I was helping teach a class last night up here at Michigan State when the subject of college football came up (Georgia Tech had a 24-0 lead early in the second? oh my!). The guy I was helping out noted that I had picked OSU over USC by 7 (and was taunting me for it…perhaps for good reasons). This caused several students to point out that “Ohio State is perenially overrated!”
Now, we’ve all heard this before. This is precisely the ESPN party line that has been expressed in so many places. I mention this because of the emotions I felt because of it, and the epiphany I had afterwards.
Hearing this from someone 4 years my junior, at a school that perenially sucks – though Dantonio is doing a good job to fix it – made me incredibly angry. I wanted to defend my alma mater and let them know that we aren’t, in fact, overrated. I’m sick of hearing how a team that beats every team on its schedule that it should rightfully beat, but falls flat against elite competition is somehow vastly overrated. Overrated is reserved for teams that have epic slides over several games, fall flat against inferior competition, for games that were substantially closer than it ever should been, and for teams who perenially under-perform.
We get labeled as overrated for losing to BCS level competition repeatedly in butt-kicking fashion. Just like Oklahoma, though I don’t hear the overrated cat-calls there. Just like Virgina Tech, also not generally called overrated. Why is Ohio State the nations whipping boy?
Then it hit me. Why do I care? No, seriously. What does it matter if Sports Illustrated or ESPN rags on the Buckeyes? What does it matter if they perenially vote us down in the polls because they think we’re not good enough? These are the opinions of people who’s job it is to talk, and talk about anything that’s going to sell. Right now, because of our two MNC fails, people are very anti-OSU. They don’t want to see anything about us, don’t want to hear anything about us. Especially after that 2006 season where the media was basically making a mess of themselves whenever they talked about Troy Smith, Ted Ginn, Antonio Pittman and the rest of the “team that just couldn’t be beat”*.
One game will not repair a teams reputation – and it shouldn’t! It will be fantastic if OSU manages to beat USC in the shoe tomorrow night. It will do a lot to get the elephant off our backs, but it will not repair the reputation. The media will still say that we’re 1-4 against big name opponants since 2006, and 0-3 in BCS games. That just will not go away. But this also isn’t the first time that we’ve had issues like this. Remember the 90’s, all of those fantastic teams that just couldn’t beat M*ch*g*n, and just could not win a bowl game? We got through all that in a single season earlier this decade.
The point is, this elephant is on our back because we’ve let it be on our backs. And I’m not just talking about our football team. I’m talking about our fan reaction to what the media says. They’re a bunch of talking heads. Sure, some of them know football, but let me emphasize that for the most part they’re no better than the rest of us. Stewart Mandel thought our O-Line was terrible against Navy. Jeff Amey put the nix to that claim. Clearly the media doesn’t know as much as they’d like you to think they know. All they know how to do is speak the party line.
But we know better, and we shouldn’t let their opinions cloud our judgement of our team. Yes, we need to beat the big name teams soon, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have an elite level team ourselves, with some of the best players in the nation. And when they treat us like the underdog and we manage to pull a season like 2002 again, they’ll change their tune like they always do. But our tune won’t have changed, not one tiny bit.
Win or Lose tomorrow under the beautiful lights of the ‘Shoe, they will still be our Buckeyes. I will be proud of the fact that we chose to prove it on the field, rather than taking the easy way out.
Let them call us overrated. We know better.
* Oops. Apparently Pre-bowl practice matters. Who knew?
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