I was born in 1985, which means that my formative years were spent watching the Buckeyes flail wildly in attempts at wins against the Michigan Wolverines. Once they actually grasped those gold pants, and a few other times they came close, but for the most part it was a miserable way to end my Novembers.
Specifically, I ended them in a certain chair. My parents had this ratty burgundy thing that I dutifully plopped myself in every Saturday in the fall, hoping to see something special happen on the part of the Buckeyes. Usually they came through, but I always looked at the Michigan game with a certain dread. In the first quarter, I'd be sitting up straight in rapt attention, by the third I'd be slumped against the side, and when the end of the fourth rolled around I typically had buried my head near the cushion with my legs dangling in the air, which is really the only appropriate response to Tim Biakabutuka running roughshod all over your hopes and dreams.
In 2005 I was also sitting in a chair, somewhere in the bowels of an apartment building on Kinnear, slumping further and further in my seat as the game went on. From the outset, it just felt like a game that the Buckeyes were fated to lose. The running game wasn't getting anything done, the team missed an extra point on their first touchdown of the game (which was followed up by two field goals and nothing else until the fourth quarter), and starting linebacker Bobby Carpenter was taken out early in the game, leaving a little known three star backup to play the majority of the most important game of the season.
With seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, Ohio State was down 21-12, and it looked like all the karmic momentum that the team had built up since Jim Tressel took over had run out.
Except... it hadn't. Troy Smith was still Troy Smith. That little known three star linebacker? James Laurinaitis. And Santonio Holmes and Antonio Gonzalez and Ted Ginn, Jr. were still prowling the perimeter of the field. Tory Smith found Santonio in the endzone with just enough time to pull the Buckeyes within a score of winning and set up this:
Antonio Pittman bowled into the endzone a few plays later, and that was that. Jim Tressel and Troy Smith weren't just a great coach and player, they were terrible witch-kings with a personal vendetta against all things Wolverine. Their invincibility against That Team Up North (after 2003) wasn't just expected, it was a metaphysical inevitability.
I love the 2005 game because it was the realization of what Ohio State football should be, rather than just a glimpse into what it could be. People who wrote the 2002 team off as a fluke now couldn't ignore the fact that Ohio State under Jim Tressel was a permanent force to be reckoned with in the college football world; they weren't just good, they were "make a ridiculous comeback in the last two minutes because of course that's what they'd do" good.
That 2005 team would go on to beat the absolute piss out of Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl, and though Ohio State has had more than its fair share of ups and downs since then, the 2005 Michigan game announced to everyone that the road to the top of the Big Ten went through Columbus, and would continue to do so for a very long time.
