100,000-plus will be there, millions more will watch it from afar, and at the end of the day the most anticipated opening football game of the 2025 season will amount to a week’s worth of media nit-picking.
It feels like I’ve seen a thousand opening days, and BIG games like Ohio State and Texas on Saturday. That’s exaggeration, of course, but I have seen a lot.
And when you’ve seen that many – and God forgive I say this about opening day of Ohio State football – after a while they kinda’ look the same. Win or lose, you begin to remember ’em that way…unless you’re Jack Park.
You lose faith in all the pre-game hype – over the top. Like someone guaranteeing that so-and-so steakhouse is the best you’ve ever tasted. Television (Fox, in this case) prepares the country for games like Texas and Ohio State – the sequel – as if it’s the return of Jesus Christ, Himself. Oh, you say…I certainly hope it’s not to that degree of sacrilege. But if you’ve experienced as many high-drama events as I have you know that if the Buckeyes are trailing by 20 points at halftime a lot of people wouldn’t notice if Jesus did show up.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA and Ohio State sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
I’m not making this up, you know. History proves, it’s not hyperbole.
I was there when John Elway came to the Horseshoe and showed 100,000 what the passing game looks like…September 25, 1982. Elway engineered the final game-winning drive against a worn-down Buckeyes secondary that was merely a preview of that which he did to the Browns five years later…January, 1987. ‘The Drive’!
And yes, I was there the day Baker Mayfield got full of himself and desecrated the Block ‘O’ on the fifty yard line. It seems like ancient history now…September 9, 2017.
I saw the Rose Bowl in 1971 when people thought Woody, Rex Kern, and Jim Otis would show Stanford coach John Ralston how Big Ten power football feels. There were T-shirts that read Three Yards And A Cloud Of Dust, modest by today’s standards. But Ralston, Jim Plunkett, and Randy Vataha showed the Buckeyes that day, like Elway did…how the passing game works.
I’ve seen the last four Michigan games, along with a few before those.
I’ve learned over the years that the less emotional you are, the better…not to make too much of something that’s going to run its course regardless of who you want to win. Because that’s how sports works. And I guess it’s why they have handshake lines after the game. Forgive and forget, and get ready for next week – the next big game.
When I was an athlete I remember getting very emotional about competition, because if you’re competing it’s an important element to success. If you’re not playing to win, why bother?
But I grew to view emotion differently when I flipped the switch from player to official…for the years that I spent umpiring minor league baseball and officiating high school basketball. You don’t care who wins. Just do your job. And I remember wondering what possessed people on the nights they had to be removed from the stands because they were too emotional!
One of the most hyped Ohio State games in memory…Rex Kern’s senior year and they were almost guaranteed the national championship…but lost to Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
Fast forward to last football season, and I remember thinking about that ’71 Rose Bowl last year while Ohio State and Oregon prepared to play. When Ohio State got off to that incredible start, like Plunkett and Stanford did back in ’71, I saw the same devastation in the Oregon crowd that I was a part of so long ago. Nothing had changed. Ohio State was such a heavy favorite to win in ’71 – couldn’t lose, they said – although no one told Plunkett and Stanford. There was such incredible pre-game buildup….and how quickly, by the second half, it came to an end.
We all get caught up in moments like Saturday because of marketing, loyalty, and pride. It just matters so much to all the different interest groups because they all have something to gain…and because this moment might never come again.
Might never come again….?
Think about it. If it doesn’t the respective athletic departments of Ohio State and Texas are going to be in a world of hurt.
There’d be layoffs at Fox.
The market for buckeye necklaces would tank.
But buoy yourself with this thought. As dark as it seemed, not even a year ago, after another world-ending loss to Michigan, were people not just as happy again after Tennessee, Oregon, Texas, and Notre Dame?
I’ve seen the championship trophy, and no where on it does it say…Yeah, but!
It makes big games and big moments like Saturday more manageable if you can think of them in those terms. And honestly, more enjoyable because your season’s not done now if you lose a game.
But all the same, someone’s going to go home on Saturday feeling like hell.
While someone else is going to feel like they just witnessed the second coming.
And nearly all are hoping that if that promise actually happens…that it doesn’t happen on Saturday, and if the Buckeyes are winning.
It’s the only thing that Fox hasn’t hyped!
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