Today members of the 2017 Ohio State Buckeyes football team received their treasured gold pants. For members of Buckeye Nation, it’s a day worth celebrating.
In 1934, after years of Michigan gridiron dominance over the Buckeyes, legendary Ohio State coach Francis (“Close the Gates of Mercy”) Schmidt told the Men of the Scarlet and Gray that the Wolverine players put their pants on one leg at a time, like everyone else. In short, the players on That Team Up North were human and could be beaten. Ever since, players on an Ohio State team that beats the Wolverines in The Game receive an old-fashioned “gold pants” charm. It’s one of the cooler traditions in the tradition-soaked world of Ohio State football.
If you click on the link above, you can watch a video that Ohio State football released about the distribution of the gold pants, including comments from J.T. Barrett and some other recent Buckeyes about The Game — and how many pairs of gold pants they’ve earned during their Ohio State careers.
The Cotton Bowl win was also senior quarterback J.T. Barrett’s last game at the offensive helm for Ohio State. In fact, the game was a bit of a microcosm of Barrett’s career at OSU. He scored both offensive touchdowns for the Buckeyes and became the Big Ten’s all-time total offense leader, but the offense became predictable and J.T. run-oriented and was stopped repeatedly in the second half, when with a few additional scores the Buckeyes could have blown the Trojans off the field and really made a statement. That’s why many members of Buckeye Nation view JTB with mixed emotions — they acknowledge him as a winner and appreciate his skills as a runner and a leader, but they also think about what could have been if he had just played a little bit better in the handful of losses that have marred Barrett’s overall record.
This year is no different. With Ohio State’s win over Wisconsin last night, a game in which the Buckeyes were led by a gutty J.T. Barrett, only days after he’d had knee surgery, the Buckeyes are 11-2 and the official Big Ten champions. Normally, you’d think the Big Ten champs would be in easily — but in one of those losses the Buckeyes got waxed at Iowa, losing by 31 points in one of those games that shows you that anyone who thinks they can predict college athletics just doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The first three teams in to the College Football Playoff are easy decisions: Clemson, Georgia, and Oklahoma, which handed the Buckeyes their other loss. And now the chatter is whether the fourth team should be Ohio State, the Big Ten champ with that one big matzo ball of a bad loss, or Alabama, which has only one loss but didn’t play in its conference championship game, lost its only game of the season against an elite team, and played a schedule that wasn’t very difficult.
“Lead” is a good word to use in conjunction with J.T. Barrett, because by all accounts he is a leader first, second, and always. Any true Buckeye fan has seen J.T. in the locker room or on the sidelines, pumping his fist and giving impassioned talks to his teammates, but what really seems remarkable about him is not the rah-rah stuff, but the quiet things that generate respect and a willingness to leave everything on the field for the guy. When J.T. first burst onto the scene, he played behind an inexperienced line and got pulverized in an early loss to Virginia Tech — but he showed great toughness, kept his mouth shut, accepted the punishment as part of the game, and led the team to a dramatic turnaround that saw the Buckeyes become an offensive juggernaut. And then, on the cusp of triumph against Michigan, he suffered an injury that knocked him out of that game, the Big Ten championship, and the run to the National Championship. Lesser people would have whined about their misfortune, but not J.T. Barrett. He reacted with grace and dignity, supported his team, and celebrated when they hoisted the trophy, even though it must of been devastating to not be able to run out onto the field.
Westworld is right up there with The Leftovers as the most confusing show since Twin Peaks. It’s so intentionally mystifying that I don’t even try to understand it, or piece together the disparate threads of the plot. I just wince at the horribly bloody violence that is likely to occur at any tender moment, groan at the show’s troubling core assumption that any human who goes to a fantasy world will promptly turn into a blood-soaked, sex-crazed lunatic, and recognize that any character in the next instant could be revealed as a robot, a cold-blooded killer, a psychopath, or all three. (I also cringe for the actors who have to routinely sit buck naked on chairs on a sterile set while other characters question them and tap iPads, but that’s another story.)
This year’s team is an intriguing one. Most of last year’s starters have ended their college careers, and many have moved on to the NFL. Familiar names like Ezekiel Elliott, Michael Thomas, Joey Bosa, Adolphus Washington, and Darron Lee aren’t on the roster any more. In their places are a bunch of new guys. We don’t really know them — yet — but we’re eager to see whether they can fill the big shoes of some of the finest players ever to don the Ohio State uniform.
A shrug, because we recognize that a win is a win and we have confidence that the offense will play better with J.T. Barrett at quarterback. We see other teams falling from the ranks of the unbeatens — look at what happened to Michigan State, for goodness’ sake — and we know that even if Ohio State’s win looked sluggish and uninspired, it still goes in the W column. And in college football, staying unbeaten is still the best way to make it to the playoffs.
This week Ohio State has a bye week, and the jinx bit — just when Ohio State seemed to have turned a corner with J.T. Barrett taking over the starting position at quarterback and the Buckeyes posting a crushing road victory over Rutgers last weekend. To the consternation of members of Buckeye Nation everywhere, Barrett was cited early this morning for a misdemeanor count of OMVI. He will serve a one-game suspension, will missing the Buckeyes’ game against Minnesota, and will be eligible to return for the game against Illinois the following week. In the meantime, Cardale Jones will once again start for the Buckeyes — and we’ll see whether Barrett regains the starting job once he’s eligible to play again.
Offensively, the Buckeyes seem to be moving toward making J.T. Barrett the starting quarterback. The more he plays, the better the offense performs. Cardale Jones is a fine player with a terrific arm, but with Barrett at the helm the Buckeyes simply seem more fluid, more confident, and more multi-dimensional — and Barrett has an uncanny knack for finding the first-down marker and keeping drives alive. With Barrett playing increasing minutes, the Buckeyes have now gone two games without drive-killing turnovers and are turning red zone appearances into touchdowns. And last night, they did it all against a pretty good Penn State defense that features lots of talent.
That doesn’t mean that their fitful offense hasn’t been frustrating. With so much talent, and the memories of the team’s dominance at the end of last year still fresh in the minds of Buckeye Nation, three-and-outs to the likes of Indiana and Maryland are like fingernails on a chalkboard.
And then, after improbably putting himself in contention for the Heisman Trophy and leading Ohio State to the brink of over arch-rival Michigan, Barrett suffered a gruesome injury that ended his season. He reacted with class and stoicism — as every J.T. Barrett fan knew he would. Throughout the season, he has managed to combine humility, quiet confidence, and leadership in a heroic mixture that seems more suited to a Grantland Rice story than modern reality. But when he broke his ankle, then gave the stunned crowd a sign as he was carted off the field, then showed up in the stands in an inflatable cast so he could help root his team to the win, Barrett became the stuff of legend.
But seriously . . . why should Ohio State leapfrog Baylor? The answer, I think, is that the 12-member selection panel that figures out the rankings is filled with people that aren’t much different from the rest of us. They’re aware of win-loss records, but they’re not prone to some purportedly scientific analysis of relative strength of schedule, common opponents, and other quasi-scientific factors that the computer wizards have used to determine rankings in the past. Instead, the panel members are prone to out-of-sight, out-of-mind notions, winning pretty versus winning ugly, the presence of stars on teams, intriguing match-ups, and other attributes of the rest of us everyday football fans.
turnovers and you’ve got a toxic brew for the favorite that is trying to avoid the crushing upset.
Who would have thought the Buckeyes would be able to rack up 568 yards against the very stout Spartans defense? Who would have thought that Ohio State could run the ball down the throat of a Michigan State team that prides itself on stopping the run when the game was on the line? Who would have thought that Ezekiel Elliott could rush for more than 150 yards and a clinching touchdown when the game was on the line? Who would have thought that Ohio State could overcome two turnovers in the first half, on the road, against an opponent that had everything going its way? And who would have thought the Buckeyes would win, despite the defense playing the softest prevent defense imaginable in the second half. (OK, that’s unfair I suppose . . . but does any true football fan really like the @#&$%#@ prevent defense?)
Webner House 