Our Honor Defend

Work weeks necessarily stink out loud.  Monday, especially, is a buzzkill.  Therefore, I’m left to thinking of ways to kill the time.  Moreover, because I have a blog and miscellaneous things I do around these parts, I have creative ways in order to kill that time.

YouTubes

I’m fast approaching the century mark in terms of YouTuberies and, the closer I get, the more I’m inclined to upload stuff just to get to that mark.  It’s petty, yes, but I can do that.  Recently, Max and I did a trade where I sent him back his 2004 Fiesta Bowl and gave him copies of the 1996 Pitt game and the 1999 Sugar Bowl in exchange for 3 games from 2005 season: Michigan State, Indiana and Michigan.  That year’s Michigan game is a game of least concern for me to upload (I think it’s been done before) and I’m saving the Indiana game for the Buckeyes’ trip to Bloomington later this year.  Yet, I uploaded a Drive-Thru compilation of the Michigan State game from that season below.  In spite of my stated goal to keep the Tressel-era games to a minimum for the meantime because they’re easier to find… and because you’ve seen them already… and because the influx of younger fans wouldn’t know Earle Bruce or Brian Baschnagel from Adam’s house cat… or off-ox, I decided to rip open the Sparty game from that season and upload it because there wasn’t much available from that game on the interweb.

That game is near and dear for obvious reasons.  Specifically, in spite of the Buckeyes’ defense forking over 450 yards of offense for the game, Michigan State still found a way to lose this game.  As we fondly remember, the chaos that ensued at the end of the half resulted in a blocked FG attempt returned by Ashton Youboty for a touchdown.  Instead of looking at a 20-7 halftime deficit, the Buckeyes drew within 3 at intermission.  Still, the Buckeyes were trailing in the 4th quarter until Troy Smith hooked up with Santonio Holmes for a 28-24 lead with 5 minutes remaining in the game.  The Spartans conceded defeat soon afterwards with a late score by Troy Smith giving the Buckeyes a 35-24 victory in a game that underscores just how bad John L Smith — friend of the program — was at maintaining leads (and order) on the sidelines.

Observations about this game

• Turnovers turnovers turnovers.  The Buckeyes won this game in spite of 6 fumbles and 4 that were lost to Michigan State’s defense.  Turnovers seemed to be a recurring problem this season.  I remember the only reason that the Iowa game was the margin it was because of turnovers in the red zone.  We could’ve easily hung 50 on Iowa that year.
• Both the Buckeyes and Spartans came off a loss.  The Buckeyes lost to Penn State the week before in a game that kinda sucked.  Michigan State lost its first game of the season the week before against Michigan.
• The Buckeyes, however, were done losing after that night game in Happy Valley.  Sparty, though? Well… they lost 49-14 to the Nerds the next week, beat Indiana (Who hasn’t? They were 1-7 in conference.) the next week, but lost out the rest of the way.  They entered this game as the most explosive offense in the Big Ten, and ended the season bowl ineligible.
• Jim Heacock, first year defensive coordinator this season, was hot the entire game.  He was barking and yelling at officials often.  I loved it.
• AJ Hawk had 19 tackles this game.
• Boom Herron’s older brother, David, started for Michigan State’s defense.
• This was Alex Boone’s first career start.  He filled in for Kirk Barton at Right Tackle who was out with injury for this game.  He wasn’t bad this game.  The sad part? Mechanically, I didn’t see much improvement from this game to any game in the 2008 season.

I’m debating what game I want to upload a compilation for next: the 1996 Pitt game (72-0) or the 1985 Iowa game that featured a torrential rainstorm that washed away the Hawkeyes’ national title hopes.  That game was one of the few of my ever-growing library that had me totally enthralled.  Most games in my library I can watch while doing something else, like reading, talking to my sister¹, or doing work projects.  This game got my undivided attention.  It’s one of those games that, if you’re serious about being a Buckeye fan, you have to watch.  I don’t know if the BTN airs this game as I’ve been told that they’ve aired the 1990 Ohio State-Iowa game before.  The 1985 matchup was so much better.  I uploaded a little clip from that game just to give a sample what occurred in that game.

Round Table

I’ve had this itch for a while now to put together a Buckeye Round Table of some kind, a Block O Table if you will. Ohio State football stands at an interesting crossroads that should necessarily entail great discussion among fans about some of the issues surrounding the team.

That said, I haven’t been able to gauge the interest of any of the Buckeye bloggers out there.  11w has their own blog projects that require their energies.  I thought for a minute that DTI folded when Alex hopped over to 11w, but it seems like someone has taken his place.  I’m not sure if AtO is defunct now; no post has been published there since an open thread for the 2009 Fiesta Bowl.  Buckeye Commentary, MotSaG, and, friend of the program, tBBC are still up and active, but I can’t speak to their interest.  If it were to get off the ground, I would hope it’d be a good forum for some new or potential Buckeye bloggers out there to make their voices heard among Buckeye fans.

It’s an idea, at the moment.  I don’t know if anyone’s interested.  I don’t know if this will be a monthly discussion or weekly discussion.  Lastly, I only have a tangential idea on how to delegate responsibility for this endeavor.  I’d love to see who’s interested in this.

And, yes, before anyone brings it up, this is basically because I like what the Nitts bloggers do during their Blue White Round Tables.  Unlike theirs, however, ours would be cooler because, well, we’d be discussing the Buckeyes… plus, it’d be a Block O Table and not a Round Table (per se).  See the accompanying image for the gist of it.

1. Hi Billy. [↩]