Ohio State takes a licking, keeps on ticking
CHRIS DUFRESNE / ON COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Buckeyes have rebounded from loss to USC and could really move up by beating Penn State on Saturday.
"The Blob" is a 1958 horror film about a giant amoeba-like alien that terrorizes a small community in Pennsylvania.
"The" Ohio State University has a football team that slimed its way into the last two national title games in Arizona and Louisiana and now threatens to terrorize a college football community at this year's title game in Florida.
Trailer caption: "Run for your lives!"
Hold it, didn't a village mob with torches run Ohio State out of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Sept. 13?
Didn't Tommy Trojan slay this dragon?
Wasn't the score 35-3?
Don't look now but . . . here come the Ohio State Zombies.
We've said it and said it and said it again: You can't get rid of these guys.
True story: After the USC-Ohio State game, I stood near midfield with two respected colleagues, Stewart Mandel of SI.com and Dan Wetzel of Yahoo!, who officially and categorically dismissed the Buckeyes from national title contention.
I almost spit out my gum.
Are you kidding?
Not this time, the scribes said.
"Really?" I responded.
Last year, Ohio State lost at home to Illinois on Nov. 10, fell from No. 1 to No. 7, was written off by everyone in the media, including me, only to rise in a few weeks back to No. 1.
And you knew what that meant: another defeat date against the Southeastern Conference champion.
There is a persistent and perceptible enmity toward Ohio State.
Some would rather see Warren Buffett win the lottery than the Buckeyes getting the third "ol' college try" against a team such as Florida or Louisiana State.
Call it Ohio State fatigue, Buckeye backlash -- but it hasn't stopped the Buckeyes from playing games and winning most of them.
They have already rallied back from that USC loss in September that did not, remember, involve injured tailback Beanie Wells.
After USC, Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel made his most important decision since choosing red as the color for his sweater vest.
Tressel benched senior quarterback Todd Boeckman, who led Ohio State to the national game last year, and replaced him with freshman Terrelle Pryor, a rare, transformational -- but untested -- talent.
The move threatened to divide the locker room. How do you hand over your Mercedes keys to a teenager?
The Pryor upside, though, was too irresistible -- and the time to hesitate was through.
