With the Sugar Bowl date looming on New Year’s Day against Alabama in the first-ever College Football Playoffs, it’s worth a stroll down memory lane to see how Ohio State has fared in that game over the years. The Buckeyes are 2-2 in the prestigious game hosted by the Crescent City, but are currently on a 2-0 streak in the Sugar Bowl.
The Buckeyes are 0-2 as the game’s underdog and 2-0 as the higher ranked team. Ohio State is a decided underdog in the upcoming meeting with Alabama.
That program cover, tho.
The Buckeyes’ first experience in the Sugar Bowl was also against No. 3 Alabama, back on Jan. 2, 1978. It did not go as well as hoped.
Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide took a 13-0 lead into the half against Woody Hayes’ ninth-ranked Buckeyes, and held a 21-0 advantage after three quarters. In the fourth, Rod Gerald found Jim Harrell for a 38-yard touchdown to get Ohio State on the board, but Jeff Logan’s two-point run was stopped. The Tide tacked on a pair of touchdown runs to win easily, 35-6.
Alabama’s defense was a difference maker, holding Ohio State to 263 total yards. The entire game could have been different if the Buckeyes had been a bit more fortunate. The Tide fumbled an incredible 10 times in the game, but lost the ball on just two of those.
Bama quarterback Jeff Rutledge was named the game’s MVP. He was 8/11 for 109 yards and two touchdowns.
It would be two days shy of 20 years later before the Buckeyes returned to New Orleans, squaring off against Florida State on Jan. 1, 1998. Ohio State was again ranked ninth in the country, and the Seminoles were the nation’s No. 4 team.
Again, the Buckeyes played like the underdogs. Dan Stultz started the scoring with a 40-yard field goal late in the first quarter. But the Noles grabbed a 7-3 lead on the final play of the opening period, just 1:56 later. Thad Busby, who went on to shred the Buckeye secondary for 334 yards, found E.G. Green from 27 yards out.
In the second quarter, Busby scored on a nine-yard run and William McCray added a one-yard touchdown plunge to open the margin to 21-3 at the break. Both scores came in the final 3:25 of the half—the second set up by safety Shevin Smith’s interception of Joe Germaine—giving Florida State all of the momentum.
Stultz added a short field goal midway through the third to cut the lead to 21-6, and Ohio State sacked Busby in the end zone for a safety, closing the margin to 21-8 after three. The Noles added a short Sebastian Janikowski field goal just four seconds into the final frame. Germaine hit John Lumpkin for a 50-yard score with just under nine minutes to play. The two-point conversion failed, leaving the score at 24-14, but the Buckeyes got no closer.
Program covers improved a lot in 20 years.
Despite having a two-score lead in the final minute, Bobby Bowden showed no mercy, letting McCray add a second one-yard scoring run with 47 seconds left to play. (Yes, I’m still bitter.)
Green was the game’s MVP, with seven receptions for 176 yards and a touchdown. But the FSU pass rush, led by All-American Andre Wadsworth, was just as important to the Seminoles, harassing quarterbacks Germaine and Stanley Jackson. Buckeye quarterbacks threw three interceptions and combined for 207 yards on 16/36 passing. At least Ohio State held the Seminoles to just 60 yards rushing.
It wouldn’t take another 20 years for Ohio State to return for a third Sugar Bowl appearance. The Buckeyes went back the very next year, on Jan. 1, 1999. For once, Ohio State was favored, entering the game as the nation’s No. 3 team, against eighth-ranked Texas A&M.
If not for improbably blowing a big lead at home against Michigan State, the Buckeyes would have been playing for a national championship. That 1998 team was so good that even with John Cooper at the helm it beat No. 11 Michigan 31-16. Nobody but Sparty even stayed within two scores of that year’s Ohio State team. Alas, what could have been.
A trip to the Sugar Bowl isn’t a bad consolation prize. But it looked like more of the same, as the Aggies drove down the field on their opening possession and scored on a nine-yard Dante Hall run. That was just about all the highlights for Texas A&M.
Ohio State put together back-to-back 71-yard drives on its first two possessions, capping them with a Germaine-to-Reggie Germany 18-yard scoring pass and a 10-yard Joe Montgomery touchdown run. Late in the first quarter, Derek Ross blocked a Shane Lechler punt and Kevin Griffin scooped and scored to make it 21-7 at the end of one. Stultz kicked a short field goal in the final seconds of the half, giving the Buckeyes a 24-7 advantage at the break.
The second half saw little scoring. Branndon Stewart found Leroy Hodge from seven yards out late in the third quarter to cut the lead to 24-14, but neither team scored thereafter, and the Buckeyes celebrated another double-digit win to finish 11-1 on the season.
Joe Montgomery and the Bucks owned A&M.
David Boston was the game’s MVP. He didn’t score, but he caught 11 passes for 105 yards and was instrumental in moving the chains for Ohio State’s offense. Germaine was 21/38 passing for 222 yards with one score and no interceptions. Montgomery ran for 96 yards and a score and Michael Wiley added 88 rushing yards. The Buckeye defense played well throughout in the victory.
The most recent trip to the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4, 2011 is probably still fresh in your mind. The NCAA would have you believe it never happened. Ohio State has even purged it from its media guide but we saw it, there’s video of it, and it did, in fact, happen.
The NCAA knew about the transgressions of the so-called Tat Five, and allowed them to play, only to vacate the game later anyway after the revelation that Jim Tressel had known about those transgressions—because the NCAA does dumb things sometimes.
The Buckeyes were the higher ranked team again, entering the game at No. 6 in the country. The Arkansas Razorbacks were No. 8, and the teams would play an entertaining game.
Ohio State drew first blood early when Terrelle Pryor fumbled at the end of a scramble and the almighty Dane Sanzenbacher pounced on it in the end zone for a 7-0 lead. The Hogs struck back two minutes later, with Ryan Mallett finding Joe Adams on a 17-yard scoring strike.
The Buckeyes took control soon after. Boom Herron found the end zone from nine yards out, giving the Buckeyes a 14-7 lead after one. Sanzenbacher added a touchdown reception from 15 yards out just over five minutes into the second quarter to provide a little breathing room at 21-7. Pryor found DeVier Posey from 43 yards out with 1:59 to play in the first half to give the Buckeyes command at 28-7. But the Razorbacks drove down the field for a 20-yard Zach Hocker field goal on the final play before the break.
In the third quarter, Hocker and Devin Barclay traded 46-yard field goals, and Ohio State led 31-13 with 4:10 left in the period.
Then Tresselball happened.
The Buckeyes got a bit more conservative and the Arkansas offense started to find some rhythm. Mallett found Jarius Wright from 22 yards away to make it 31-21 (after a Mallett-to-D.J. Williams two-point conversion) in the final minute of the third quarter.
Early in the fourth quarter, Arkasas got a gift. The Hogs defense pushed Herron backward into the end zone and somehow the referees called it a safety rather than giving forward progress. Suddenly, the Razorbacks were down just 31-23 with 11:52 still left in the game. The Buckeyes continued to grind the ball on offense and play defense, hoping to strangle the clock before the Hogs could come back.
Hocker added a 47-yard field goal with 8:55 to play and Arkansas pulled within 31-26. A touchdown would now win it for Arkansas, which was starting to play good defense and shut down the Ohio State running game. With just over a minute to play, disaster struck when Arkansas blocked Ben Buchanan’s punt and took over at the OSU 18. On second-and-10, Solomon Thomas intercepted Mallett’s pass on a zone blitz and the Buckeyes held on.
Pryor was the game’s MVP, going 14/25 for 221 yards and two touchdowns, without an interception. He also rushed 15 times for a team-high 115 yards. Herron ran for 87 yards and Cam Heyward was a beast on defense, harassing Mallett all night.
The Buckeyes finished 12-1 with the lone blemish coming in Madison in a 31-18 loss to Wisconsin. In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered if the Buckeyes won that game, because the NCAA hammer came down later anyway. But the Sugar Bowl win over an SEC team certainly felt good.
We don’t know what the 2015 Sugar Bowl holds in store, but Ohio State has a shot at improving to 3-2 in the Sugar Bowl and, more importantly, advancing to the National Championship Game in Dallas.
