YouTube turned 10 last month. Its birthday celebration was missing one conspicuous friend of the site.
Of course its first video ever uploaded - Me at the Zoo - was in attendance as were YouTube legends Psy, Rick Astley and every single cat that's ever lived. But there was one invited guest that unexpectedly sent its regrets.
The redemption-themed Ohio State football hype video was a no-show.
It was a dark and stormy night. Let's relive it!
YouTube's first decade coincided with what seemed to be an inexhaustible inventory of ominous Buckeye football highlight videos that all began like this one with dreary slow-motion imagery of Florida, LSU, Texas, Southern Cal, Penn State or any one of the 21 losses Ohio State has suffered over the decade we've been sharing and uploading videos.
See, our beloved team limped to an embarrassing 110-21 record during the YouTube era (only 84% - that's a B; ugh Ohio State's dad is going to be furious) - with seven of those losses coming in a one self-nuked season - which resulted in our fan base becoming obsessed with redemption.
There will be no redemption-themed hype videos this summer because there is no atonement, restitution or reclamation to be had anymore. Ohio State won the first-ever college football playoff in resounding fashion. Every single bit of redemption required by the previous decade has now been procured.
Sure, some joker may decide to cobble together Virginia Tech highlights from last season set to Daniel Powter heading into the first game of the 2015 season but for now we're heading into an offseason unlike any other. Not even 2003 was like this.
The last title occurred in what anthropologists now refer to as "The Pre-Narrative Era." This was prior to the word narrative evolving into its current, overused eye-rolly term. Back then the Big Ten was merely one of the money conferences aligned to send its better teams into the BCS instead of some frigid Rust Belt remnant where the indigenous were fleeing for warmer trailer parks climates - which is why B1G football is so bad.
Coincidentally, this was one of narrative's greatest hits. It went 5-2 that postseason.
The SEC went 3-4, but ESPN had not yet aggregated its viewing audiences by conference so nobody cared. Ohio State's 0-7 bowl record against the SEC was largely in consolation bowl games and also ignored, which meant the only real redemption in 2003 was of the meta variety: A celebration of Jim Tressel turning a previously rotting apple into delicious pastry while beating Michigan twice in a row.
There were two problems with the afterglow in 2003: One began at the end of the first overtime of the BCS title game when Glenn Sharpe interfered with Chris Gamble and Dan Fouts provided his dissenting opinion of the call on live air. Eleven years later a documentary that included this little bit of revisionist history - that Ohio State won because of one bad call - was broadcast on ESPN.
Every single bit of redemption required by the previous decade has now been procured.
That all began that night. Yes, this hat really exists. Miami's small but vocal fan base along with hordes of detractors clinging to one 50/50 call (which was preceded by two game-ending misses in regulation) went to great lengths to dampen Ohio State's euphoria. As Caesar used to say of his adversaries, osores odierint.
There are no asterisks attached to the 2014 title. No one questioned it once the games were played. The recreational haters that happily joined Miami's cause have not attached themselves to the grunting noises coming from Fort Worth and Waco because of how dominant the Buckeyes were.
The second problem rose from 2002 hero Maurice Clarett's clashes with Andy Geiger, which eventually begat his departure from school, his descent into darkness and ultimately also produced a documentary that was broadcast on ESPN.
That's two films in wide circulation which both gave Ohio State's national title a sour bit of Behind the Music treatment. It seemed nobody wanted Buckeye fans to enjoy 2003.
And there was also no YouTube back then either. I personally procured the Fiesta Bowl broadcast from a friend of a friend of a friend who had burned it onto four CD-ROMs. That's how I relived the magic from that evening in Tempe. Twelve years ago in technology terms seems like roughly 1000. (Seriously, CD-ROMs).
Since then the Buckeyes have steadily built a redemption video library based on missed opportunities and nightmares. There's even an video indictment of the Fiesta Bowl officiating in Miami's favor where the real zebra crimes took place. YouTube arrived years after that game. It's the first known Ohio State redemption video - and it took place in a game the Buckeyes won to claim the national title.
But that decade all seems like a distant dream now. In just over a month the Buckeyes completely redefined everything its fan base had been pleading for since its previous title.
Glendale is no longer the awful place where Florida wrecked all the good memories of the 2006 team, or where the 2008 team gifted Texas the Fiesta Bowl. It's now the destination Ohio State has pegged as the last game of The Grind. We're no longer trying to forget Glendale; we want to go back.
Doran Grant delivers the news: Redemption!
The Louisiana Superdome got a little less dirty after the Buckeyes beat the Razorbacks on the same field where they fell to LSU three seasons earlier. It has since become the holy site where one of the two epitaph plays for Ohio State this century took place.
Redemption video production on YouTube has been abruptly replaced with celebration videos. In one month's time there have been more locker room celebratory dance videos created than there had previously been in total over the prior decade.
Over the next few weeks and months - when we would normally anticipate the very latest montage videos basted with melancholy tunes predicting this to finally be the year the Buckeyes atone for prior shortcomings - we should be treated to an entirely new kind of offseason hype offering, and it will be redemption-free.
Redemption is ambitious, challenging and now attained. Those videos had their decade, and they may return in a future year - but for now they will be replaced by a theme even more onerous and burdensome than Redemption.
That would be Repeating. And not even Psy or Rick Astley were able to do that.
