- Saturday, October 15, 2011

- Memorial Stadium - Champaign, Illinois

- 3:30 p.m. (ET)

- TV: ABC (Regional) - or ESPN -


Ohio State and Illinois square off for the 98th time this Saturday in Champaign, and like so many aspects of OSU football this season, things seem a little upside-down this time around. For starters, the Illini are ranked, undefeated, and favored, while the Buckeyes (3-3, 0-2) are none of the above. Ron Zook’s 16th-ranked charges are riding high at 6-0, while the team that has dominated Big Ten play for a decade is looking up at...well, everyone...in the league standings.

Ohio State will try to avoid falling to 0-3 in the conference by winning in Champaign for the ninth straight time. Memorial Stadium has a reputation as a tough place for the Buckeyes to play even though they haven’t lost there in 20 years. The last Illinois win over the Bucks came in Columbus in November of 2007, and cost Jim Tressel’s then 10-0 OSU team an unbeaten regular season. OSU leads the all-time series 63-30-4, and they have won three in a row, six of the last seven, and are 34-12 in Champaign.

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For the first 35 minutes, Ohio State’s Big Ten road opener at Nebraska went wonderfully- better, in fact, than even could have been hoped. With Braxton Miller making dynamic plays and the defense shutting down the occasionally explosive Cornhusker offense, the Buckeyes rolled toward the midway point of the fourth quarter with a three-touchdown lead that was looking more and more insurmountable by the minute.

Then, with shocking swiftness, it all fell apart. Offensively, defensively, the collapse was total and comprehensive. When the dust from the wreckage cleared Ohio State had suffered its second consecutive defeat, 34-27. It took about a quarter’s worth of football to turn a season-turning win into the biggest comeback in Nebraska football history, the first Big Ten win in Nebraska football history and a game probably seen by Cornhusker faithful as an all-timer. Good for them- bad for Ohio State.

And all it took was one play to set the entire disaster in motion.

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The dark bedroom has a deafening silence to it. It’s always that way the morning after game-day. With all those damn people screaming their heads off while he works, it takes at least 36 hours for his head to feel right. Which isn’t fair, to be honest. It isn’t like he goes to some strangers office and yells at the top of his lungs while they’re doing their job. It’s distracting frankly, and a little rude.

The alarm clock starts screaming at precisely 5:00 AM. That’s not descriptive writing, by the way. He rigged his alarm clock so he could wake up to a blood curdling scream every morning. When he first set it up, he told his wife it was the only thing that could shake him from his dreams. If he was being honest though, he just wanted to start each day with an audible example of his thought-process. Some people do yoga to start the day. Those people are ass-holes.

He didn’t need the alarm clock this particular morning. He had been sitting up, staring at the digital numbers as they went through their 60 second routine. At 5:01, he grunted and begrudgingly got out of bed. Might as well get this day over with. The sooner he did that, the sooner he could come home, eat his porridge and watch reruns of Cops. Nothing better than a warm meal in your stomach while watching justice flex its muscle.

He eats a small breakfast before a quick shower and shave. He doesn’t touch the mustache with his razor though. That would be insanity. A mustache to a man is like a set of testicles to a gorilla -- the bigger it is, the more respect you get. That was the first thing his father taught him, and that’s why he only recruited young offensive lineman with a promising upper-lip. His mustache is the foundation of his career, family and friendships. Always has been, always will be.

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Ohio State did almost everything right for two and a half quarters in Lincoln, Nebraska on Saturday night, building a 27-6 third quarter lead over the Cornhuskers with a solid offensive performance that absolutely no one saw coming. But an injury to quarterback Braxton Miller and a fourth quarter collapse by the OSU defense allowed Nebraska to score 28 unanswered points and pull out a 34-27 victory over the Buckeyes for their first Big Ten win.

Husker quarterback Taylor Martinez, running back Rex Burkhead and the Nebraska offense rediscovered their option rushing attack in the second half, and the OSU defense had no answer for it after the momentum of the game shifted on a key third quarter play. The Buckeyes had the ball and a 3-touchdown lead when old “Mo” changed uniforms. Linebacker Lavonte David swiped the ball from Miller as he fell to the turf on what would have been a first down carry at the OSU 23-yard line, and the air immediately began coming out of the Buckeye balloon.

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