As we eagerly await the start of another Ohio State football season, sometimes it’s good to look back at where the program has been in the past. Well, 25 years ago, the Buckeyes entered a season filled with high hopes and promise.
The Buckeyes had gone just 4-6-1 in Head Coach John Cooper’s first year in 1988—the transition from Earle Bruce being a rough one—and finished a humiliating seventh in the Big Ten that year. But the team made progress in Cooper’s second go-round in Columbus, climbing into a third-place tie in the conference and losing only on road games against nationally ranked opponents.
In 1990, with another recruiting class under Coop’s belt, he entered his third season with Ohio State coming off an 8-4 season and returning 11 starters, including two-year starting quarterback Greg Frey. It looked like things would be different. There was enough turnover that the team’s problems could no longer be blame-shifted onto Cooper’s predecessor and talented prospects filled the roster.
As a fan, 1990 presented hope after a prolonged drought in Columbus. Everyone expected the Buckeyes to return to prominence as they entered the season ranked No. 18 in the country.
It didn’t start well, Unfortunately, tailback Carlos Snow would miss the entire season after having a benign tumor removed from his hip.
Then, Ohio State lost defensive stud John Kacherski for the season with a knee injury in a tougher-than-expected home win over Texas Tech. It was heartbreaking for Kacherski, who had missed the entire previous season with a knee issue.
The Buckeyes struggled and needed a Jeff Graham punt return touchdown to fend off the Red Raiders, 17-10 in the Horseshoe. Despite the narrow win, hopes remained high in Columbus.
Ohio State seemed to settle in with a 31-10 drubbing of Boston College in Chestnut Hill a week later. The Buckeyes took a step forward in that road victory and entered a huge game against USC with a 2-0 record. The Trojans had clobbered Ohio State the previous season and revenge was on the minds of all OSU fans on Sept. 29, 1990, with Cooper having two weeks to prepare.
The Buckeyes were the higher ranked team on that Saturday, entering the game at No. 15 and USC ranked 18th. But it didn’t go well. Ricky Ervins ran all over the Buckeyes before being slowed by a twisted ankle. The Trojans enjoyed a double-digit lead for long stretches of the game before the Buckeyes started to rally.
With two and a half minutes to play and severe weather moving into the area, the referee called both head coaches out for a conference. In this infamous pow-wow, Cooper told the referee his team was going to try an on-side kick against Larry Smith’s Trojans, and, if unsuccessful, Cooper agreed to end the game.
USC recovered. Game over.
As I stood in the rain until stadium personnel came over and ordered me to leave, I thought about how I’d given Cooper the benefit of the doubt through his difficult first two seasons. I considered the agreement to end the game early, regardless of how the odds were against a comeback victory, to be a betrayal. “Buckeyes don’t quit,” I thought. That’s when I decided Cooper wasn’t one of us.
Of course, nowadays, they usually just send the teams back to the locker rooms and wait out the foul weather. But that game was an anomaly. To walk out with time on the clock and timeouts left was, to me, a maddening situation. I was done with Cooper. Unfortunately, it would be a full decade before Ohio State reached the same conclusion.
With a good shot at a national title likely out of reach already, we turned our eyes on the Big Ten season. At least the Rose Bowl was still in play.
Nope.
The Buckeyes came out and played poorly against Illinois, falling 31-20 in the Horseshoe to No. 13 Illinois. It was the third straight season the Buckeyes lost to the Fighting Illini—a streak that hadn’t happened since the 1920s. Ohio State had yielded 30+ points at home two weeks in a row. Everything was terrible and nothing would ever be good again.
A trip to Indiana a week later offered no respite. The Hoosiers played Ohio State to a 27-27 tie and would have won had they not had a Vaughn Dunbar touchdown called back on a penalty. A season that began with such promise now found the Buckeyes mired in a 2-2-1 season with the likelihood of any major bowl game long gone.
Ohio State did right the ship a bit after that Indiana debacle. The Buckeyes reeled off five straight victories, starting with a 42-2 clubbing of Purdue in West Lafayette. Next came big home wins over Minnesota (52-23) and Northwestern (48-7).
The Buckeyes then visited No. 6 Iowa at Kinnick Stadium, and inexplicably found a way to win the game in the dying seconds, nipping the Hawekeyes, 27-26 in the season’s most improbable victory. In a run-down apartment near the corner of King Avenue and High Street, I watched on TV as Bobby Olive made a diving catch in the back of the end zone with one second to play, leapt to my feet and ran out into the street screaming. I looked to my right and my neighbors had done exactly the same thing.
High fives and group hugs ensued and all down the street other celebrations could be heard.
The Buckeyes thumped Wisconsin on the road a week later, 35-10, setting up the annual showdown with Michigan in Columbus.
The Wolverines snapped a 13-13 tie with a game-winning field goal as time expired, completing a comeback from a 13-6 third-quarter deficit. Yep, it was another soul-crushing defeat to That Team Up North in the Cooper era, as he fell to 0-3 in The Game as Ohio State’s coach. The Buckeyes actually still had a shot at the Big Ten crown if all things fell right that day, but J.D. Carlson’s dagger put an end to that.
The season was capped by a 23-11 loss in a Liberty Bowl the Buckeyes obviously wanted no part of playing in. Ohio State finished 7-4-1 overall and 5-2-1 in the B1G, good for only fifth in the conference. It was oddly just a half game out of first place, as Michigan, Michigan State, Illinois and Iowa all finished 6-2 in league play.
The 25 years between this season and the 1990 campaign has surprisingly not dulled my feelings much about that USC game, or indeed the frustration of that year and the accompanying home losses to Illinois and Michigan or the ugly tie at Indiana. More than a few people suggested hiring Indiana’s Bill Mallory to replace Cooper. You know things aren’t going well when the suggestion of poaching the Hoosiers’ football coach actually merits consideration.
It wasn't all bad, though. Every season has its gold nuggets. In addition to Bobby Olive's catch at Iowa, there was a great season by a freshman running back named Robert Smith. He was kind of fun to watch.
But we’re in 2015 now and coming off a national championship in the first ever College Football Playoff. That 1990 team seems to belong in an alternate dimension.
Time and change will surely show…
