"Did they win?" Did the Buckeyes win?"
My eight-year old bounced into the kitchen early Tuesday morning with more energy than usual. She didn't make it past halftime of the Oregon-Ohio State game, but not for a lack of interest: Little kids generally need slumber parties and/or sugar to stay awake that far past bedtime.
"They won," I deadpanned, in a deeper-than-usual voice indicative of minimal sleep. "They beat Oregon badly. The Buckeyes are the national champions and football season is over."
She was excited. "National champions! Have they ever done that before?"
Well, yeah. They had. I explained how Ohio State had won several national titles but only one other that I was around to enjoy personally. I was leaving for Europe on business that morning which kept me from Dallas, but a dozen years ago nothing had prevented me from going to Tempe.
"Last night was pretty great, but there's nothing quite like being there," I told her. "The game last night was awesome, but the first one, the one I went to before you were born - that was something that can't be duplicated. It's one of those moments in your life where you'll never forget where you were when it happened.
She was interested. "So, what happened?"
Well...
Ken Dorsey was in the middle of being flung to the ground by Cie Grant when everything went black.
Every memory of attending Ohio State games as a child, a #teen, a college student and as my present day masquerading-as-an-adult self emerged from my temporal lobe all at once. It was the tapestry of my life, marked by Buckeye football games where I kept getting older but they stayed the same, almost satisfying team.
I never saw Dorsey's desperation heave. My brain just kind of shut down, overwhelmed by that unplanned data dump. I was sitting in-line with that end zone in Sun Devil Stadium, so had my eyes been functioning properly they would have had the best view of the final play of the game. I have no memory of it happening live.
The next thing I remember is seeing a stage being hauled out onto midfield for the trophy presentation and being aggressively hugged by strangers. I didn't make any words or noises until Jim Tressel hoisted the trophy in the air after proclaiming we've always had the Best Damn Band in the Land; now we've got the Best Damn TEAM in the Land. Then, finally, I started shouting - but still, no actual words.
At that point I hugged my wife, who had seen me in my catatonic state and left me alone to hug everyone else in our section. Good decision on her part.
There were grown men in tears, everywhere - just openly crying and hugging everyone. The celebration subsided and the stadium emptied out into Tempe's bars where late into the evening we found ourselves with friends I had grown up with in Columbus.
We were all born in the early 1970s, so as far as we were concerned this was Ohio State's first title. What happened before you were born might as well be a movie, because that's the only condition in which you can experience it. There's no tension, and triumph can only be born from uncertainty.
The father of one of our friends walked into the bar with a huge smile on his face and joined us. After a few beers it occurred to the Generation Xers that we were in the presence of a Buckeye who had attended Ohio State the last time the team had won a national title, in 1968.
"Just like tonight," he said, "It's one of those moments in your life where you'll never forget where you were when it happened."
We were interested and had to hear about what that was like. "So, what happened?"
Well...
It turns out he didn't actually seen Ohio State play Southern Cal in the 1969 Rose Bowl.
He didn't even know who had won the game for several days. That's because he was in Vietnam on active duty during the war.
There were no in-game updates, reports, social media or simple ways to even just get a damn score. Even if there were, he had other relatively-important things to worry about - like not being killed. There were 45 American casualties in Vietnam per day in 1968.
In December, Task Force Yankee was conducting Operation Taylor Common, whose primary tactical objective was to clear the An Hoa Basin near the border with Laos. He knew the Buckeyes had throttled Michigan in November, but it took several days before he learned they had stopped O.J. Simpson and the Trojans and completed a perfect season.
Still, he didn't have the juicy details of how it had gone down and - in an era that predated entire games and highlights showing up on YouTube (in 2003, pre-YouTube, we were just anxious to get the Fiesta Bowl burned onto, like, four CDs) he just wanted to talk to anyone who had seen the game.
It could have been someone who had seen the game in Pasadena, on television, or listened to it on the radio - to him it didn't matter. He just needed to find a person to tell him what happened, and that person turned out to be Woody Hayes.
Several weeks after the game he was at a base in Tokyo when Woody showed up on a planned trip to visit the troops. He made his way to the coach, introduced himself and giddily started asking him questions about the Rose Bowl.
It turns out Woody was far less interested in talking about the Buckeyes and Trojans than he was in thanking him for his service and telling him how important he was to the war effort. Outside of a yessir, we beat'em he wasn't able to get too much out of out of the old man - but the first person he was able to share in the splendor of that perfect 1968 season and Rose Bowl victory was the legendary coach who made it happen.
"My memories are not of the game itself, but from weeks after the game. That's what happened." The game might as well have been a movie to him, except he experienced the tension of it at the time - wrapped in the incomparable tension of being in the war.
It was the coolest thing I had ever heard in my life, replacing Tressel's now we got the Best Damn TEAM in the Land statement which had only claimed that designation hours earlier. I was thrilled for him that he got to enjoy this title in Tempe, and not on the border between Vietnam and Laos.
"So that's what happened," I told my daughter. "It was a pretty great night. Last night was a pretty great night. It took 12 years, and before that it took 34 years.
"Are the Buckeyes going to win it again?" She asked.
I couldn't answer the question immediately. Parents know the consequences of promising anything that doesn't eventually happen.
Sure, Urban Meyer is still rebuilding the program to his liking. His Buckeyes have still not yet reached their cruising altitude. After Woody's 1968 team ran the table it was widely believed (and in hindsight, understood) that his 1969 team was even better. It was barely different from what happened after Tressel's 2002 team went 14-0; if everyone who was supposed to be available in 2003 had stuck around no one was beating that team either.
We're conditioned for disappointment. It's an emotional hedge. Yes, the team that takes the field this fall should be beastly. It's not the first time a championship sequel was scheduled to be even better. College football rarely plays out how it's scripted.
"Well, it's happened before," I said, "and it's Ohio State. So I wouldn't bet against them."
I hope she gets to see that movie and feels all the tension that comes with it.
