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MIKE BEAS: Like them or not, Buckeye football fans the best
A few years ago I found myself the recipient of a cruel joke. Or so I thought while attending a Big Ten football game and noticing that my ticket?s small print was sending me marching into a sea of scarlet.
Maybe if I kept my yap shut for four quarters (yeah, right), the afternoon would go by smoothly and only a few harmless trash-talking episodes will ensue.
Bracing myself for the worst, a strange thing happened.
Ohio State fans were, for the most part, pretty nice people. Oh, Buckeye Land has raised some bandwagon-jumping jerks, but what college football fan base hasn?t? Think every supporter of Notre Dame, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee is taking today off to be fitted for a halo?
Hardly.
My mind backtracked to that autumn stampede of
OSU backers the other day when reading that between 30,000-40,000 Buckeye fans ? that?s 40,000, not 4,000 ? made the trip to Austin, Texas, for the much-anticipated showdown between No. 1 Ohio State and second-ranked Texas.
Austin is 1,300 miles southwest of Columbus, Ohio.
Think of how many Ohio residents were forced to come down with mysterious illnesses last Thursday and Friday.
?Yeah, boss (cough), this is Walt. I won?t be in today (sniff). Seems I?ve come down with a bug of some sort (throat clear). My voice is going, so don?t call me this weekend. Don?t want to strain it (cough, the sequel). See you Monday.?
As this conversation takes place, Walt?s buddies are in his driveway loading his grill and enough food to feed half of Youngstown onto the RV.
Forty-thousand people. Thirteen-hundred miles. State after state of in-between.
Who does this?
And who rents the home team?s 16,000-seat basketball venue to hold a pep session prior to Saturday?s kickoff and then has roughly 7,000 rabid Buckeye fans show up?
Don?t mess with Texas, my foot. Don?t mess with Ohio.
Texas, which supposedly invented and perfected the sport of football, got eclipsed off and on the football field over the weekend. A dream-come-true double-dip for all those Buckeye backers driving those 1,300 miles the other direction on Sunday.
OSU does get points taken away for the celebratory idiocy taking place near campus after the victory, which included fires, arrests and the obligatory torched automobile or two.
Not to send these morons crashing back to earth, but you?ve won two football games in 2006. Eleven more and you?ve got your title.
Enough wrist-slapping. The intent here is to give credit where it is due and Ohio State stepped up large in almost every way possible.
Athletics are driven by numbers, so until Michigan, Tennessee or some other program pulls off or surpasses what Ohio State just pulled off, Buckeye fans have No. 1 to themselves.
Sports Editor Mike Beas can be reached at
mike.beas@heraldbulletin.com.
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