Only thing I wanna know is why I get looked over
I guess I'll understand when I get more older
Big brother saw me at the bottom of the totem
Now I'm on the top and everybody on the scrotum
-Kanye West, "Big Brother"
Jim Tressel's worst mistake as a coach was not lying to the NCAA, it was in 2002 when he neglected to completely disembowel the Cincinnati Bearcats and scatter their entrails on his way back to Columbus as a warning to any other upstart collegiate football programs in Ohio.
Instead, that game was a 23-19 nailbiter only sealed by a last second interception. Still an important win en route to a national championship, but not quite the scorched earth tactic that would've prevented crap like this:
Was the marching band not invited? Hell, why not have them dot the I behind second base? OSU refuses to play us here. They back out of contracts. They run from us.
"They run from us" coming from a UC fan about Ohio State is like Wile E. Coyote talking smack to the Road Runner. Like, yeah, points for effort, but how many times does an ACME anvil have to fall on your head before you realize that maybe you're a little out of your league?
There's always been this weird tension between Ohio State football and other, decidedly lesser, college football programs in Ohio. Like a Scooby Doo villain, the Cincinnatis and Toledos and Miamis of the world seem convinced that if it weren't for us meddling Buckeyes, they'd have their moment in the sun too. It's led to a ridiculously uneven rivalry where once or twice a year a teeny group of Ohioans send out thousands of unanswered prayers for their podunk school to take down the flagship football team in the state.
Still, fine. You know what? I can get down with a good old fashioned one-sided beef, especially if it makes the team that I root for look pretty awesome for ninety plus years. Today what I would like to do is take a look at each of the in-state opponents that Ohio State has played in the last ten seasons, and see if there truly is beef on these streets; in other words, do said teams have a legitimate gripe that Ohio State is not treating them with the appropriate respect afforded to their Big Ten opponents?
Schools will be rated on a beefy scale of meaty beefs: schools with a legit gripe that OSU isn't taking them seriously will be awarded with a giant porterhouse steak, whereas schools that are covering for the fact that they are in fact bad at football and not worth what precious little free time Urban Meyer has to think about them will be admonished with kale or something.
Kent State has played against the Buckeyes twice in the last ten seasons, a 48-3 Jim Tressel style beat down where the implication was that he could've scored 65 on you if he had felt like it, and a 66-0 Urban Meyer style destruction last season where he just went ahead and did exactly that.
Those are actually the only two times that Ohio State and Kent State have ever met each other, and while the Golden Flashes might mosey on over to the Shoe for another 850k check, it's probably unlikely that the Buckeyes will ever feel the need to the 25,000 seat Dix Stadium anytime soon.
Beef ranking: Iceberg lettuce. Doesn't even come close to matching the nutritional value of spinach, nevermind actual meat.
I've always kind of rooted for the Toledo Rockets, but I'm not really sure why. For some reason they've always seemed to be the Ohio team outside of Ohio State most deserving of at least mediocre success on the football field, and for a while they've been just outside that boundary of semi-competence. In 2009 TPeezy and company destroyed them, but in 2011 a game Rockets squad under the auspices of Tim Beckman (!) gave the Buckeyes all that they and STARTING QUARTERBACK JOE BAUSERMAN could handle in a 22-27 loss.
That 2009 game was played at up in Cleveland at the Brown's stadium, which financially is about the only way for another Ohio college team to avoid playing in Columbus anymore. It's true that "neutral" sites in Ohio, even in Cleveland or Cincinnati, are never going to be neutral, but each Ohio State game in the Horseshoe brings in 6.5 million dollars in ticket sales alone. Unless smaller schools can offset that somehow, the Buckeyes take a huge financial hit by travelling.
Anyway, Toledo has played the Buckeyes one other time, in 1998. They got dumped on.
Beef ranking: Bacon bits. Might be meat, not sure, sometimes they stick in your teeth and that's annoying.
Ohio University has always been close, too. They're never actually good, per se, but they might eventually become good enough to possibly beat Ohio State. Since that's really the only metric that we care about, let's talk about the one time they just about did it.
I was at the 2008 game, watching in agony as an Ohio State team went into the fourth quarter losing 14-12 against a potentially inebriated Frank Solich squad led by an awesomely named QB that went by the handle of Boo Jackson. Stepping in for an injured starter, Boo was horrible against Ohio State, going 9/25 with three picks. Still, he led the Bobcats on a third quarter touchdown drive that covered over 70 yards and put them in the lead. It was that exact moment that I looked at our roster, with Rasta Wells at tailback (Beanie was injured), Boeckman at QB, and Ray Small somehow playing, and thought "This is it. This is how it ends. With Mo Wells falling over himself and Frank Solich pounding a 40 and laughing all the way back to Athens."
Well, it didn't end that way obviously, but it reminded me that nothing lasts forever. Ohio State will probably lose to an in-state school again at some point. It will suck. But as long as it isn't against the last two teams on this list, I'll be okay.
Beef ranking: Chicken fried steak served on a styrofoam plate in your grade school cafeteria.
Not a lot to say about Akron, really. The last two times that they've played the Buckeyes have been laughable (Luke Fickell was able to shut them out in his first game as a head coach), but they did manage to put up two touchdowns in a 28-14 loss back in 2001. Good job? I mean, seriously, as far as these games go, that's a win.
I will say that Akron's new stadium, the 30,000 seat InfoCision Stadium-Summa Field is pretty sweet, and if I ever had any desire to get within 50 miles of Akron I'd check it out.
Beef ranking: A crayon drawing of a hot dog.
It was always kind of adorable how Jim Tressel threw a bone to his old stomping grounds and gave Youngstown State a big ol' check to come to Columbus to get stomped by his teams. In the two games that the teams have played in the last ten seasons, the score worked out to a combined 81-6. So, bad.
It's possible that with Ol' Jim and brother Bo teaming up to lead the Penguins to a glorious future, they might pop their head back into C-Bus for a cup of tea. Urban Meyer will predictably stomp them, and that will lead to a billion hot takes that the internet has been waiting to punch out on their keyboards ever since Tressel got hired as the YSU president. Which, by the way, is a hell of a job for him to take on. That's a story that might end up being even more interesting than his coaching career once it's all said and done.
Beef ranking: A glass of water with some weird black specks floating around in it.
So this is where things get interesting. Bowling Green has played Ohio State four times in the history of its program. In 2003, BG actually outscored the Buckeyes in the 4th quarter, coming within a touchdown of beating them. That 2003 team was coached by Gregg Brandon, who had just taken over for the departing Urban Meyer. Urban had won nine games the previous season, and it would've been very intriguing to see how the 2003 game would've played out had he stayed.
Brandon ended up winning 11 games that year, and while the Falcons have never had any real kind of consistency since then, they've traditionally played Ohio State fairly well. In 1992 they kept it close in a 17-6 loss, and 35-7 is bad but maybe not super terrible given that it was against Troy Smith and Ted Ginn in 2006.
With that said, let's be clear here: any respect given to any other Ohio team is not with a "they're our rivals and we should fear them" attitude, it's more of a "I should probably stay awake for the entirety of the game" kind of thing.
Beef ranking: Canned Vienna sausages.
Ohio State has a weird dude-bro reputation which might be somewhat justified, but given that I grew up near Miami University, I must object. There is no school in Ohio, nay, the country, as dude-bro-y as Miami University. You can smell the stench of entitlement and boat shoes and Icehouse from miles and miles away, as the painfully white population of Oxford, Ohio attempts to richsplain to you why raising tuition to 30k a year wouldn't hurt application rates from low-income families.
To me, Miami has always been the antithesis of Ohio State. Ohio State is grubby and loud and slovenly and friendly and awesome. It has a very low Greek participation rate (even for a school its size), and I personally was tempted to show up to class in pajama pants on several occasions because I knew no one would care.
Anyway, Miami has for some time felt that they should get equal billing academically with OSU, and as dumb as that is because OSU is a better school by almost every metric, that feeling has also extended into football. Cradle of coaches blah blah blah. In 2000 Miami came close in a 27-16 loss, but it's been downhill since then. Most recently Urban beat them by 46. Sorry snobs.
Beef ranking: A twenty minute lecture about the benefits of using lard-based hair gel.
Ohio State has played Cincinnati more times than any of the aforementioned teams, and had the Bearcats been any good during those meetings, maybe we'd be more inclined to show them what they feel is the appropriate amount of respect.
Remember how I mentioned that Jim Tressel should've stomped the Bearcats underneath his loafers back in 2002? It's not just because it was a close game on a big stage (the game was played in Paul Brown Stadium because Nippert is the stadium equivalent of Justin Bieber squeezed between William Howard Taft and Paul Prudhomme on a Cesna), it's because that is the only time in the seven games between the two teams that the Bearcats have lost by fewer than two touchdowns. That flukey almost-win-but-still-a-loss-you-idiots apparently gave Bearcat fans a license to create shirts like this when their team was briefly relevant on a national stage.
I was sitting in B deck this past season among a large crowd of Cincinnati fans, squirming as they gave Ohio State all they could handle for about three quarters. Gunner Kiel passed for over 350 yards and 4 touchdowns, and I got Real Mad as I had to listen to Bearcat boosters sing their completely unintelligible fight song.
But, as all in-state upset bids eventually must, the momentum died as Ohio State realized that they were the better team and asserted their authority.
Here's the problem as I see it: in-state schools know that their best shot at any kind of recognition is beating Ohio State. Because of a ridiculously long streak of losses that's older than my grandma, a win over Ohio State would mean more to the Cincinnatis and Miamis of the world more than a win over a Texas or a Georgia. There is a lot of built up resentment that comes with constantly being the little brother to a program that's been incredibly good for generations, going back to the 1930s.
So I get the beef. I do. Here's the solution: beat us. Cincinnati has five 10-win seasons since 2007, but if they want to actually earn the respect of Buckeye fans, they're going to have to do a lot better than a close call in 2002 and a dumb shirt. Until then, the whining about a national championship winning team getting to do fun stuff in the state where they play sounds a whole lot like the jealousy of fans who know they'll never get to cheer their team to similar heights.
Beef ranking: A delicious Skyline four-way topped with Tommy Tuberville's tears.
To get along with people in real life, you need to grant them some level of respect no matter who they are. This is called "not being a turd," and it is helpful in many situations.
In football, which is not real life, respect has to be earned. A couple of close calls here and there do not constitute respect, and because of that the Buckeyes have run of the entire state of Ohio. If that makes people in Cincinnati or Akron or Bowling Green mad, it's because deep inside they want to see their own team where the Buckeyes are today. They say that we're too afraid to come meet them at their home fields (when maximum seating is often a third of Ohio Stadium, meaning that the Buckeyes might actually take a financial loss to travel), they say that we alter the schedule to avoid them, and they say that we don't share the Ohio football wealth.
Well, right now the streak stands at 40 games. Continued navel gazing from the peanut crowd will help it run to 41.
