For one of the greatest, most storied college football programs of all time, Ohio State definitely has an... interesting bowl record. It seems odd that a team that has thrived on consistency throughout its existence would stumble time and time again when it comes to exhibition games played in areas with more old people and talc-y sand than angry drunk high school dropouts filed with cheese and road salt, but that's generally been the case.
Today I want to offer up at least a partial explanation for the above: Ohio State, at virtually every stop along the way, has never had a coach that can consistently pull the team together after a tough end to the season. Twenty times the Buckeyes have lost either the penultimate or final game of the season (or both), and then in the subsequent bowl games have gone a combined 8-12. This might not be a major shock to anyone with a passing understanding of how Ohio State has done in bowl games overall, but it's interesting that this trend starts as early as the mid 1970s and continues through 2011. In fact, every coach since Woody Hayes has had to deal with the situation, and in general it has gone badly.
Now, in 2015, Urban Meyer has a chance to avoid the trap that has snared Buckeye teams for the past four decades or so. Let's take a little stroll back in the past to see how and why some of these losses happened.
WOODY HAYES
1977
Ohio State was 9-1 and ranked 4th in the country headed into the annual Michigan game in 1977, and had the Buckeyes won against their rivals, they would've had a legitimate shot at being seen as the best team in the country after a bowl game victory against Alabama. Neither of these things happened. After a 6-14 loss in Ann Arbor, the Crimson Tide rolled the Buckeyes 6-35 in New Orleans. In the first 10 games of the 1977 season, Ohio State averaged 33.1 points per game. They failed to score more than a touchdown in the final two.
1978
The final game of the 1978 season was also the final game of Woody Hayes' coaching career; funny how a little thing like bopping an opposing player in the neck with your fist can do that. What people sometimes forget about that loss to Clemson in the Gator Bowl is that it was part of a disappointing season that included losses to Penn State, Purdue, and a regular season finale against the Wolverines at home where the Buckeyes weren't able to accomplish much of anything as they lost 3-14. The truth is that college football was beginning to leave Hayes behind, and the way the season ended ushered in the reign of Earle Bruce
EARLE BRUCE
1980
The Buckeyes under Earle Bruce could be said to have typically underperformed on the whole, the same could not be said about their bowl record under Woody Hayes' devotee. Bruce was 5-3 in bowl games at Ohio State, but one of those losses came in 1980, after the season ended in a very familiar fashion. A lackluster loss (3-9) against Michigan at home, followed up by a neutral site thrashing in a bowl game. In 2015 it's hard to imagine a world where this was the norm, but, well...
JOHN COOPER
1989, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1997, and 2000
That's right, six. Six god dang times during the course of Cooper's tenure as the Ohio State head coach saw Ohio State fans absorb both a loss to Michigan to end the season followed by another loss in a bowl game. Despite an overall sterling coaching record, it's what eventually led to Cooper's firing (that, and a team that had become a version of Bobby Bowden's "who gives a shit what they do in their free time" Florida State squads, except, you know... bad).
Probably the worst of these was in 1995, when all the Buckeyes had to do was not blow it against a middling Michigan team in Ann Arbor and then beat their bowl opponent to help them create a massive controversy about a true national champion (given that Ohio State was not a part of the newly created Bowl Alliance, designed to determine a "true" national champion). That controversy never came, as Cooper and the Buckeyes totally blew it against both the Wolverines and then Peyton Manning and the Tennessee Volunteers in the Citrus Bowl.
JIM TRESSEL
2007
Okay, admittedly slim pickings here, but I vividly remember the Buckeyes' 2007 loss to Illinois in their home finale. Mostly because I was there, stewing in my own anger as a botched fumble call and the Buckeyes generally just not being all that great led to the fightin' Ron Zooks turning my last game in Ohio Stadium as a student into an absolute nightmare. It was a deeply stupid game that didn't matter because many other deeply stupid things happened shortly thereafter that allowed the Buckeyes to play in the national championship. Which they lost.
LUKE FICKELL
2011
The Buckeyes were tough and competitive in all four of their final games of the 2011 season, which would be a nice little gold star for them had they not lost every single one. Things got worse after the season was over, when Bo Pelini was hired as the new head coach, who promptly led the Buckeyes to three straight 8-4 seasons. Hahaha I'm just kidding, we hired Urban Meyer and it's been pretty great since then.
Even with a letdown loss to Michigan State in the final home game of the year, Ohio State could very well use the momentum of their Michigan win to come out against Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl and kick the absolute hell out of them. After all, those eight aforementioned bowl wins include one of the best Rose Bowls ever played and a pretty satisfying win over Bill Snyder's Kansas State team in the 2003 season. But to cram a football down Brian Kelly's purple throat, Urban Meyer and the 2015 Ohio State Buckeyes are going to have to overcome a whole lot of historical precedent and their own frustration at being left out of the gigantic party that is the College Football Playoff.
