Of course, football Saturdays also bring your foes to your campus, and I saw plenty of Buckeye backers among the Spartans. One group, all dressed in scarlet and gray, set up their chairs and tables in a clearing and were nice enough to invite this Wolverine to join them.
“Urban Meyer’s been the best fit with his school since [Nick] Saban went to Alabama,” said Brandon McCurry, twenty-eight, who now lives in Jacksonville. “He’s a Buckeye through and through, born and bred. Cooper couldn’t beat Michigan because he didn’t understand the culture.”
“Urban’s whole mentality is speed, and national championships,” added Rob Young, twenty-seven, from Findlay, Ohio (“Flag City, USA”), between beanbag tosses.
“And national recruiting,” McCurry said.
“Tressel was more conservative,” said Eric Corle, twenty-eight, from Grand Haven, Michigan. “Urban’s more aggressive. We like that.”
“Eleven and one is not good enough!” said Dana Chalupa, twenty-five, who’s getting her PhD in sociology at Bowling Green. “It’s not!”
When a sweet sociology graduate student tells you 11-1 is not good enough for Ohio State, you have just seen what pressure looks like. Year in and year out, no coach in the Big Ten has more pressure to win than Ohio State’s—something Tressel, Cooper, and Earle Bruce could have told Meyer, and probably have. The tenures of Ohio State’s last five coaches all ended in firings.
How did these fans explain the uncommon intensity Buckeye fans brought to their team? “The whole state is Buckeyes,” Corle answered. “No split loyalties. And no pro teams in town.” The NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets, obviously, didn’t count.
“The last time the [Cleveland] Browns won the title [in 1964], Jim Brown was the star,” McCurry said. “And the Bengals have never won it.”
What did they make of the Big Ten’s apparent demise, relative to the SEC?
“The Big Ten’s the oldest conference in the country,” McCurry said, “but the population in the Sun Belt is changing everything.”
“Like recruiting,” Young said. “Down there, you’ve already got the cream of the crop. Then you take the cream of the cream. And because they oversign recruits [an unethical but legal practice, analogous to overbooking flights], they get to keep it all.”
“Academics in the SEC are not as important as they are in the Big Ten,” McCurry said, then chuckled. “Except at Vandy. But what does that get them?”
I turned the conversation to the Michigan–Ohio State rivalry.
“Best rivalry in college football,” Young said.
“In sports,” Corle added.
“If you’re not hated, you’re doing something wrong,” McCurry said.
“I’m looking forward to that,” Young said. To what, exactly? “To being hated again. Like we were. But maybe even more, this time. If we keep winning this year, we’re gonna be hated everywhere—and that’s gonna be nice!”
• • •
Of the programs I researched, Ohio State makes the boldest bid for winning. Not at all costs: they graduated 74 percent of their players that spring—up from 63 percent just two years earlier—ahead of Michigan and every other Big Ten school but Northwestern and Penn State. But Meyer pledged to do better. Since his six Florida teams all finished in the top three in the SEC in both Academic Progress Rate (APR) and graduation rates, often trailing only Vanderbilt, and every senior on his 2008 national title team graduated, there was no reason to doubt he was serious about academics.
But the Buckeyes’ recent past, and the comments from their president to their fans, suggest their priorities are not the same as Northwestern’s—or Michigan’s. Putting aside president Gordon Gee’s unfortunate comment—“I’m just hopeful [Tressel] doesn’t dismiss me!”—and Maurice Clarett’s steady stream of damaging quotes, the hits still kept coming. Just a few days after my visit to East Lansing, Ohio State’s third-string quarterback Cardale Jones tweeted a PR man’s nightmare: “Why should we have to go to class when we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.” You could argue that anyone whose grammar and punctuation were that bad and was not even a starter is exactly the kind of person who should take most advantage of the educational opportunities being offered, but that’s a side point.
To be fair, when even twenty-five-year-old grad students declare that 11-1 is not good enough, everyone feels the pressure to win—from the president to the third-string quarterback. When the standard is an undefeated national championship season—not this year, even these fans conceded, but soon—it is obviously impossible for Meyer to surpass their expectations on the field.
But he could off the field, with higher graduation rates, and fewer negative stories. If he could do all that, he could strike a blow for college football itself. The best answer to “Everyone cheats” is “We don’t—and we still beat you.”
That, of course, would only earn the Buckeyes still more resentment around the league—which would please these fans immensely.
• • •
While we were out singing “500 Miles” with a hundred of our best friends at Crunchy’s, Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer was sitting in his hotel room half an hour away, racking his brain for something to motivate his team. He wasn’t searching for the usual pregame fodder about sticking together and playing their best. He needed something better, because he felt their challenge was bigger than just playing a tough Big Ten team.
“We were 4 and 0,” he told me, “but we still weren’t very good. And Michigan State had whacked us pretty bad the year before. We couldn’t move the ball against them.”
But Meyer’s biggest problem wasn’t a football problem, but a fundamental one: trust.
“The kids wouldn’t let us coach them,” he said. “Whenever you take over a new program, there’s going to be pushback—but it had gone on long enough. They were still in the evaluation stage with us—and going into your fifth game, that’s not good.”
Zach Boren, the senior captain, “was actually one of the biggest offenders. It was always, ‘Why are we doing this? We didn’t do it this way before! We won games and went to the Rose Bowl!’ You put in all the time and effort, and you start to get a little angry that they’re not coming along.”
So, the night before the Michigan State game, Meyer stewed in his hotel room, trying to come up with something to create a breakthrough and end the war of wills between the coaches and the players so they could join forces against their foe.
“I started thinking of the pageantry and the tradition of Ohio State football,” he said, something he knew well from growing up in Ashtabula. “And that’s when I came up with it. So I decided, at breakfast, I’d give a real impassioned speech.”
The next morning, while tens of thousands of fans enjoyed their burgers and brats at their campus tailgates, Meyer tapped his glass, then stood up in the hotel banquet hall to address his team. “Ohio State’s got a lot of great traditions,” he told them. “The Victory Bell, the Buckeye Grove, the Senior Tackle. We’ve got all these great traditions—so why can’t we start one?
“We need to come together. We need to be one. We could cut our fingers and sign our names in blood, but I don’t think we can do that with the Internet,” he said, getting a chuckle. “Might make some news.
“So let’s make a toast to each other,” he said, and lifted his glass of water, inviting them to do the same. “Let’s start today. Open your hearts, and let us coach you. All in!”
They clinked their raised glasses and drank their baptismal water.
“This will go down in Ohio State tradition as one of the great moments.”
It could, anyway.
“Whenever coaches do things like that,” he told me, “it’s risky. If it doesn’t work, you’re all of a sudden in a storm that you can’t manage. You put it out there, and they don’t take it, then you panic and start getting gimmicky. Secret handshakes, slogans on T-shirts, all that. And then you’re fishing. You’re lost.
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“It only works if you win. When they asked Francis Schmidt in 1934 how he planned to beat Michigan, and he said, ‘Michigan puts their pants on the same way we do—one leg at a time,’ that’s awesome. But if Francis Schmidt said that, and his players went out there and got their asses kicked, would they start giving out little gold pants?
“It only works if you win.”
• • •
ESPN set up its College GameDay crew in East Lansing that day to showcase a classic Big Ten battle between fourteenth-ranked Ohio State, at 4-0, and twentieth-ranked Michigan State, at 3-1. The Spartans had lost to Notre Dame, but beaten a ranked Boise State team. Both teams had visions of a division title.
The stands were packed early—never a sure thing with the modern student population—and in full bloom with a student whiteout. But enough Buckeye fans were in the northeast corner and in the balcony to make some noise when the players gave them something to cheer about.
The Buckeyes brought their band, too, which they call “The Best Damn Band in the Land,” or TBDBITL for short, and the moniker is more than bluster. They are damn good.
With a three-thirty kickoff, the view from the press box was worth taking in. When you look out through the back windows, away from the field, you see Munn Ice Arena, the Breslin Center for basketball and concerts, and in the distance the capitol dome five miles up Michigan Avenue—the trip Hannah made often in his pickup truck—all surrounded by green, green, and more green.
But the view out the other side, past the field, is even better. MSU can’t boast a golden dome, a mountain range, or a Great Lake, but looking out on the brick buildings and the thoughtful landscaping, with mature trees, open fields, and pathways cut artfully through all of it, it makes you appreciate what President Hannah had envisioned.
• • •
On the game’s first possession, Buckeye quarterback Braxton Miller needed only eight plays, one third-down conversion, and less than three minutes to cover 75 yards for the game’s first touchdown. It looked as if it could be a long day for the Spartans, but they stopped two Buckeye drives with an interception and a fumble recovery.
But it could have been a much better half for the Spartans, too. Their star tailback, Le’Veon Bell, had disappeared; first-year quarterback Andrew Maxwell’s passes were off, and when they weren’t, his receivers dropped them; and their kicker missed a 42-yard chance before halftime, so the Spartans went to the locker room down 7-3. For anyone but a Big Ten fan, that was probably reason enough to change the channel.
After the teams started the second half by swapping field goals, Maxwell and his receivers finally got in sync, connecting for a 29-yard touchdown that featured crafty moves and poor tackling. The scoreboard didn’t ask questions: 13–10 Michigan State, with 4:49 left in the third quarter.
The Buckeyes had already survived a close battle against Cal at home, and the next week they couldn’t shake University of Alabama–Birmingham until the five-minute mark. This was hardly a dominant Ohio State team, but the 2012 squad was nothing if not resilient.
But Urban Meyer carried a burden the rest of the Big Ten did not: if the league’s only national-title-winning coach could not succeed at the league’s only consistent national contender from the previous decade, the Big Ten was doomed. And if the team didn’t vindicate Meyer’s morning toast, he might be, too.
On just the fourth play of the Buckeyes’ next possession, Braxton Miller fired a bomb down the right sideline, slipping it just past the defender’s fingers into the hands of Devin Smith, who ran straight to the end zone for a 17–13 Ohio State lead.
But just as quickly as Miller had flashed his promise, he showed his inexperience. At the start of the fourth quarter, he got hit hard and apparently assumed he was down, so he spun the ball on the field—but the whistle hadn’t blown, it was ruled a fumble, and the Spartans got the ball. Could they take advantage?
The Spartans’ drive stalled at the Ohio State 31-yard line, forcing them to settle for a field goal to move within one point, 17–16, with 7:07 left.
It seemed like the right decision at the time, but a few minutes later Meyer’s speech seemed to kick in. The Buckeyes started with the ball on their own 18 with 4:10 to kill. Meyer was in no mood to take chances passing the ball against a good defense, but he wasn’t too eager to give the ball back to Le’Veon Bell, either.
“We had to move it, the hard way,” Meyer told me. “It was our O-line against Michigan State’s very good D-line, on national TV. We didn’t do a lot of option. We just ran it straight up the gut. On a third-down play, we ran right over Reid Fragel—pure strength on strength. That’s when you go ‘Wow.’ ”
Quarterback Braxton Miller made a gesture many interpreted as the “Superman,” when he pulled his fists apart on his chest, as though busting out the S on his shirt. He was actually communicating a very different message: “Open your heart,” the point of Meyer’s breakfast toast, “which is the opposite,” Meyer said. “And that’s what they did: they opened their hearts.
“It was not just what they did on the field, but how. They grew up, right then. Boys became men that day.”
At the center of it was senior captain Zach Boren, whose blocking at fullback was crucial to that drive.
“We hadn’t really played very well in any of our nonconference games,” Boren told me. “It was time to get better, time to become a team. When Coach said, ‘It’s time to buy in,’ we took that to heart. And that’s what happened out there. The last four minutes of that game, that was something. We held the ball the entire time. Carlos Hyde was just chewing up yards, like there was nothing they could do.”
“After the toast,” linebacker Etienne Sabino told me, “we were going to do it for each other. It wasn’t cocky, but it was confident. And from that point, our play just elevated from there. No doubt we were going to find a way to win.”
After Ohio State’s offense fought for three straight first downs, Meyer called for the victory formation, with the shade sliding over the field.
No one would have confused the game that day for the Patriots versus the Colts—or Alabama versus LSU, for that matter—but no one sitting in the stands or watching it on TV had any such expectations. They had come to see a big game between two Big Ten teams. While the Spartan fans were surely disappointed, everyone had gotten what they’d paid for: an all-out battle between two longtime foes who left everything on the field.
The postgame handshakes complete, Meyer ran with his players to the northeast corner, where the Buckeye fans gathered. Standing in the middle of the mob, surrounded by his players, he was beaming.
The drums and sousaphones belted out a few rock anthems, to which the fans, players, and coaches responded with rhythmic fist-pumping. The postgame routines are truly tribal, the modern equivalent of dancing around the fire after the kill. Then they put their arms around each other to sing “Carmen Ohio,” the alma mater, with emphasis on “O-hi-o!” Running up the tunnel, Meyer leaped up to high-five a fan.
No one who has ever met Urban Meyer would ever call the man soft, or stupid. He knew his team needed a lot of work to compete at the national level. But he also knew that in college football, unlike every other sport, you almost never face any opponent twice, and just one loss can knock you out of the running for the national title or even the conference crown. Because one loss can be too many, one victory matters most in college football.
This game might have been a sloppy, simple, one-point victory over an average opponent—but the Buckeyes had won. The Spartans got nothing. So the Buckeyes, and only the Buckeyes, got to go home happy.
And their coach went home convinced, for the first time, that this was his team, and they were finally in it together.
• • •
At Michigan State, they host the visiting team’s postgame press conference in a portable classroom parked near a loading ramp. To get there, you have to walk up the tunnel and past Ohio State’s equipment truck, painted gray with wh
ite and black stripes at the top, with eleven gigantic, green BUCKEYE award stickers, and, in big, bold letters, THE PEOPLE. THE TRADITION. THE EXCELLENCE.
Waiting for Meyer to show up, all you could hear was the loud loading of the truck by the student managers: bang-bang-bang.
Meyer showed up with his son, wearing a Braxton Miller number 5 jersey, while his dad wore a relaxed, satisfied expression—the rarest of sights for a college football coach in season.
“This was my Big Ten baptism,” Meyer said, after praising the Spartans. “It was a war—two sledgehammers going after each other. I know the Big Ten’s taken some heat, but that was a great game.
“That ranks as one of [my] top wins,” which was saying something. “This was fantastic. We’re happy to be 5 and 0, with a chance to go 6 and 0.”
After he finished, he stood against the fifteen-foot concrete wall that borders the loading area, with his right arm around his wife and his left arm around his son, to savor five minutes of peace.
Ohio State’s Sports Information Director Jerry Emig brought a series of players down the ramp for the reporters, like chum to sharks. While they devoured their subjects, Meyer was able to walk out unnoticed with his son. He passed a table stacked with Styrofoam boxes of chicken tenders, an apple, and a banana, grabbed one for himself and one for his son, then walked up the ramp, where he was cheered by the Ohio State fans behind the ropes.
Behind him, his players—all dressed in shiny black sweats—grabbed boxes for themselves, then gave their parents hugs at the rope line. They could look forward to a satisfying four-hour ride home of cheerful talk and text messages.
“That was a big win for our program,” he told me. “Big win.”
“On Saturday, September twenty-ninth, 2012, at eleven twenty-two a.m., we became a team. And they proved it seven hours later.
“By the time we got on the buses, something had changed.”
• • •
After the game, I walked back across the campus toward Grand River Avenue. Most of the tailgaters had packed and gone, but I saw a few hearty souls drinking beer, jawing, watching their generator-powered TVs, and even playing a friendly game of cornhole. A loss does not ruin the day for Spartans the way it does for Wolverines and Buckeyes, but their energy had taken a hit. They were no longer standing, but sitting in chairs in circles in the growing dusk.
Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football Page 26
