There were six seconds left. It was 4th and 23.
No one converts 4th and 23. Not at home, not on the road and most certainly not in the waning seconds of Ohio State's Senior Day - and that's what Iowa was facing the final time Joey Bosa's uncle would play in the Horseshoe. It was also the last home game for Chris Spielman, Tom Tupa, William White, Alex Higdon and George Cooper. Perhaps you remember those guys.
They began their final college season ranked #5 in the country with a non-conference slate of West Virginia, Oregon and at #4 LSU. They got into October undefeated but then suffered what Earle Bruce called the darkest day in Ohio State football when Indiana came into the Horseshoe and ended a 31-game losing streak to the Buckeyes. The rumblings about Earle began in earnest that day.
Three weeks later Michigan State spoiled our Halloween, then the Buckeyes limped to Madison and gave Wisconsin its only win over its final eight games. The rumblings about Earle grew louder, and the team returned to Columbus for its home farewell. Iowa was on the ropes. The season might have been disappointing, but it was not yet lost.
The offense left the Hawkeyes just 76 seconds to go the length of the field after scoring a go-ahead touchdown for a 5-point lead. Ten plays and 70 seconds later Iowa had the ball on Ohio State's 28-yard line and needed 23 yards, quickly.
But no one converts 4th and 23 with six seconds left on the road.
I didn't see it. Oh I was there, but seated in AA deck at field level on the opposite goal line 100 yards from where the game ended and everyone in front of me s t r e t c h e d to try and see the play, leaving me watching a row of backs after the ball was snapped.
There was no video screen in 1987 so I heard the Buckeyes lose the game. Ninety thousand people simultaneously gasped in a manner that told me with a high grade of authenticity that Iowa's 4th down attempt had gone extremely well for Iowa.
I looked up the video above on YouTube for this column. This is actually the first time I've seen that play, 29 years later. I'll never forget that sound.
Neither Iowa nor Indiana had won in Columbus going back to the 1950s. Five of Wisconsin's 12 total wins against the Buckeyes - in 57 tries - had come against Bruce's teams. Ohio Stadium was left breathless as Marv Cook converted that impossible 4th down, cut the Buckeye secondary into pieces and scored. And everyone began to think about Earle.
Ninety thousand people gasped as Iowa's 4th down WENT extremely well for Iowa.
It was no longer rumblings; we were past that. You could feel the collective thoughts exiting the stadium.
The next day Bo Schembechler heard rumors Bruce's job was in jeopardy and joked that if Ohio State fired him he would resign, become Michigan's athletic director and then hire him to coach Michigan.
Monday morning Ohio State fired Earle and the whole town immediately went crazy. Monday evening the OSU band showed up at his house and serenaded him in his yard. That Saturday the team triumphantly carried him off the field in Ann Arbor.
But it was the sound Ohio Stadium made when Cook won the game that set it all in motion. The confluence of those rumblings and the historic losses led to the moment that enormous, ambient gasp served as the death rattle for Woody's successor.
You didn't have to see the play to know what was coming. You only had to hear it, as I did, and then you felt it. And then you knew it. Even I knew it, and I was preposterously optimistic 9th grader.
Twenty-four seasons later I was back in AA deck at the field level again when freshman Braxton Miller rolled right toward where I was standing and fired the ball toward the north endzone.
That video isn't mine. Someone who actually saw the play shot it. I'm across the field underneath about three rows of screaming fans who immediately saw how all alone Devin Smith was in the endzone when Miller unloaded the ball. They toppled forward in an excited, spontaneous crush. Miller's windup was the last part of the play I was able to see.
The rest of it I heard and felt. The gasp began when the ball left Braxton's hand as 105,000 people glanced downfield and realized that Wisconsin had covered Smith about as well as the fat kid who always goes long in playground football. Fans came tumbling down on me as the ball traveled and I heard several people shout touchdown during the ambient gasp.
no matter how 2011 might end - and no matter what the NCAA would ultimately decide - Ohio STate FOOTBALL would be okay.
All I could see were jackets and benches. Then the gasp abruptly turned to euphoria as the stadium exploded, and that's how I knew. This time the video board was there to show the replay after all of us at the bottom of the pile picked ourselves up and finished hugging each other.
Ohio Stadium didn't have many reasons the cheer in 2011, but on October 29th we learned that no matter how this season might end, no matter how many more games the Buckeyes would lose and no matter what the NCAA would ultimately decide to do to them going forward, everything would be okay. Two freshmen playing for a program in flames took down the Big Ten champions one week after completing a single pass.
Two freshmen on a full roster that had chosen to play for Jim Tressel. The new guys didn't get a single game for what they had signed up to join and they took on seven losses that season under a cloud of uncertainty that dominated 11 months and all of our precious Saturdays. There was no escaping it, but for that immortal Braxton-to-Devin play.
Seven losses. It's an entire career's worth at Ohio State. Then, a postseason ban. But those who stayed would be champions, and Columbus cherished their loyalty and embraced all of them without any debate.
Nineteen years earlier there was nothing approaching that kind of unanimity in accepting Earle's successor. For five seasons he was judged harshly for who he wasn't, and fairly for what he could not deliver in the season finales. His Ohio State tenure would be determined by the outcome of his 58th game:
"With, let's say, six-and-a-half minutes to play," Keith Jackson asked his television audience as the Buckeyes reached Michigan's 5-yard line down 7 points, "would you go for two or would you tie it?"
Jackson and Bob Griese had spent the better part of the Ohio State-Michigan broadcast discussing John Cooper's job security. After every play that didn't quite go the Buckeyes' way the camera immediately flipped to him to frame his beleaguered expression and capture his classic fingernail-chewing angst that was always at its peak the final Saturday of the season.
"Does a tie count as half of a win?" Jackson sincerely asked as Ohio State prepared to punch it in. "Well," Griese replied, "it does if you're the big underdog." The game narrative was long established as Cooper's job security hinging on the outcome of The Game.
This wasn't Iowa's last gasp in 1987 abruptly flipping the outcome. It was a pre-determined four-hour job interview.
Ohio State clenched on 1st and goal and lost yardage. On 2nd down Kirk Herbstreit made the wrong read on an option play and kept the ball, taking a walk-in touchdown away from Robert Smith. Third down was nearly identical, leaving the Buckeyes with 4th and goal with the game and Cooper's employment on the line. It had been the kind of red zone play calling that would come to embody his close games with Michigan, when it always felt like Ohio State was afraid of scoring.
I didn't see that 4th down play in 1992. There was no crush of fans, nor was I seated too far away from it to get a good view. I chose not to watch it and put my face in my hands once Herbie went under center and began barking out his cadence. As a result I heard Cooper's tenure being allowed to continue at Ohio State, at the moment it was decided: Touchdown, Buckeyes.
Ohio State was unprepared to issue a verdict to Cooper for simply not losing to Michigan.
The crowd erupted. It was an unexpected stay of execution. I now know what that sounds like.
That was because Ohio State was unprepared to issue a verdict for not losing to Michigan. The trial had been conducted under the black and white auspices of win-or-lose. No one entered the afternoon thinking about a tie, despite Michigan entering the game with two of them already on the season and leaving Columbus with a third.
Herbstreit hit Greg Beatty on a 4th down seam route and the Buckeyes immediately sent out the PAT team to notch the game at 13 with 4:24 remaining. Tying abruptly became winning. Gordon Gee confirmed it, even as the game ended with the teams trading uninspired 3-and-outs and Michigan deliberately running out the clock.
Ohio State went for the tie in 1992 because of what happened 1991, 1990, 1989 and 1988. The Buckeyes hadn't dropped five games in a row to Michigan since the mid-1920s. When they served as the frosting on Desmond Howard's Heisman cake in 1991 the graduating class of 1992 became the first to leave Columbus without a single pair of Gold Pants in 40 years.
You don't get Gold Pants for tying Michigan. But you don't lose your job, either. When Herbie hit Beatty and the Buckeyes went for one you could hear the jury make its determination: This isn't what we wanted, but it's good enough.
Ohio State would only lose 12 games over the following six seasons as Cooper solidified the program into the powerhouse is still is today. Ten years later the tone and edge of the program were finally upgraded to match the talent the Buckeyes were accustomed to having.
Penn State entered the 2002 matchup averaging 41 points per game. The Buckeyes were averaging 36, yet it was only 7-3 Nittany Lions in the 3rd quarter with Ohio State seeming perfectly content to turn a football game into a slow, patient strangulation contest.
Like the rest of the Buckeye fan base in 2002 that had grown accustomed to late-season dream-crushing, I was a basket case waiting for - if not expecting - the inevitable shoe to drop on an undefeated season. I sat in C-Deck with a direct line of sight to Chris Gamble jumping the route and picking off Zack Mills at the 39-yard line.
But I didn't see it. After A.J. Hawk sacked Mills on the previous play I dug into my pocket for my Nokia 3310 - in a bygone era where cell signals in stadiums weren't an rumor - and promised the friends I was with that I would book non-refundable passage to Arizona for the BCS Championship at that moment, in the stadium, as the ninth game of the season was still being played. Hawk's 2nd down sack inspired me to believe Ohio State would be able to asphyxiate Penn State.
Okay, do it I was told. Hey, it was my idea. I was totally doing it. Call my bluff.
I was awash with feelings. I had witnessed, albeit audibly, Iowa end Earle's tenure on the final play of the final home game of the 1987 season. There was the shocking loss to Michigan State in 1998, which unfortunately I saw all of in the stadium with my actual eyes. At that point in the 2002 season the Buckeyes were 8-0, #4 in the country and had Penn State along with four other games to go to even be considered for Tempe.
But it was still October. Holy Buckeye hadn't happened yet. Maurice Clarett was sidelined with an injury and Ohio State couldn't move the ball without him. I sat and stared at my phone with the Southwest Airlines ticket counter number dialed as the crowd roared in anticipation for Penn State's 3rd down play.
Seconds later Gamble was dancing in the end zone and Ohio State had the lead. 1-800-I-FLY-SWA was still staring back at me on my phone screen, dialed but unsent. One pick-six aside, it still didn't look all that good for the crippled Buckeyes to make it to Tempe - especially with two ranked teams, the defending conference champions and Michigan still remaining beyond Penn State.
But that crowd sounded better than I had heard it going back to the 1995 Notre Dame game. It felt good enough. I glanced down at the Ohio State sideline, exuberantly celebrating a three-point lead with 28 minutes left to play and my phone still in my hand as the crowd continued to roar long into the television timeout. Tresselball be damned; inevitability is something you cannot see. You just have to feel it.
So I stuck my index finger into my ear. Then I hit Send.
