As bad as it was, it can always get worse…or can it? My own thoughts about losing to Michigan for a fourth straight year, and what it does or doesn’t prove.
Columbus, OH – Let’s get beyond play-calling.
Let’s get beyond the obvious fan disillusion with Ohio State coach Ryan Day and his morphing before our very eyes into a figure that feels like John Cooper.
Let’s even put aside tradition, gold pants, how to feel after you’ve gotten whipped…and throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Let’s hide all the sharp objects, ropes, and rethink the impulse to sit in the car with the garage doors shut and the engine running.
Let’s try to think about grandmothers at home decorating the house for Christmas…instead of chugging a Busch Light in the south stands wearing her generational T-shirt that says, M–k Fichigan!
All of those things were on the lips and in the minds of Buckeye Nation following a fourth consecutive loss to Michigan on Saturday; and no fan, coach, reporter, Stephen A. Smith (or Molly Qerim) can put a definitive finger on why. It’s just that…….
To those who live for nothing else, it just sucks to lose to Michigan.
Huffer Chiropractic can help athletes perform at their best…offices in Osgood, Jackson Center, and Dublin, Ohio.
Or does it? The game has changed when you consider that it’s not only a possibility now in college football, but a probability, as well. Ask Michigan, who lost to Indiana three weeks ago, and to Minnesota and Illinois earlier in the year – three teams they used to pick their teeth with!
So what?
So come to grips with the reality…that this is not the college football of the past. It’s not the Michigan of the past. And it certainly isn’t the Ohio State of the past.
The cry is “that we can’t run the ball,” and that’s true. There was a day when coaches recruited goons to play tackle and guard, and they did run the ball. Three yards and a cloud of dust, and a string of bodies left behind.
There was a day when John Brockington, Eddie George, and Pete Johnson played running back – so physically overwhelming that people couldn’t tackle them. At least that’s the perception we remember. No guarantee, however, that they could do it now.
But as bad as it hurts to lose, does it hurt more when you consider that you might have been duped. That’s right, duped – return on investment!
The expectation was before the year even began that this was the best football team that money could buy in the day of name, image, and likeness. Let it roll off your tongue…N-I-L. If you give them enough money the best players will come, or stay. This is the way the game is played now – immediate return. And based on reporting, it should have been good enough to beat Michigan.
The thought did cross my mind as I drove home Saturday about how we’ve gotten beyond the shock of Ryan Day saying a year ago, that an additional 13 million NIL dollars would be necessary from the alumni community to keep the Buckeyes’ roster intact. There was an outcry in the bars and the barber shops then; and I saw the same outrage Saturday, 13 million later, and a fourth straight loss.
College football, you understand, pays all the bills. But proportionately, I see the scramble and anxiety with other college sports trying to keep pace through NIL – of baseball athletes leaving because someone, somewhere, offered them $300,000.
The reality, now, is of athletes going to college for a different kind of education – how culture has poisoned their thinking – that you’re getting screwed if all you get for playing football is a free education. They’re making half a billion a year, and all you’re getting is a degree? They owe you!
Whether you’ve deduced – whether you like it or not – the day of NIL has made college athletes something just less than Patrick Mahomes and what he gets paid to represent State Farm. The difference is that advertisers have long demanded a return on their investment. You’re getting paid, and we expect more.
Let’s put it another way. If you’re getting $300 grand to pitch college baseball…you’d better pitch like Sandy Kouafax. And it’s a short window.
So we’re not ready to apply that logic to Jack Sawyer, and Emeka Egbuka, and TreVeyon Henderson. Like many others, I respect anyone who comes back for their senior year now to make good on a commitment and pursue an unrealized goal.
But we could. Because how many of you left the stadium Saturday, or turned your TV off, while thinking…where’s the return?
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and the Buckeyes for Press Pros Magazine.
Does anyone get their money back?
Well no, they don’t, and in fact days like Saturday must cast gloom on the whole question of NIL, of who’s willing to pay, and for how long.
Of how much for the annual misery of blaming Ryan Day, or someone, over why we can’t win a football game?
The finger pointing that now comes for the next 364 days – the anticipation of what happens in Ann Arbor next November.
How ugly might that be?
Is $13 million still the figure? Time and change, indeed.
And so far beyond play calling!
The Hughes Law office, in Urbana, sponsors OHSAA and Buckeye sports on Press Pros. Call them today if they can help you…Ph. 937-398-0520