There's little prestige in playing the spoiler.
They are ruinous. Spoilers in movies wreck the plot and bludgeon the surprise. Spoilers in food impair both the meal and the consumer. And that spoiler you installed on your Dodge Stratus does not look cool at all, Chad.
Sports are different. Spoilers rise above their own mediocrity to wreck someone else's fairy tale. If you peel back the triumph of mortally wounding a legend all you're left with is inferiority. So - this is easy - spoilers simply refuse to peel it back. They allow the triumph to define their legacy.
Ask Buckeye fans to choose a season where Thad Matta played the spoiler. They'll pick his first one, 2005 - and that's correct, but it doesn't go far enough to amplify just how prolific of a spoiler Matta was because he was so good for so long before his decline.
He left a sturdy 26-win Xavier program for a 16-loss Ohio State team anchored to a postseason ban. It was an impressive and quick turnaround; his Buckeyes had 16 wins by the beginning of that February. A month later was Senior Day, and the undefeated No.1 Illini were the guests. A year earlier his Musketeers had ended St. Joe's undefeated season in the conference tournament.
Spoiler? Little bit.
The Buckeyes, riding a three-game losing streak, were the only thing standing between Illinois and a perfect regular season. As spoilers do, Ohio State treated the game like a title match and annoyed the champs all afternoon. Illinois was up two when guard Luther Head tried to finish off the team that had nothing to play for with a 3-pointer that clanged off the rim.
Ohio State's rebound. Timeout. Twelve seconds left. A few days later my late friend Bobby Birmingham - for you long-time readers, that's Birm's brother - would excitedly relay to me the sequence around the bench during that timeout (from memory):
They're all gathered around with the staff and there's chatter in the huddle about getting it to (Terrence) Dials inside, getting it to overtime, extending the game but then Thad busts in and shouts, "fuck that! We're going for the win!" And they draw up the three for (Matt) Sylvester, who was hot.
Instead of going inside, Dials threw a monster down-screen that freed up Sylvester, who calmly nailed the final three points of his career-high 25 (he had been averaging eight). A split-second after the ball passed through the net, Matta sprinted toward the baseline to call timeout to force Illinois to go the entire length of the floor off a game break.
Seconds later, game over. Ohio State players and fans rushed the court. Matta did not. Instead, he calmly turned against the oncoming mass of humanity and pulled all of his assistant coaches in for an emotional group hug as the chaos reigned around them.
Spoiler wrecked another fairy tale. That's what you remember. You don't peel that one back.
But Matta never stopped playing spoiler. He spoiled Illinois' perfect season first. Then, grandiose plans in Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Madison, and West Lafayette. He won the Big Ten again and again and again and again. The Buckeyes were no longer dashing the dreams of others, but with all the success Buckeye fans were starting to get...you know. They began to believe in the standard that was being sold to them.
Matta teams even went so far as to spoil the spoiler. In 2010 a rebuilding Michigan program was seconds away from a .500 record and continuing its season on the upswing. The Wolverines had forced the Buckeyes to go the entire length of the floor off a break with only seconds remaining.
Matta's exuberance after the basket is toward the replay officials at the table upon seeing notorious troll and basketball official Ed Hightower immediately waving off Evan Turner's game-winner. He knew it was good. Matta wasn't going to allow Michigan to be the spoiler, and he definitely wasn't interested in Hightower spoiling a victory.
As the Buckeyes slowly declined - which directly coincided with Matta's physical challenges, grueling surgeries, and rehab stints - many of us refused to believe in any outcome but a turnaround. We had seen what was possible under impossible circumstances. Ohio State beat programs it had no business beating, landed recruits it shouldn't have landed and won games it was meant to lose.
Everything about Ohio State basketball was redefined over the past 13 seasons. The Buckeyes are now supposed to be as good as Matta made them. He sold that to us. Columbus is a premium coaching destination for basketball, and it is absolutely fascinating to see the debate over whether that's historically true or just a function of Matta's success. It's the latter.
Ohio State fans have been spoiled so badly by what Matta sold them that the best parts of his tenure are now the expectation.
That decline was not a regression to the mean. It was and is a decline. Matta's three predecessors produced 10 (!) seasons as bad or worse than the year he just completed, which was the worst of his career. Ohio State fans have been spoiled so badly by what Matta sold them that the best parts of his tenure are now the expectation.
It was time. You should not be sad about how it ended, because this is the rite of every Buckeye coaching legend. Matta was a great coach, and great Ohio State coaches do not happily ride off into the sunset - not even once, not even ever. But among them all - possibly since Francis Schmidt finally decided that beating Michigan should be an expectation and not such a big goddamn deal - Matta was the great spoiler.
Ask Buckeye fans to choose a season where Thad Matta played the spoiler. They'll pick his first one, 2005 - and that's correct, but it doesn't go far enough. It was every one of them.
Ohio State basketball rose under Matta above its own historical mediocrity to wreck the fairy tale of its own making - that it couldn't also be a basketball school too.
And as a result, the program needs a new spoiler. Because fuck it, we're going for the win.
