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Making it Rain on OSU Fans
04/10/07
by Clay

If Ohio State was in the SEC, it'd be just another school. Slotted somewhere in the Ole Miss or South Carolina conference range. High dreams, committed fans, but schools that the stars have to perfectly align every 30 years or so for championships to happen.

But fortunately for Ohio State (it doesn't deserve to be referred to with a capitalized The) it's in the Big 10. Which means we have to hear about the Buckeyes all year until they advance to the championship game and come up woefully short. Except, that is, for when they employ felons at running back who are currently serving jail time, and don't have to play any SEC teams in bowl games.

Yep, if you want to pinpoint the athletic department that consistently receives the most unjustified acclaim in the entire country, set Google maps for Columbus and just wait for the map to download. If you're anything like me, you halfway expect for the resulting campus map to be covered by one gigantic word that also starts with O: Overrated.

After the January spanking in the BCS Championship Game that made Ohio State 0-8 all time in bowl games played against the SEC, Florida defensive end Jarvis Moss said, "Honestly, we've played a lot better teams than them. I could name four or five teams in the SEC that could probably compete with them and play the same type of game we did against them."

You get the feeling Joakim Noah or Corey Brewer could have said the same thing -- if either of them had taken time to speak in any language other than ear-splitting incoherence after the Gators pimp-slapped the Buckeyes for the third time in about three months.

But it really didn't matter; everyone in America could tell that for the second time on the basketball court and the third time in about 14 weeks, counting the gridiron spanking, Ohio State was simply no match for Florida. And trust me, it's painful for me to give Florida this much credit.

I would have preferred that somehow, someway this game ended in a tie. Rooting for Florida or Ohio State is like deciding between whether you'd rather have a root canal without laughing gas or get stabbed in the arm by a sharpened bayonet. Neither one is particularly appealing.

Florida's success has made my life as a fan pretty insufferable for the past year. The amount of trash talk I hear from Gators fans is overwhelming. So consistent is this trash talk from Gators alumni that fans of other SEC schools have been e-mailing me, wanting to know how we can respond to a Gators championship onslaught. After much thought I have come up with 11 defenses to Florida's third championship, alternating with 11 observations from the Final Four.

1. Championships, much like Ohio State, are overrated. We cheer for collegiate athletics for the fun of the competition, the triumph of student-athletes, and the bonhomie engendered by schoolyard games.

2. Will Billy Packer ever learn how to pronounce Billy Donovan's name? It's not that complicated. How does no one correct this? If I was a coach and Donovan constantly called me Trevis, "Coach Trevis needs a timeout now," this would drive me crazy.

3. Championships don't count when you get to play the Ohio State Losers in the championship game.

4. Greg Oden being the lead story at halftime. Look, Florida was up 11 points at the half, and yet we still started off with Oden talk. We get it, Greg Oden is a good basketball player. Aside from watching him do women's diving scissor kicks after each dunk (how is this not a technical?), I don't really have any issues with Oden. Any guy who will grow a beard and not trim it for several months is fine by me. But having to hear how great he was ad infinitum made me want him to lose just so I wouldn't have to hear any more about how great he was.

5. During the game, I turned to my friend Junaid after we had both received six taunting text messages in a row from Florida grad Neville and said, "Can we mention that the Lady Vols are in the women's basketball final as a defense?" Before he could even respond, my wife said, "Maybe UT needs to start a women's football team too so they can win." Both of us were utterly defeated and speechless.

6. How about the block-charge call in the Florida-UCLA game that was so close this weekend they just offset it and called a block and a charge on the same play? This reminded me of elementary school kickball when we used to call for redoes on difficult plays. Only it was in one of the most important games of the year. Seriously, college basketball needs the NBA circle under the basket.

7. Only focusing on men's basketball and football titles is sexist. And everyone who brags about male sports titles without talking about women's sports titles is violating Title IX and is in danger of being imprisoned. For life. (Caveat: This may or may not correctly sum up the legalities of Title IX.) Also, I realize this violates a previous argument, but as a lawyer you are taught to make inconsistent legal arguments. This is called being "thorough" and also "overbilling."

8. The Billy Packer arm-rub of Oden after the Georgetown-Ohio State game. As if the overpowering Oden-love wasn't enough, did anyone else notice Packer sort of rub Oden's arm as they finished the postgame interview? It reminded me of how every mom looks in graduation pictures with their sons. Only I'm going to go out on a limb and say Billy Packer is neither maternally nor paternally related to Oden.

9. Championships don't matter when every coed at your school has fat arms.

10. Don't you think Georgetown's Jeff Green feels like the luckiest man on earth now that the Ohio State game has been over for a few days? Imagine if Greg Oden finishes that dunk and Jeff Green still gets called for the block (which further demonstrates my block/charge argument by the way). That play becomes the most replayed shot of the NCAA Tournament since Christian Laettner scored on Kentucky. And no matter what else he does for the rest of his career, Jeff Green has to live with being the most posterized player in NCAA tourney history. I bet Green still wakes up covered in sweat and thanks God Oden fumbled the basketball on the dunk attempt. I would.

11. Florida fans wear jean shorts, colored wristbands, and wife beaters. To weddings.

12. My favorite part of the Final Four? When CBS had to go to commercial because the Florida girls with fat arms were rioting over the Georgia Dome selling out of cinnamon and sugar funnel cakes.

13. Billy Donovan's going to leave ... Billy Donovan's going to leave ... Billy Donovan's going to leave. This is what the Kentucky fans are taunting Gators fans with in the wake of Donovan's second championship. Which is really pathetic. Like breaking up a loving and successful marriage because you're a billionaire and can afford a trophy wife and then incessantly bragging about how cool you are for pulling this off. So I refuse to accept this taunt on principle alone.

14. If Billy Packer and George W. Bush went out to dinner, who would have the lower approval rating at the table? Shockingly, I think it's Packer, and all he does is call basketball games.

15. The only reason Florida even has Tennessee natives Corey Brewer or Lee Humphrey on its basketball team is because former Tennessee coach Buzz Peterson was such a bad recruiter, he couldn't convince teenage boys to come to Knoxville for an orgy starring Gisele Bundchen and her five sisters.

16. If I could be any college basketball player, I think I'd be Al Horford.

17. At least once or twice in my lifetime another team is going to win back-to-back basketball titles, so this really isn't that big of a deal.

18. The shot with two minutes left of Urban Meyer laughing and Jim Tressel looking stone-faced and uncertain like he did for the entire BCS title game was just cruel and unusual fan punishment. It's not like any Ohio State fan had forgotten about the football game. And then the cameras find the coaches in the stands after the game is already decided. Tough.

19. Florida has only won a single national title in football in the past two years. Slackers.

20. Corey Brewer thanking his "daddy" on television. Brewer's from Middle Tennessee, where use of the word "daddy" transcends race. At least I think it does. Although come to think of it, I haven't heard any Asian or Hispanic Nashvillians using the term.

21. Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl owns Billy Donovan in head-to-head games. Three out of four over the past two years, and the one loss was without Chris Lofton. Insert your own team's record head-to-head against Florida and insist, to the high heavens, that fan debates are limited to the two teams in head-to-head games and not to how the respective teams do in other games.

22. In case you missed it, Mike Conley Jr. is, shockingly, the son of Mike Conley Sr. And did you know that Conley and Greg Oden were teammates at Lawrence North? Or that Joakim Noah's dad is Yannick Noah and that Yannick won the French Open? These are all pretty amazing storylines that were totally underplayed. How did this happen? Someone needs to be fired.

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