West Lafayette is a barren, blighted realm.
Surrounded by the cursed wastes of northwestish Indiana, those who enter lose all sense of self and time and space. Wandering aimlessly among unending rows of corn, monolith windmills, and decrepit Circle Ks, you may visit the home of Purdue University, but you can never truly leave.
A part of you will always remain. Eternally pulled back to this pit of the damned where you are doomed to relive your worst moments, projected as they are into your subconscious, addled by the stench of wet, decaying pitch. You want to look away in revulsion and self-pity, but you can't; a second-ranked Ohio State team will have always lost to a 3-3 Boilermakers squad by almost 30 points.
It was real. It happened. You can never forget.
Ohio State football is, somehow, 2-4 against Purdue in West Lafayette since 2004. There are "reasons" for it, in the same way that there are reasons that any team loses to another, but given the context in which both teams exist those reasons are borderline nonsensical. The Buckeyes have nine Big Ten championships since 2004; Purdue has had five winning seasons since then.
Today I'll look back into the abyss and try to briefly explain what the hell happened with each loss. I'll fail, but someone needs to take on the psychic burden, and it might as well be me.
2004
Ohio State wasn't great in 2004. 6-3 coming into the Purdue game, they were still trying to find an offensive identity centered around Troy Smith and company (as opposed to their previous strategy, an offensive identity centered around Mike Nugent kicking six field goals a game).
Purdue wasn't great either, but they did have a coach in Joe Tiller who knew how to coach up quarterbacks a little bit. The deciding factor in their 24-17 victory was taking advantage of four Buckeye turnovers (including three interceptions thrown by Smith), and Jim Tressel not yet trusting anyone but his quarterback to run the football with any kind of consistency.
So Purdue got to exorcise "Holy Buckeye" and Ohio State learned a valuable lesson about offensive gameplanning. Everyone was even. Right? Nope.
2018 in one image.
2009
Smart Football's Chris Brown wrote this about the Death of Tresselball after the USC loss in earlier in this season, but it applies pretty well to Ohio State's 18-26 loss to a Danny Hope squad that would finish the season 5-7.
"Tresselball" might have been enough in 2002, but football has evolved, and I don't just mean the "spread" offense. Tressel is apparently convinced that "conservative" playcalling is synonymous with not understanding the percentages, and consistently playing suboptimally [...] And, even more fundamentally, his brand of football is a relic, for good reason.
The seventh-ranked Buckeyes were outgained 287-361 against 1-5 Purdue. Boilermakers running back Ralph Bolden ran the ball 17 times for just 43 yards and still had more rushing yards than anyone on Ohio State's roster. Here at Eleven Warriors, we were super flummoxed and pissed. Then the Buckeyes beat Michigan and won the Rose Bowl. I don't know how any of this is supposed to make sense.
2011
Okay, whatever. I'm not too upset about this one because 2011 was a gigantic mess throughout. Ohio State lost in overtime, 23-26, and adding to the tragicomedy is that had Purdue not blocked an extra point at the end of regulation, the Buckeyes would've won outright.
On the plus side, it did lead to this fantastic .gif and set the stage for Kenny Guiton working his magic a year later.
2018
This is the one that I don't think I'll ever be able to fully wrap my head around.
The Buckeyes were (deservedly) the second-ranked team in the country coming into this game. They were undefeated, had an incredible, record setting quarterback, two running backs capable of breaking any game against any opponent wide open, and a wide receiving corps full of potential NFL talent. The defense wasn't great, and continued to not be great after this game, but surely they could hold it together enough to take down a Purdue team that had lost to Eastern Michigan earlier in the season, right?
No! Not even close! Yes, the Boilermakers won 49-20, but the four touchdowns Purdue scored in the final frame were simply the disgusting, rancid cherry on top of a game that Ohio State never had a real chance at winning from the start. Put another way, the Buckeyes didn't score their first touchdown until the 9:36 mark in the 4th quarter, and when they did, they were still down by 15 points. Then Ohio State beat Michigan, won the Big Ten championship, and won the Rose Bowl.
We spent gallons of ink trying to explain the inexplicable on this site, but the horrible truth is that there is something old and terrible and awful going on in West Lafayette. It is The Worst.
Some eldritch horror stalks the woods and fields there. I've felt it, having driven those roads myself. You can sense something watching, waiting, for any sign of weakness or poor defensive scheme. It's there, just out of the corner of y-oh MY GOD NO. NO!
