The Situational: Bridge to Nowhere

That gives us NCAA Donkey Football Kong. Instead of navigating Mario through some dystopian ladder world you could play as Ben Buchanan (player rating: N/A) in Lincoln, Nebraska. Those bourbon-filled barrels at the bottom right would be tossed into your path by a giant, angry ape instead of being photoshopped as they are here.

I would play the hell out of this game, however imaginary it may be. Still, that (thankfully) headless Ohio State helmet flying toward Buchanan in that photo is and was 100% real, as was that stupid game in Lincoln where it was taken five years ago.

The last time OSU lost in October there were bombs.

You may be thinking hmmm there must be a good reason that dumb night from 2011 is gracing the Eleven Warriors front page in 2016 and you're correct: Prior to Saturday's collapse in Beaver Stadium that debacle against the Cornhuskers represented Ohio State's most recent October loss

The Buckeyes had been undefeated in all Octobers since then. Five years, man. We're spoiled. Collapses happen. College kids + College coaches = burning to the ground at some point is an absolute certainty. Ohio State's defensive lapses, catastrophic special teams failures and glaring issues at wide receiver were hard to understand Saturday and even more difficult to digest.

But, uh, we need to go back to Lincoln in 2011. We need to remember. You can't just call any game a Donkey Kong barrel fire. There is a standard for this, and that game was it.

Ohio State led Nebraska 27-6 and forced a 3-and-out to get the ball back. Braxton Miller got hurt and fumbled three plays later, leading to a quick Nebraska touchdown.

Here is how the Buckeyes then managed that lead and clock with just a quarter and a half to play:

The Buckeyes had multiple drives where they burned less time off the clock than they would have had they simply taken a knee. Coaches repeatedly allowed Joe Bauserman to airmail clock-stopping passes into the stands with a lead on the road and Carlos Hyde in the backfield. That's not bad luck or being outplayed. That's a self-inflicted hate crime.

The Buckeyes burned their own house down that night. This is not what happened in Happy Valley. Saturday marked the first time an Urban Meyer team had ever blown a double-digit 4th quarter lead. That night in Lincoln the Buckeyes allowed Nebraska to pull off the biggest comeback in school history. 

The still-young 2016 Buckeyes took a very bad loss Saturday due to both strategic planning and execution. They can now allow that sting to linger longer than it should, or they can grow up and get back to winning. Losing sucks. Let's get Situational.

The Air SHOW

Let's stay in 2011 for another moment, since you still can't believe how bad last Saturday was.

Behold, Jake Stoneburner securing Ohio State's only completion of the game in Champaign that season literally 105 years after the forward pass was legalized and one week after that stupid night in Lincoln. This game was broadcast in HD. There were no service academies involved. It really happened.

Yes, Ohio State's current passing game needs improvement, but the two guys who coached the offense and quarterbacks in 2011 are currently Team Grandpa Who Doesn't Call Plays or Coach Linemen Anymore in East Lansing and Working in Healthcare Instead of Football, respectively. Life moves pretty fast. Remind yourself of that while gnashing your teeth at this extremely young team. Started at the bottom, now we're here. 

Ohio State played that game at Illinois in 2011 during the pre-beat writer era at 11W which meant I covered that game for our readers. My game recap was titled Puntageddon and I used a photoshopped picture of a walrus dressed in Jim Bollman's sun hat and windbreaker for the header. Inexplicably I didn't win the Pulitzer that year.

Look at these real statistics from that game, contrasted against the passing/receiving production from last Saturday in Happy Valley:

The Bourbon

There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.

Abner Doubleday: War hero, bourbon. (did not invent baseball)

Two weeks ago this Saturday's Northwestern game time was abruptly moved from a twilight kick back to 3:30pm without explanation. We sleuthed a bit and concluded it was to avoid a possible conflict with the possibility of another Ohio team facing another group of North Siders, with a much bigger prize at stake.

Two weeks later it's a non-conflict and all sides will be able to watch Ohio State-Northwestern and Cleveland-Chicago without overlap. Onto the next conflict: The bourbon for a World Series where you have a rooting interest.

Some of us - and this is admittedly gross - are getting an unwanted Sophie's Choice for this year's Fall Classic. I'm simultaneously overjoyed and crushed watching Cleveland play the Cubbies. Whiskey-wise it's much easier.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, NY. New York has emerged as major player in the craft bourbon game with objectively good whiskeys from Tuthilltown (Hudson Baby, esp) Hillrock (Solera Aged) and Kings County (Chocolate). But just a 10-minute walk from the Hall of Fame sits the Cooperstown Distillery, and they make - among other spirits - a classic bourbon packaged in what's basically a big glass baseball.

The Abner Doubleday Classic American Whiskey has a conventional mash bill (51% corn, then rye, malt and barley) but is finished in old bourbon casks which gives it a unique essence layered atop of its vanilla shoe leather flavor. Yes, the bottle is marvelous. The bourbon inside is good enough for consumption too. There's nothing cursed about it.

The Playoff

The Cubs and Indians share many common elements:

• Midwestern homes with proud histories
• Situated on the shores of Great Lakes
• Decades of immeasurable pain and suffering
• Copious musical homages

After Chicago wins home games the stadium blasts Go Cubs Go which is a schlocky 80s singalong written by the same guy who wrote City of New Orleans, which ironically is a song about leaving Chicago. There's a bittersweet angle here that its writer - Steve Goodman, who died long before he ever heard it sung by 38,000 people in Wrigley - is kept alive by the Cubs' newish musical tradition.

With respect to the departed and his family, Go Cubs Go is absolutely terrible; the type of shitty brainworm you accidentally hear on a children's show and then cannot evict from your skull for days. Other musicians have tried to dethrone Go Cubs Go with offerings like Let's Go Let's Do It and We Got The Fire, the latter of which...yeah, irony.

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder is responsible for the best Cubs musical tribute. You might think it's bad, but if I were to agree with you then we'd both be wrong:

Over in NE Ohio's dugout, Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer - who is starting Game 2 tonight - recorded a rap song called Gutter to the Grail. You'll hear current Indians shouted out in it, like Jason Kipnis, Cody Allen and Carlos Santana. My review of Gutter to the Grail is you should not click on the link to it.

There's the Cleveland Indians Rally Song from 1982 (when the rallyin' Tribe finished last in the AL East) and Randy Newman's Burn On, which opened both Major League and the Believeland 30for30. Currently, Ian Hunter's Cleveland Rocks from the Drew Carey Show and Michael Stanley's My Town get played at Progressive Field in the place where Go Cubs Go is heard at Wrigley, i.e. after good things happen for the home team.

But as is the case in the Horseshoe at the start of the 4th quarter, Ohio's official rock song makes an appearance in the middle of the 8th inning:

Here's to Chicago's North Side being sad this Saturday, at least due to the events from that afternoon in Columbus. Go Bucks. Go Ohio.