because of leadership.  “Leadership and Love”, it will be dubbed one day.  The perfect storm of talent evaluation, development, coaching, and schematic creativity are added to that selfsame leadership and love, and this Ohio State has it all…in abundance.  You Warriors know this to be true.  And that is the source of your frustration.  This team could beat the green-skinned toothy Harboons of Ackligan (a three-moon system in the Wolvern galaxy). 

They are that talented.  The college football world just hasn’t quite realized that yet.

But come to fear it, they will.

So it is with quiet glee I declare to you, O Warriors of the Eleven…the sky is not falling!  And no, I cannot tell you when the sky actually does fall.  That would be a violation of the universal Time-Line Law.  But I will say that the asteroid that skips into the earth’s atmosphere on November 2 will dissipate harmlessly, so telling you that ahead of time really isn’t a violation of Time-Line Law.  Believe me…T.L. enforcement would be right close on my tail if I did commit such a violation.  I’d likely then have to do something very stupid, like travel back to just before making the “downliner” and correct it into an “upliner” that doesn’t create any of those pesky ripples in the continuum (hint: sudden chills in the midst of a short mental “time-glitch”, often called “déjà vu”, is most often a benign ripple).  But yeah, uh-huh.  Talk about the year of the Murphy!  Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan, huh?

But I don’t want to burden you with all of my woes.  I know you’re kinda stuck in the present of where you are (I would invite some of you onto my ship, but the added mass would trigger an alarm, and then they really would be at my hatch!).  But my point is this: 2020 is just one year!  Sure, it will be seen as a mostly bad one by a majority of earthlings of your time, grant you that, I will.  But any grief you may feel now will soon give way to wonder and excitement over what you will discover is not just a unique team right at this moment…but a unique and glorious team of tomorrow!

Look, some of you use the phrase “I want to run through a wall…”.  We of the future and sideways parallels collectively never understood that term, and many of our researchers were quite literally injured seriously trying to replicate the connotation…until we studied the Ohio State fans in more detail.  It has something to do with adrenalin, right? 

You will be feeling that again!

So buckle up, Buckeye Nation.  Tuck your poison nuts away for use in your tomorrow.  Beyond your wildest hopes and plural imaginations, your delight and glee is yet to come.  Be strong.  Stand up.  Be heard, yes.  But more than that...be felt! 

And not just by the babies of the Big Ten as it realizes it has been lapped and left behind…(Note: Kevin Warren, second from left)

...but by the powerhouses on the outside…the Tigers and the Tide, and all the others who ebb and flow with a semblance of greatness from time to time. 

Nobody but us Time-Line historians were able to pinpoint the reasons for the glitch of 2019, but that third quarter scoop and score had a clear and simple explanation: Perhaps the Seeing Eye Cats would have been a better choice?

Regardless.  They will all soon realize a Dynasty has arrived.

This is a special time!

I will bid you a fond farewell with this quote from a great and famous Buckeye…

“O-H!”

…]poof[…