The Buckeyes March On

Yesterday I joined a group that headed to Ohio Stadium to watch the Ohio State-Indiana game. On a cold and snowy day, we watched the Buckeyes pulverize the outmatched Hoosiers, 56-14. The win keeps the Men of the Scarlet and Gray undefeated and on track to be in a position to achieve their goals: beating Michigan, winning a Big Ten championship, and competing for a national title.

For the true Buckeyes fan, however, every game, no matter how lopsided, involves good points and areas of lingering concern–because true Buckeye fans hold their gridiron team to impossibly high standards. Yesterday was no exception. The good points included 660 yards of total offense, achieving a nice balance with the ground game and the air attack each racking up more than 300 yards, and five touchdown passes for C.J. Stroud. Putting up these kinds of numbers in cold, snowy conditions is an added plus, because if you play football in the Midwest in November, when the really big games occur, you’ve got to be able to move the ball in cold, sloppy weather conditions. And the Buckeyes’ defense played well, harassing the Hoosier offense throughout the game and holding Indiana to two scores (one coming when the game was well out of reach) and well under 300 yards of offense.

So what are the areas of concern? I’m still worried about Ohio State’s ability to convert in short-yardage situations. Ohio State had some failures on third-and-short yesterday, against a team that doesn’t really match up against the Buckeyes in the trenches. Long runs are great and make the rushing game statistics look good, but as the season winds down, being able to pick up the tough yards, get first downs, and keep the ball in the hands of the offense will become increasingly crucial. The key question that we’ll get answered in the very near future is: can Ohio State and its offensive line do that against a team that has a great defensive line and will make the Buckeyes fight for every yard?

With yesterday’s win, the Buckeyes move to 10-0. Next up is Maryland on the road, and looming behind is That Team Up North, which also stands at 10-0, tied with Ohio State at the top of the Big Ten East. This season is feeling a lot like past seasons, where everything is leading up to The Game once again.

The Population Implosion

I was born in 1957, the peak year of the American “baby boom.” I grew up in a world where families routinely had three, four, five, or more children, and where population growth was a huge concern for some futurists, giving rise to scary depictions of future Earth in grim movies like Soylent Green and books like The Population Bomb.

As a result, it’s very weird to see people expressing the opposite view now. Social scientists and politicians are worried about population shrinkage, not growth–because in many parts of the world human beings simply aren’t reproducing at a rate that would even replace those who are dying. The signs of the issue are everywhere. In 2020, for example, Michigan had more deaths than births. In China, the world’s most populous country–right now, at least–the fertility rate fell in 2021, for the fifth straight year. China’s population issues are so significant that the country reversed its long-standing “one child” policy in 2016 and is now encouraging families to have more children, as well as restricting the ability of Chinese men to receive vasectomies, which once were mandated. (The Chinese about-face on children obviously is a pretty strong indictment of large-scale governmental planning of modern societies, but that’s a blog post for another day.)

China and Michigan aren’t alone. Across the world, many countries are falling far below the fetility rate needed to simply replace their current population, which is 2.1 births per woman. In America, the fertility rate in 2020 was 1.64, well below the replacement line. Many countries are so far below that rate that they will commonly see years like Michigan in 2020, where deaths outnumber births. And that trend will create clear social and economic problems in those counties, going far beyond the presence of “ghost cities” in China–like the one shown above–because there just aren’t enough people to fill them. The problems are very basic. If most of your population is aging and retired, who is going to work and produce the income that produce the taxes that support the retirement social apparatus? And who is going to care for all of those older people?

The “why” of this development is impossible to figure out. Are people having fewer children because they are concerned about bringing new lives into a troubled world? Or do they think that having a large family will be an impediment to their lifestyles? Or are they more focused on living virtual lives through their computers, or concerned at the impact that humans have had on the world and its environment? Deciding whether to have a family is an intensely personal decision, and there are undoubtedly a huge range of reasons for the decline in birth rates, but what’s interesting is that it seems to be happening everywhere, in virtually every culture, at the same time.

What does it mean for us? It means immigration becomes a lot more important as a means to fill the worker gap caused by the falling birth rates. It means that states like Michigan are going to have to figure out how to lure workers from other states if it wants to survive long term. And it means that robotics are going to become an increasingly common way of replacing the human workers who just aren’t available. Over the next few years it seems likely that we’ll see a shift to a much more automated, machine-oriented world because there just won’t be any choice. That’s not exactly the future people were expecting.

Despoiling The Spoilermakers

Yesterday’s game against the Purdue Boilermakers promised to be a challenging match-up. In recent years, Purdue has played Ohio State very tough–beating the Buckeyes on several occasions that still stick in the craw of Buckeye Nation–and the Boilermakers had already beaten two top three-rated teams this year when they knocked off Iowa and Michigan State. That’s why Purdue is now recognized as the “Spoilermakers.”

But Ohio State fans needn’t have worried. The Buckeye offense roared back to life and quickly put Purdue into a deep hole, thanks to big plays and some mistakes by Purdue that gave the Buckeyes short fields. The halftime score had Ohio State up 45-17–after the game, Ohio State Coach Ryan Day called that, with admirable understatement, “a heck of a score”–and the Buckeyes went on to win 59-31.

Ohio State’s offensive numbers were ridiculously gaudy across the board. C.J. Stroud was 31 of 38 for 361 yards and five touchdowns. Ohio State ran the ball 31 times for 263 yards, averaging an absurd 8.5 yards a carry. Garrett Wilson had a 51-yard touchdown run and caught three touchdown passes. With numbers like that against a solid team, you’re going to win most games, even if your defense gives up 390 yards through the air, as the Buckeyes did yesterday.

As Russell and I watched the game, it came home to me again and again how Ohio State now plays a kind of football that past generations of scarlet and gray-clad fans wouldn’t recognize. Those of us who became members of Buckeye Nation during the Woody Hayes “old buttoned shoe” era of full-house backfields and run-dominated offenses can still hear his inner voice counseling in favor of constant runs when you’ve got the lead, but the college game has changed. You’re not going to score 45 points in a half with grind-it-out football, and you’re not going to attract the highly rated “skill position” recruits with that scheme, either. The reality is that Ohio State has morphed into a quarterback and wide receiver oriented offense that has great running backs, too, and when everything is clicking, as it was yesterday, their offense is both fun to watch and hard to stop.

But even if Coach Hayes might shake his head at what Ohio State’s offense has become, he would understand the schedule. Ohio State has two of the toughest games of the season yet to go, against Michigan State and its powerhouse running game, and then up in Ann Arbor against That Team Up North. Both of the Michigan squads are 9-1 on the season and harbor hopes of knocking off the Buckeyes and going to the Big Ten championship game and perhaps, the College Football Playoff.

Woody would tell you that, whatever happens with the Ohio State offense, the defense will need to play better to bring home victories in those two games–and he would be right.

The Year Without The Game

With all of the other bad things that have happened during this ill-fated year, I think many of us had a sneaking suspicion that the Ohio State-Michigan football game — known around these parts simply as The Game — would fall victim to the coronavirus, like so many people and traditions and parts of American life have fallen victim before it. Yesterday, that suspicion was confirmed, when a coronavirus outbreak at the University of Michigan caused The Game to be canceled. And so, for the first time in more than 100 years, in 2020 we won’t be able to watch the latest installment of the greatest rivalry in sports.

It’s a tough development to swallow in a year that has brought a lot of hard things to take.

It’s difficult to describe the Ohio State-Michigan game experience if you haven’t lived through it, aren’t invested in it, and haven’t been immersed in it. Let’s just say it’s unique and — during the week of The Game, at least — pretty much all-consuming. Fans of both teams look forward to The Game with a mixture of anticipation and dread — anticipation, because you hope for a victory, and dread, because you hate the very idea that your team might lose to its hated rival. The outcome of The Game pretty much makes or breaks the year. Victory is sweeter than you can imagine, and defeat is like a sucker punch to the gut that leaves that achey feeling at the back of your throat.

This year, as Michigan has struggled and Ohio State is considered to be in the conversation for the College Football Playoffs, some people have suggested that UM used COVID-19 as an excuse to avoid The Game and complicate Ohio State’s potential path to a role in the playoffs. I would never say that. A big part of The Game is the respect that the two schools, and their fans, have for each other. I suspect, instead, that the opposite is true: those inside the Michigan program were looking forward to the Ohio State game as a chance to redeem a disappointing season, which has happened repeatedly in the history of the rivalry. But player safety and public health concerns have to take precedence.

With The Game being cancelled, what other traditions are at risk? Say, how is Santa’s health these days?

Found Money

On Thursday, drivers on U.S. Route 31 in Grand Haven, Michigan confronted one of those moral dilemmas that ethicists love to discuss.  A fellow driver somehow forgot that he left a cash box containing $30,000 on the bumper of his car.  As he drove on the highway, the box fell off the bumper and opened on impact with the pavement, and the thousands of dollars in cash spilled onto the road and into the air.

And thus, the ethical thought experiment met reality:  if you were driving one of the following cars and saw the money on the road — where you were out in the open, surrounded by total strangers, where no cameras would see your conduct and no criminal consequences were likely to attach to what you did next — what would you do?

In this instance, other drivers immediately started stopping, scooping up the money, and driving off — conduct that, incidentally, caused a traffic tie-up on Route 31.  Of the $30,000 in the cash box, only $2,500 was immediately recovered and returned to the owner.  Since Thursday, police have appealed for drivers who pocketed the loot to probe their consciences and turn in the money.  Only some have done so.  Two teenagers turned in $630, which would sure seem like a lot of money to a kid, and one woman turned in nearly $3,900.  The police commended them for their honesty.  However, most of the money remains unrecovered.

Over the years, I’ve found wallets and car keys and credit cards and other valuable items, and I’ve always returned them immediately because I’d like to think other people would do the same with an item I misplaced.  But before I hurt my shoulder patting myself on the back, I also recognize that I haven’t been in desperate need of money on those occasions, either.  If you were at the end of your financial rope and suddenly saw hundred dollar bills on the Route 31 asphalt, would you do the honest thing — or would you think that your prayers had been answered and drive off with fistfuls of money without a second thought?

Where Can I Get A Recording Of The Game?

I’m not saying my decision not to record The Game was outcome-determinative, but . . . well, c’mon, you know it was!

What a performance by the Buckeyes, their coaches, their much maligned defense, and their equally maligned offensive line!  Beating That Team Up North never gets old.  And this win is made all the sweeter by the fact that Michigan came in expecting to win.

Seriously — where can I get a recording of The Game, 2018?

The 17-Year Turning Point

Seventeen years ago today, I was at an Ohio State-Michigan basketball game.  It was the middle of another bleak winter, but there was a little bit of a buzz because the Buckeyes had just named a new head football coach and the rumor was that he might be at the game, where members of Buckeye Nation could get a good look at him.

His name was Jim Tressel.  He’d had good success coaching at Youngstown State, and there was hope that he might be more successful at Ohio State than his predecessor, John Cooper.  Cooper seemed like a nice enough guy, but his record at Ohio State in the games that really counted — that is, the annual fight to the death against Michigan, and then bowl games — was abysmal.  The Cooper era left Ohio State fans feeling beat down and forlorn, like we were in a hole that we could never really dig our way out of.

Could Tressel turn things around, and actually win a few games against the hated Team Up North?  Even more fundamentally, could we be sure he actually understood how important that game was?  There was always a lingering suspicion that Coach Cooper was baffled that, every year, his performance was judged on the basis of that one game.  Of course, native Ohioans and members of Buckeye Nation understood why that was the case — understood it intuitively, in their bones and their blood and their sinew, understood it with a depth of feeling that some might find maniacal but that every true sports fan recognizes.

And then, at halftime of that basketball game 17 years ago, Coach Tressel walked out and made a short little speech that was one of the single most electrifying moments I’ve witnessed in person.  He said:  “I can assure you that you will be proud of our young people in the classroom, in the community and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the football field.”  It wasn’t quite a guarantee of a win, of course, but it was an Ohio State coach speaking confidently about okaying Michigan.  It was thrilling!  The crowd erupted, and the video of Tressel’s remarks that I’ve posted above really doesn’t capture the explosion of cheers.  Here was a man who clearly . . . understood.  He understood the importance of The Game, and the importance of pride.

And he was right.  Coach Tressel changed things, forever.  The Buckeyes went on a tear against Michigan, and other teams, and they haven’t looked back.  And while Coach Tressel’s career at Ohio State didn’t end the way he hoped, members of Buckeye Nation will never forget him.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 17 years.  Coach Tressel, thank you for that speech!

Best Baby Outfit Ever!

Hey, when does football season start?

Wishing, And Hoping

Today is the day the College Football Playoff Selection Committee earns its keep.

They’ve been watching games all season, and since mid-season they’ve been issuing interim rankings after each weekend of play.  But now the regular season games and the conference championship games are done, and it’s time to finally decide:  which four teams should be in this year’s playoff?

Alabama is in, of course, as the number one seed.  They romped through a pretty pathetic SEC without a loss and drubbed an offensively challenged Florida team in the SEC championship game.  That’s an easy call.  But who else do you select?  One-loss Clemson won the weak ACC, edging out a pretty one-dimensional Virginia Tech team in last night’s championship game, and has looked good at times but bad at times, too.  One-loss Washington played one of the easiest schedules in college football and won the PAC 12, beating up a hapless Colorado team in the championship game.  Oklahoma, with two losses, won the defensively challenged Big 12.

And then there’s the Big 10.  Ohio State played one of the toughest schedules in college football, smashed Big 12 champion Oklahoma on its home turf, and beat a series of top ten teams during the season, including winning a thrilling edition of The Game against Michigan.  But because Ohio State lost at Penn State, on a blocked field goal in the fourth quarter, the Buckeyes didn’t play for the conference championship.  Penn State did and won last night, coming from far behind to beat Wisconsin.  But the Nittany Lions have two losses, one of which was a 39-point thrashing at the hands of That Team Up North.

So who should join Alabama in the playoffs?  The dedicated members of Buckeye Nation obviously hope the Committee selects Ohio State, which was ranked number 2 after last week’s Committee vote.  Should the Committee just pick the one-loss teams from the Power Five conferences, which means Ohio State, Clemson, and Washington should make the cut?  Or should Penn State’s impressive run and conference championship knock out one of those teams?  But how do you vault the two-loss Nittany Lions above two-loss Michigan, which beat Penn State like a drum early in the season?

Ohio State fans are wishing, and hoping, that the Buckeyes make the cut.  Having watched a number of games with the top teams, I honestly think Ohio State is one of the top four teams — but I’m not on the committee.  We’ll know at 12:30.

When All Will Be Revealed

Tomorrow we’ll see the finale of HBO’s Westworld.  We’re being assured that all will be revealed, and after the episode the show will actually make sense.

Yeah, right!  I’ll believe it when I see it.  That’s like expecting triumphant Trump staffers  and bitter Clinton campaign operatives to reach friendly consensus on why Donald Trump won the election, or imagining that fair-minded Michigan fans will freely concede that the referees correctly spotted the ball on the 15-yard line after J.T. Barrett’s fourth-down keeper in the second overtime of this year’s classic version of The Game.

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.)

I’ve stopped trying to figure it all out.  Kish and I watch the show, and I just let it kind of wash over me, rather than struggling to make sense of why Dolores’ outfit changes from instant to instant or why Bernard’s interactions with his fake dead son are so significant.  I realized that the show had reached the point of ridiculousness this past week, when I was walking back from lunch with two friends, one of whom watches Westworld and one of whom doesn’t.  The watcher and I started talking about the show, and after a few minutes of discussion of “Billy” and the possibility that the show’s plot is running along different timelines and the importance of the photo of Billy’s bethrothed and whether the twitching beings at the church Dolores visited were troubled robots looking for some kind of salvation, the non-watcher asked, with a baffled laugh:  “What is this show?”  And I realized that it was all pretty silly.

So I’ll watch the finale, but I’m not expecting that I’ll get everything in this episode, because that sure hasn’t been the case in the past episodes.  I just make one request:  before we move on to “the new narrative,” can you at least let us know what the old narrative was all about?

Epic

Look, there have been a lot of incredible Ohio State-Michigan games over the years.  Virtually every game between the two fierce rivals during the ’70s was a tough, hard-hitting advertisement for why college football is the greatest sport there is.  There was the Snow Bowl, and the 2006 match-up between two teams ranked no. 1 and no.2, and — giving the devil its due — Michigan’s legendary 1969 upset of an Ohio State team that many at the time considered to be the best college football team ever.

So I’m not going to say that yesterday’s double-overtime thriller was the best Ohio State-Michigan game ever played — but I am going to say that it was an epic contest that was simply one of the best college football games I’ve ever seen.  Two strong teams with shutdown defenses.  Wild emotional swings.  Missed field goals and turnovers.  Officiating controversy.  A gutsy call that blew up in the coach’s face, and then a gutsy call that produced the game-winning touchdown.  It’s the stuff of legend; an instant classic that people will remember and talk about for years to come.  No one who watched it, in the stands or on TV, will forget the 2016 edition of The Game.

And in the end, Ohio State won, and Michigan went home crushed.  Michigan’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh, blames the referees for the loss, saying they missed a spot and blew some pass interference calls.  His disappointment is understandable, because his team played a great game and seemed to have The Game in hand until Ohio State’s defense ground the Michigan offense down and the Buckeyes’ offense finally woke up.  Still, it’s too bad that such a great game should end with such sour grapes.  Coach Harbaugh’s comments seem to cheapen The Game, and that’s too bad.

Ohio State’s unfortunate mishaps against Penn State mean that the Buckeyes once again won’t play in the Big Ten championship game.   Instead, they will have to wait to see whether they are selected for this year’s college football playoff, and Ohio State fans will keep their fingers crossed that the selection committee recognizes that the Buckeyes are one of the four best teams in the land.

For now, though, we can just savor an epic win against the Wolverines, and reflect on the fact that beating That Team from Up North never gets old.

What Bernie’s Michigan Upset Might Mean For Ohio

In a stunning upset, Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary in Michigan last night, narrowly beating Hillary Clinton and delighting those unnamed members of the Webner household who have felt the Bern and are supporting the Sanders campaign.

It was a shocking victory, because the polls prior to the Michigan primary had shown that Hillary Clinton was way ahead in Michigan, by as much as 20 percentage points, and the pundits had already chalked up the state as falling into the Clinton win column.  But the polls were wrong — obviously — and now the pundits and pollsters are wondering whether there are some fundamental errors in their polling metrics and identification of likely voters.  They are uncomfortably considering whether the fact that polls were so wrong in Michigan might mean that the polling data in similar Midwestern states, like Ohio and Illinois, might also be way off base.  The polls in those states are showing Hillary Clinton currently holds big leads heading into primaries that will be held next week.

Sanders’ upset win is richly satisfying — not because I’m a Sanders supporter or Hillary hater, but because I’m sick to death of how the news media now uses polling data and know-it-all pronouncements to drive a horse race narrative and prematurely pick the winner, rather than just reporting on what the candidates are saying and doing and letting the voters decide.  The pollsters and pundits have long since declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee and have talked, talked, talked about when Sanders will be forced to get out of the race, but the voters in Michigan had something different to say about it and thumbed their noses at the Beltway crowd in the process.  Good for them!

Bernie Sanders obviously touches a chord with some voters that Hillary Clinton simply cannot reach.  Does his win in Michigan mean he might pull off an upset here in Ohio?  I don’t know, but I will say that I have personally seen a lot more excitement and activity in the Sanders campaign than I have from the Clinton campaign.  In Michigan, Sanders crushed Clinton among younger voters, made significant inroads with African-American voters, and appealed to Democrats who are fed up with their economic circumstances.  Ohio isn’t quite in the same shape as Michigan, but many of the same issues are present, and there’s no reason to believe Sanders can’t do the same thing here.

I’m hoping that Bernie Sander’s Michigan shocker means the pundits will stop with their confident pronouncements about what is going to happen, in Ohio and elsewhere, based on polling data that might just be fundamentally flawed.  Perhaps, just perhaps, they will be content to actually let the voters vote now that the race moves to the Buckeye State.

 

The Villain Comes Home

Evan Turner — improbably nicknamed The Villain by teammate Mark Titus — came back to Ohio State tonight to see his jersey retired and hung from the rafters.  Turner had a storied career with the Buckeyes, won National Player of the Year honors, and made a killer three-point buzzer-beater to beat Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament.  Tonight he gave a heartfelt speech about his teammates, his coaches, and especially his Mom helping him along the way.

Oh, and the Buckeyes beat the Wolverines, too.  A good time was had by all.

Another Great Season

Look, I know a lot of pundits and Ohio State fans are at the point where the Buckeyes have to win every game by 50 points and win the national championship, or the season is deemed a failure.  I think that’s ridiculous, but it is what it is.

This was a great season, by any rational measure.  If you are an Ohio State fan, you define season success by whether you beat Michigan.  This year, the Buckeyes trounced the Wolverines, in Ann Arbor.  Michigan was a darned good team — they smashed an SEC team, Florida, in their bowl game today.  And then Ohio State won its bowl game today, convincingly beating a very solid Notre Dame team in the Fiesta Bowl.  Those of us who lived through the Cooper era will never forget it, and will always treasure every win against That Team Up North and bowl game opponents because we will always remember, with a grimace, what it is like to end a season with a painful belly flop.

People are upset because Ohio State lost one game, played in a driving rainstorm, on a last-second field goal.  But when your team finishes 12-1, wins its crucial rivalry game and pounds a traditional power in a New Years Day bowl game, you can’t fairly be heard to complain.  If you do, you’re really as spoiled as the appalling Affluenza Kid.

A lot of Buckeyes have made the last few years really enjoyable for those of us in Buckeye Nation and will (in some cases probably) be moving on. Thanks, Braxton Miller!  And Joey Bosa.  Ezekiel Elliott.  Cardale Jones.  Taylor Decker.  Adolphus Washington.  Joshua Perry.  Jacoby Boren.  Other seniors who have won 50 games in their four years.  And, perhaps, some other juniors who think it’s time to take their talents to the NFL.  They have accomplished everything you could ask for, and I will always remember cheering myself hoarse and screaming “ZEEEEEKE” as last year’s national championship game wound down and I got to celebrate a year where my team and many of these same players and coaches won it all.

Thanks, guys, to all of the players, to head coach Urban Meyer and the rest of the coaching staff, and to everybody else who is part of the Ohio State football program.  It’s been a pleasure, and today was the cherry on top.

Happy Picture, Happy Thoughts

Ohio State isn’t playing in the Big Ten Championship Game today — more’s the pity — but that doesn’t mean we can’t still revel in last weekend’s crushing defeat of That School Up North.

And in the meantime, we’ll think happy thoughts about the dominoes that need to fall for the Buckeyes to get back into the playoffs to defend their National Championship.  I think we need Michigan State to beat Iowa convincingly in the Big Ten Championship Game, along with Alabama losing in the SEC Championship Game or Clemson losing in the ACC Championship Game — or maybe both.  It’s a long shot, perhaps, but it’s still a shot.

Thanks to Mrs. Nesser for this picture of the scoreboard at the Big House, memorializing the Buckeyes’ dominating win.