No Ohio State football team should ever look like that.
Ever. Even if the program had just missed out on a handful of national title shots in excruciating fashion and an emotional downshift was inevitable. The Buckeyes can't be allowed to fall apart in any postseason game. Even a devalued one.
They were missing their rangiest receiver, had lighter-than-expected depth at tailback and late offensive line shuffling wasn't ideal. Ohio State simply ran out of juice after losing to Michigan, again.
But no Buckeye football team should ever look like that - not with the weapons it still had available. Scoring only once in any game against a team with over 60 3-star players on its roster is unacceptable in any era or setting.
We are, of course, talking about Ohio State's 2001 Outback Bowl loss to South Carolina:
It was sort of a capstone on what we have seen as a deteriorating climate within football program. Concern about discipline, competitiveness, academic pursuits, a whole series of things.
Rangy WR Reggie Germany was forced to sit that one out, having infamously pulled off a 0.0 GPA during the fall term. Derek Combs' bowl practice appearances and punctuality earned him an in-game suspension. Offensive linemen LeCharles Bentley and Tyson Walter engaged in their own unique brand of shuffling. It wasn't great!
That capstone quote above was from Andy Geiger at the press conference following John Cooper's termination, which took place after one of the most pathetic bowl game performances ever produced by any Ohio State football team.
Deteriorating was an apt descriptor. Rapid would have added precision to the nature of the decline - Ohio State had just been the nation's most formidable program two seasons earlier. No matter how much college football changes, it's still played by college kids. Conditions can deteriorate rapidly.
Ohio State football did not rise to its elevated perch by promoting interns or preserving nepotism.
Not all bowl game losses smell the same - as bad as the 31-0 shutout to Clemson in the 2016 CFP Semifinal was, the Buckeyes still lost to the eventual undefeated national champions. That's a higher challenge than the low bar the 2000 team failed to clear in Tampa.
Which is why Ohio State faced no culture or talent questions after 2016, two years removed from a national title and one season following from a regrettable failure to remain upright while perched atop the sport. The problem was a failure to perform at an acceptable level by a section of that coaching staff.
That rapid deterioration was almost entirely on them, and Urban Meyer knew it. His team had a stifling defense which sprung leaks on account of an offense that could not move the ball or stay on the field. If that sounds familiar, congrats for watching the entire 2023 Cotton Bowl.
Meyer didn't wait to make necessary changes, because the best program stewards in the sport always operate with urgency. Ed Warinner and Tim Beck were essentially fired on the tarmac in Phoenix returning from that 31-0 disaster and replaced that same week with significant upgrades in Kevin Wilson and Ryan Day.
That's how it's done. This is the Ohio State football standard. It's a business, not a family.
Dec 29, 2023; Arlington, Texas, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes special teams coordinator Parker Fleming looks to the video board during the second quarter of the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic against the Missouri Tigers at AT&T Stadium. © Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK
Failing to act with urgency is how head coaches lose their jobs. Unfortunately, Meyer was prone to making emotional hires too - you may be surprised to learn he's actually human. Wilson and Day entered the program in an era where Meyer also hired the man who proposed to his daughter and the best man from his own wedding.
Neither hire had appropriate credentials or reasons to be on Ohio State's staff, and neither had any market value in college coaching. Both were still on the payroll when Urban retired, and one remains today. Jim Tressel used to have Nick Siciliano masquerading as quarterbacks coach. Today, Ryan Day has Corey Dennis.
The 2001 Gamecocks might have been in the same state as Clemson, but not in the same galaxy as the 2016 Tigers - South Carolina had gone 0-11 the previous season. The Buckeyes rolled into Tampa, treated it like Spring Break and were humiliated by a middling program that had no business staying on the field with them.
We've breached a similar, though not identical timestamp - the last major bowl win for the Missouri Tigers (so, not the Cotton Bowl) was a 20-18 upset over Florida in the Sugar Bowl back when Steve Spurrier was quarterback. Back when they played it in Tulane's stadium. Not quite as sweet as the destination it has been over the past four decades.
So last Friday was Mizzou's best bowl win in about 60 years. A gift from Columbus.
This rapid deterioration is due to a failure to perform at an acceptable level by a section of that coaching staff, and Day knows it. College football's best program stewards operate with urgency, but no such leadership is on display in Columbus.
At the time this column was written, Ohio State still employed a shocking number of assistants who don't recruit, cannot recruit, cannot coach adequately - or a combination of all three.
If you're not maniacally plugged into the meticulous details of the Ohio State football program, you can get a rundown of whom these guys are elsewhere on this web site, in the forum or any other outlet that covers this team. But you don't need it.
You just need the embodiment of the current, rapid deterioration. And that is Parker Fleming.
Fleming was making $68,958 as a quality control assistant in 2020 before Day elevated him to a $300,000 salary in 2021 to occupy a coordinator position, running Ohio State's special teams and gaining off-campus recruiting privileges and obligations.
His unit was comprehensively mediocre in 2021, his first year in such a role. The Buckeyes' special teams got even worse in 2022. There were the two botched fake punts against Michigan and Georgia, the mystifying coverage schemes and the final play of the season as the clock struck midnight in Atlanta - but those were just the memorable, highlight-reel failures.
Fleming's unit has been defined by its unrelenting and aggressive incompetence. It attempted three 2-point conversions in 2022 and took pre-snap penalties on all three of them:
Ohio State tried to go for two three times last season and took pre-snap/delay of game penalties on all three attempts pic.twitter.com/Yx8bmI4PEq
— Colton Denning (@Dubsco) February 16, 2023
Day's response to this performance was rewarding Fleming with a $200,000 raise and a two-year contract. Here is his recruiting track record. On Friday you watched Ohio State's punt return team literally stand in place while fair-catching balls inside the 10-yard line three times.
They picked up a half-dozen holding penalties this season on fair catches. That's not coaching, it's vandalism. There's no strategy or improvement, just rapid deterioration. Fleming has no upside, no market value and contracted through next season for no reason. His existence on the staff is self-sabotage which extends beyond special teams snaps.
When any organization retains F, D, and C employees, the B and A ones go elsewhere. That's a First Day of Management lesson and Ohio State football is failing it.
Fleming's retention is the embodiment of the program's deterioration. If you squint hard enough, you may conclude Day is so stubborn he would rather be proven right than take action to correct a condition of his own making. Moving on from Fleming would be a tacit admission of a mistake he made following 2021. Alas, giving him a giant raise for performing terribly didn't work.
Day has been forced to defend Fleming in press conferences this season, as beat writers delicately raise the subject of the Buckeyes' pitiful third-unit performance. This is how Iowa has operated with Kirk Ferentz, but under the warm blanket of nepotism.
The outcome on Friday - a 14-3 loss which seemed inevitable even with a 3-0 halftime lead - diminished the championship effort and preparation of Jim Knowles' defense. It's just incredibly hard to smell a flower in a landfill.
Unlike that 2001 Outback outing, Ohio State's offense didn't look like it had been on Spring Break in Tampa against Missouri. It looked like it had been completely unprepared to play in a football game against any opponent. It all looked improvised.
We could talk about offensive line development being stuck in neutral. Quarterbacks whose ankles appear to be made out of pretzel rods, which may be an indictment of a strength and conditioning program that's grown stale.
the underlying disease created by chosing passivity over urgency is now on full display.
A tight end room that produces a lot of fire but consistently alarming blocking liabilities from top to bottom. A defensive coaching legend in his twilight whose inability to secure recruits has left his own unit in an alarming state. Plenty of time to cry about all of that. It's a long offseason.
We could also talk about Day quietly holding three full-time jobs because he refuses to let two of them go, which has compromised the results of all three. The second-most shocking moment of the Cotton Bowl, behind the offensive line's comprehensive inadequacy - was seeing Lincoln Kienholz's throwing motion.
He looked like he had been instructed all season by a former Georgia Tech wide receiver who simply married into the right family. Ohio State did not rise to its perch by way of promoting interns or preserving nepotism.
If Day wants a family atmosphere at work he should open a deli and hire people who look like him to get their paychecks there instead. Ohio State is not a job where the head coach surrounds himself with people he enjoys and has the luxury of kicking difficult decisions down the road.
Other programs with OSU-level aspirations understand this. And if Fleming's cartoonishly horrendous performance is being tolerated - as discussed, he's been promoted, extended and given multiple raises - then just imagine what else is permissible.
His continued preservation on the staff negates the need for a detailed list of grievances, which - bonus - my own chronic inability to stop typing the thoughts in my head slipped a bunch of them in the paragraphs above.
When Ohio State lost to Michigan in the game where Tshimanga Biakabutuka became a household name, John Cooper fired defensive coordinator Bill Young. It was a significant personnel move; Cooper had Young on his staff at Tulsa, moved him to Tempe when he took over at Arizona State and then moved him again to Columbus.
They were inseparable, right up until Coop finally accepted that separation was required. By the time he began to understand how the Ohio State head coaching position absolutely had to be handled, it was too late. That blown 1998 title shot was the mortal wound to his tenure, and his final two teams embodied what rapid deterioration looks like.
Day inherited a situation he helped elevate through his own performance on the Ohio State staff. It is now rapidly deteriorating around him in large part because of difficult decisions he either refuses to make or is delaying for too long. That's the job. You have to do it.
Giving Missouri its moment in the sun isn't the bottom. That was merely a symptom of a burgeoning crisis that won't magically correct itself in the absence of bold, demonstrative and immediate actions with the coaching staff. The underlying disease created by choosing passivity over urgency is now on full display.
It gets much worse than losing to Missouri in a meaningless game. The time to act was months ago, and the best college football program stewards understand this.
If Day is among them, he should show it. No Ohio State team should ever look like that.
