Thursday’s Grab Bag — Revenge Edition
The Illini Are Coming!
The Illini are coming to Columbus for the first time since 2007. You may remember: that game kind of sucked. The officiating crew — featuring Steve Pamon (to your right), a man of less than reputable character — got trigger-happy with the whistle on an Illini run that should’ve been a touchback. But let’s not lose sight of the nature of that run: we got torched on the ground our defense was unable to get Illinois off the field in key stretches. The game concluded with Illinois successfully converting a 4th down when they had originally signaled a punt. The offense didn’t fare too well for the Buckeyes this game. Beanie was held under 100 yards, minus a few early runs. As for Todd Boeckman? This was our introduction to the “bad Todd”. Boeckman got some preliminary Heisman consideration after the rout of Penn State in Happy Valley, but promptly ended that conversation with a 13/23 156yd and 3 INT performance.
In short, and as I mentioned earlier: that game kind of sucked. In terms of sucktitude, which is formally defined here as the aggregate level of suck inherent in any given thing, it was no less than an 8 on a 10pt scale. Losing is one thing; getting Zooked is another.
I have a general policy towards opponents who happen to beat us in Ohio Stadium. Beat us in the ‘Shoe, and you deserve the Achan treatment. Yep, including the sheep and oxen as well. I am that vindictive. To get in the mood for that, I uploaded to YouTube the only asskicking of the Illini I have on me: the 2005 game. This game was recent, and not a lot needs to be said about it. This was Ron Zook’s first year, and the Illini weren’t good at all. I have other victories over the Illini in my possession (1980, 1986, 2002, 2006, 2008), but this one just feels right.
“Simon is going to be a star”
One of the pleasant stories this young season has been the emergence of John Simon on the defensive line. Simon is a true freshman and is given frequent game reps on the deepest unit on the team. Think about that: he’s a true freshman on a team where every defensive tackle you can conjure redshirts. Nader Abdallah redshirted. Todd Denlinger redshirted. Doug Worthington redshirted. Garrett Goebel redshirted. John Simon is playing. It’s even more impressive considering that Simon has supplanted the redshirt freshman Garrett Goebel in terms of the staff’s hype-o-meter. The coaching staff was very high on Garrett Goebel entering this season, and now Simon is getting the praise. Consider that very, very positive for future defensive lines, and this one too.
Dave Biddle provides some quotes about why the players and staff are excited about Simon.
“John Simon is a good player,” OSU head coach Jim Tressel said on Tuesday. “He’s an active guy, strong guy, first one into the meeting room and first guy into the weight room. He’s going to be a good football player – he really enjoys it.
…
“We thought he was a good player,” Tressel said. “But you never know how a guy is going to do and that’s the beauty of getting them in here and getting them comfortable in the summertime and letting them train with the other guys. You could tell by his training that he was serious. And then of course, ‘Well, let’s see how he plays football.’ You could tell right away that he loves the game and John is going to be a good football player.”
“John, first and foremost, is a huge meatball,” Homan said. “He will live and die in the weight room. It was Friday night and we were in Cleveland getting ready to play football and me and Spit were walking back to our hotel room and John asked me and Spit, ‘Hey, where’s the fitness room at?’ And me and Spit looked and him and I said, ‘You must be crazy. Night before a game, you can’t be working out.’ Then Spit said, ‘Just go to your room and chill out and relax.’ And that’s what he did – he took our advice.
“But John is an unbelievable hard worker. He is a quiet kid that hardly talks and he loves football. He’s always in the weight room, always in the film room and he’ always asking questions about football. He wants to get better and he’s going to be a great, great football player for us.”
Elbow Bump
Jon Thoma’s absence from the Toledo game, due to a flu, was a topic of interest at the time. While Thoma’s role as punter was filled in admirably by Ben Buchanan, his flu nevertheless brought up concerns over an H1N1 epidemic making its way to Columbus. Naturally, Ohio State took necessary precautions with respect to Thoma and looked for several preventative measures regarding the spread of the flu.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen a few of them yourself at your place of employment. You should wash your hands with warm water and soap, for no less than 20 seconds, and thoroughly towel your hands dry. Tressel was also told there’s one more thing you can do: elbow bump. Let him explain.
I think we have a new endzone celebration.
What To Watch For
The only good part of Thursday and Friday night college football is that I have something to watch at the bar while I get drunk and try to have some semblance of a social life. Otherwise, the bars would show NASCAR and Braves baseball and I would have no good moving pictures to watch while listening to the never-ending loop of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”1 on the jukebox. Still, the quality is poor and the teams are usually from meek and uninteresting conferences, like the WAC, MAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, ACC or Big East.
With that in mind, your options for this week are actually not that bad. Thursday night will be an “SEC Network” (whatever floats your boat, ESPN) game pitting no. 4 ranked Ole Miss against South Carolina in Columbia (ESPN, 7:30PM ET). Friday will be the two-time defending Big 12 North champion Missouri Tigers demonstrating their relevance to college football by going on the road to take on those titans of sport, the Nevada Wolfpack (ESPN, 9:00PM ET). Shine on.
- Seriously, I hate those songs. [↩]
You forgot to mention Styxx….you KNOW they play some styxx
I forgot that 2005 game ended 40-2….. somehow 40-2 seems more embarrasing than 40-0. LOL Lets hope for a repeat.
Surely (Shirley), they must play Leonard Skynard there as well.
I think you may have coined a new verb, ‘Achaned’; as in, “Boy, did the Illini get Achaned on Saturday”. I was going to suggest that we should ‘Carthagian’ the Illini;
“A second offensive under the command of Scipio Aemilianus resulted in a three-year siege before he breached the walls, sacked the city, and systematically burned Carthage to the ground in 146 B.C.”
.. but it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like “to be Achaned”.
Come on! Let’s get that 1980 and 1986 game on here! I just introduced this website to one of my friends who didn’t know about this site! He said. “This site is awesome!” When he saw all the old games. So put those two games on dude!
Also, I am waiting for the 1982 victory over SCum to be put on here!!!
Oh and the 1979 Scum game too!!!!
Oddly enough, Ken, not a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd comes on the bar jukebox down here. It could be that the bar I hang out at purposely tries to deter the university kids from coming in. “Sweet Home Alabama” is an unofficial Crimson Tide song, I guess. But yeah, the guys typically get their air drums on to “Sister Christian” while the women start screaming out that wretched “Don’t Stop Believin’” song. The bartenders all know me and like me (I tip well, as everyone should), but they generally don’t like me selecting music on the jukebox. In my defense, if they don’t want me selecting “What A Fool Believes”, “Both Sides Now”, “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”, “Tin Man”, “Xanadu”, Starship’s “Sara”, Spandau Ballet’s “True”, “Dancing Machine” and others, then it shouldn’t be on the damn jukebox. If any of them happens to read this, they probably know who I am by now.
Come to think of it, my friends in Ohio found out the hard way: if you give me money for the jukebox to pick out something I like, I will oblige… and people tend to suffer for it.
The locals also love selecting that Kid Rock song that samples “Werewolves of London”. I don’t know what it’s called, but that’s because Kid Rock is dead to me. The locals like it because it makes a reference to “Sweet Home Alabama”. Limp Bizkit’s “Rollin’” gets picked a lot too, as does “Break Stuff” and “Nookie”. The locals must be always cranky if they keep listening to that crap. In spite of being in high school for the peak of Limp Bizkit, I never liked that stuff. Other usual stuff escapes me at the moment, but that’s also because I’ve purposely blocked it out. The proprietor of the bar is a big alt rock fan from the 90s and has all of Siamese Dream in the jukebox… hence, why I tip. She always goes for “Silverfuck”, but I usually pick out “Spaceboy” if she’s already picked that song. Her usual selection is usually my least favorite off of Siamese Dream.
Chad, I think you’re in the minority regarding the old stuff. I myself love the older, more obscure games I have. The nonconference, interregional games I have (Syracuse, BC, Colorado, UCLA, BYU, Oklahoma and others) are my prized possessions. Still, I’ve gathered that most people like the newer stuff, even though I generally don’t like uploading it. I think they like it because they remember it so well. People already remember the 2005 Illinois game, but I’d love for them to revisit the 1986 defensive slugfest probably because they don’t remember it at all. Still, 2005 gets us in the mood for what I want on Saturday.
Expect a lot of obscure, moldy oldies in the offseason. I’m going to try to scale back my responsibilities here in 2010, hopefully try to get someone who can write about the basketball team better than I can (I don’t have BTN, and that limits me).
Im a big fan of playing “Slow Ride” by Foghat or “Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith on the Jukebox…which is funny because I listen to metal *throws up the horns*
The hardest those jukeboxes’ come to having metal is Godsmack, which gets the occasional spin.
Syracuse, BC, Colorado, UCLA, BYU, Oklahoma and others
Put them on! I told you my friend was creaming his jeans at this site when I told him about it! He looked on the web on his blackberry and was like “Man, this is the best site ever!!!”
I got more too, including both WVU games (87 and 98), Louisville, Arizona, Fresno State, LSU (87, 88) and I think that’s about it for the intersectional stuff. Someone offered me the three Florida State games, but, uhhh… no thanks. I’m still looking for some of the more obscure nonconference matchups from the 80s: Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State, Utah, Duke, Colorado, Alabama (a loss) among others. Seriously, compare the schedules from the 80s to the ones we have now. In terms of weird, intersectional matchups, those schedules can’t be beat. I miss those. If I were AD, I’d stop scheduling all in-state schools. I miss the days from the 70s when it was considered an insult to the program to play an in-state school. There’s a reason we didn’t play an instate school from 1934 (thereabouts, a game against then Western Reserve) until 1992 (Bowling Green). We are Ohio football. That’s why we were often commonly referred to as simply “Ohio”. If only I were Gene Smith…
Good grief, Vico, how do you do it?! After reading your story, thank God I’m married and don’t have to “go out there again”. Good point about the jukebox selections. The bar doesn’t have a Karaoke Night does it? That could be pretty gruesome.
Speaking of Crimson Tide, I wonder if that is ‘bama’s official/unofficial movie? In particular:
Denzel Washington: “GO BAMA”
Crew response: “ROLL TIDE”
I’d like to see someone overdub that clip with a:
Denzel Washington: “OH”
Crew response: “IO”
After all, the SSMN Alabama is an Ohio-Class submarine, whose lead sub was, naturally enough the SSBN Ohio. Hah!
Seriously, keep up the dredging with the older even obscure game clips…. and, if only Gene Smith did have your ear.
Ken, the locals here are suckers for anything that makes a reference to Alabama or the Crimson Tide. To be fair, I think Ohio would be too if we had more references to Ohio State in popular culture.
For example:
- Last night at my usual hangout, representatives from the Tide (detergent) company came in handing out free t-shirts to promote the product because, of well, the mutual use of the term “Tide”. Tide is the best-selling detergent here accordingly.
- Remember that obscure song “Deacon Blues” by Steely Dan? It gets frequent radio play here for the lyrics: “They got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose / They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, Call me Deacon Blue”. After the “They call Alabama the Crimson Tide” part, people usually shout “Roll Tide Roll”.
- Forrest Gump is revered down here. Knowing Alabama’s relative dearth of good tailbacks in Alabama lore, I remember jokingly asking if Forrest Gump was their best tailback in the program’s history. I got admonished rather loudly, not in defense of Shaun Alexander, but to remind me that Forrest Gump was only a kick returner. Ohh. Good news there.
- That said, having actually read the damn book on Forrest Gump, local conception about Forrest Gump is greatly misguided.
Of course, I haven’t seen Crimson Tide. I don’t watch a lot of movies.
Fortunately, there’s no karaoke section at the bar and the bar I go to is one I frequent for the very reason that they don’t have live bands. Still, my general policy on jukebox selections is to punish people for the hubris of bar music. I’ve gotten into trouble for it too at another bar (not really trouble, but the owner that I knew quite well gave me a talking-to). After someone selected Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer”, “You Give Love A Bad Name” and “Wanted, Dead or Alive” back-to-back-to-back, I hijacked the jukebox with Steve Winwood’s “Valerie”, Robbie Dupree’s “Steal Away” and Percy Faith’s “Theme From A Summer Place”. Apparently Steve Winwood isn’t bar music. See: Bon Jovi — the swamprats pulled from the gutter of New Jersey to appeal exclusively to horny schoolgirls in the 1980s — is manly, bar music. Steve Winwood is not. Seriously: I hate Bon Jovi… and Dave Matthews, and whoever is responsible for Kenny Chesney (including Chesney himself, his parents, and his distant ancestors). These things tend to play well in my age bracket.
Alas, stones are easy to throw down here, but I’m usually a square peg in a round hole anywhere I am when I’m surrounded by people my age. Ohio is where I felt most at home, at least among peers (I always enjoy time with my parents). I look forward to being in Ohio in November to see my friends.
Man, Vico, you must hate that sh*t ESPN is using as their intro music for college football. There is nothing in this world that gets me less excited for football than listening to that no-talent ass-clown Kenny Chesney.
Oh yes, texbuck. The rage builds. I’ve been asking around here what exactly it is about college football that necessarily requires me having to listen to country music or some irritating jam band.
To no avail.
I was inspired to suggest that Spandau Ballet’s “Gold” replace all college football-related music after I read this petition filed with the House of Commons several years ago: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/goldanthem/
One of these days… one of these days.
Put them all on Vico. I would like to see those 80 matchups. There were some interesting matchups. 1985 was an interesting year. Pitt 10-7, Colorado-which you have on here, Washington State. 1986 too, Alabama 16-10, Washington 41-7, Utah 66-6, Colorado 13-10. Interesting matchups.
Put em all on. I love this site and watching the old games!!!
Now that you mention it, someone offered me their copy of the 1985 Pitt game — the first night game in Ohio State history, but the final 12 seconds of the game is missing. In a 10-7 victory where Ohio State won in the final minute (TD strike to Carter, I think), the last 12 seconds of that game are kinda important.
I thought OSU led the entire game 10-7. I remember watching that game, but I was like 7 years old and don’t remember much. Come on! Put those games on!!!!
I was also gonna ask, How do you get all those games??? I would love to have that collection!