Forty-one minutes and thirty-seven damn seconds.
That's how long the 2009 Buckeyes hogged the ball during the 2010 Rose Bowl against the Oregon Ducks, turning New Year's Day's most celebrated event into a five-hour strangulation snuff film.
One hundred and three Rose Bowls have been played, and none of the 205 other teams have ever held the ball that long. Hell, no team has ever come close. Michigan won the 1902 edition 49-0, rushed for 502 yards and didn't have the ball for even 40 minutes (Stanford also forfeited and left the stadium with eight minutes remaining, but stay with me here).
Committed ballhogs generally carry a 10-minute advantage in TOP, which is to say they average 35 a game. Navy and Wisconsin currently lead the FBS with that mark. It's predictable; they're intent on grinding defenses over four quarters, running clock and keeping opposing offenses off the field by running the damn ball.
Death's coldest stare | © Mike Granse-USAT Sports
Which is why it's an underappreciated marvel that Ohio State attempted 38 passes in that Rose Bowl. The Buckeyes rushed the ball 51 times, and once you account for Terrelle Pryor bailing out of passing plays with his legs, they achieved nearly perfect balance between run and pass against the then-Pac-10 champions. That game plan and its execution both belong in the Smithsonian.
I've wondered for years why Ohio State fans don't put that team - or specifically, that game - on a pedestal high enough to justify how miraculous it was. The 1996 team also won a Rose Bowl but lost at home to Michigan and is far more adulated than the 2009 edition, which won in Ann Arbor. Jake Ballard's late catch is just about the only memory that's been retained from that game.
Nothing else about that run - and the Buckeyes' fifth-straight conference title (there would be a sixth) - gets our nostalgic energy humming, nor do we really reminisce that season or game. Sure, the Buckeyes have won two Sugar Bowls, a Fiesta Bowl and a National Championship game since then, but this was a Rose Bowl and a Big Ten title. A lot of us are old enough to remember growing up when those were all that mattered.
Anyway, I finally figured out why - nearly eight years after the fact - and it required 2017 to happen. It hit me during the 4th quarter of the Iowa game. It's Purdue's fault.
Ever since the Buckeyes lost to Oklahoma on the second Saturday we had been twisting ourselves into uncomfortable positions trying to pave clean parallels to the 2014 season, when Ohio State overcame an early stumble and never fell again (psst, we did this last year too). It's done purely out of recency bias and whimsy, because national championships feel good. We just want to feel good again.
But within minutes of Nick Bosa's ejection, those parallels evaporated. The Buckeyes could do nothing right while the Hawkeyes played like Nick Saban's angriest Alabama team - which was jarring because Iowa isn't very good (sorry, Iowa). The parallel abruptly switched that afternoon, and it was easy to miss to where while drowning in the shock of the moment.
We are now on a slow boat to 2009. And Iowa is this year's Purdue.
It flubbed a marquee home night game against Southern Cal that September (Ohio State was eulogized as the grisly demise of Tresselball at the time) but rebounded nicely, pitching consecutive shutouts amidst questions about strength of schedule. Then they took down Wisconsin ahead of what was scheduled to be an unexciting trip to West Lafayette.
That loss to the Trojans was forgivable by comparison. The Buckeyes were rounding into their usual title-contending form right as the Boilermakers splattered them.
Angry football teams tend to win. Dreamers almost always wake up too soon.
Terrelle Pryor turned the ball over four times, and Buckeye fans were screaming for him to be benched in favor of his backup Joe Bauserman, a promising gunslinger with no starts who had been drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Purdue was 1-5 at the time and had dropped five straight games. The goodwill built following the collapse at the end of the USC game was gone, despite the Buckeyes still controlling their destiny.
You like parallels, right? Hope you are enjoying these #parallels.
Ohio State tumbled from 7th to 18th in the BCS rankings, which for those of you too young to remember was only a two-team affair. But weeks later, a Big Ten championship. A win over Michigan seven days after that. Then the Rose Bowl against Oregon. Forty-one minutes and thirty-seven damn seconds of beautiful murder.
The Buckeyes finished the season 5th, the highest for any two-loss team in the country and with a trophy from the bowl game college football held in the highest regard throughout its first century. And now, welcome back to 2017.
That loss at Iowa is only slightly more forgivable than Purdue Harbor, and following the latest CFP rankings and some predictable stumbles from other teams, many Buckeye fans now have their eyes re-trained on the four spot. It's statistically reasonable, but it also demonstrates how we learned nothing from 2009 or 2014.
The Buckeyes were written off on both occasions. That 2014 run has a flowery afterglow because of how improbable it was - but few were eyeing the path to the playoff after being run off the field by Virginia Tech. Nobody was thinking national title after losing to 1-5 Purdue. And if you were still on the CFP train while Ohio State was allowing 55 points to a team whose offense put up a goose egg seven days later, you can anonymously turn in your drugs at the nearest police station.
That's not because it's impossible. It's because you're falling into the same trap again.
Playoff chatter can be crippling. Michigan State walked into an ambush last Saturday because its opponent was wounded and free of any manufactured playoff pressure. Ohio State's coaches stopped overthinking the offense and pulverized the youthful Spartans in the same way they could dominate over 110 FBS programs if they chose to. The defense had a really good day against what's basically Iowa, but Green and White.
RTDB = win. | © Joe Maiorana-USAT Sports
BCS was gone; CFP was the longest shot - and the 2009 and 2014 Buckeyes both won out. They both did so with minimal, external national title pressures; Urban has defiantly said they're absolutely not talking about it, he of The Chase. And yet Vegas, which had the Buckeyes winning by 20 in Iowa City refuses to shut up about it.
That unlearned lesson from 2009, which repeated itself in 2014 is that there are few motivators as freeing as being written off. The 2009 edition hoisted a Rose Bowl trophy, but lost some shine once hindsight determined just how much was lost at Purdue. Maybe Iowa will prove to be as damaging.
National championships feel good. We just want to feel good again. The surest way to get there - in an unsure college football landscape - isn't to obsess over playoffs. The 2009 team fought against its own performance in West Lafayette. The 2014 team played itself playing Virginia Tech for the balance of the season. The enemy is us. Both mindsets paid off handsomely.
Ohio State should dwell on what it did to itself in Iowa City for the next three, four or five games, because angry football teams tend to win. Dreamers almost always wake up too soon. We'll have the rest of eternity to decide what it all meant come January.
