Friday nights at the movies were always my happy place.
Nothing compares to a fall afternoon in a crowded, raucous Ohio Stadium - but there are only a few of those a year. They're sacred and anticipated all year long; you can't just order up a Buckeye game whenever you have the hankering.
Cinema is unlimited and available year-round. Capping off a school week in a dark theater with pristine acoustics, a giant a bucket of buttered popcorn and a cup of Coke large enough to dock a jet ski in was my happy hour in high school. Two-plus hours well-spent.
One Friday night my senior year I went to see The Silence of the Lambs in Hilliard. I had been looking forward to seeing it for years - not because of internet trailers or social media hype, but word of mouth. Everyone was talking about it. True analog hype that's rare these days.
I had read the book my sophomore year, and the buzz on the street was Hollywood absolutely crushed the big screen adaptation. Could not have been more excited - I asked an interesting girl if she wanted to see it with me and she accepted.
Friday night. Date night. Movie night. No Buckeye football in the wintertime. Two for the show with popcorn, soft drinks and a cannibalistic serial killer. The stuff of teenage dreams.
Our theater was packed and mostly full when we arrived, but we still found two available seats right behind a couple of rows which had been reserved. Didn't occur to either of us why those two seats were available, but we also didn't care - the early 1990s predated current reserved theater seating protocols.
First come, first serve - except for those two rows. We didn't wait long to find out why.
A couple dozen Ohio State Buckeyes began lumbering into the theater and made their way to those reserved seats. They all arrived together and were hard to miss. Oh wow, is that Kent Graham? Chico Nelson? Craig Powell! David Monnot? Larger than life. And also just large.
They were all about my age, too - two summers later I'd be in classes with a few of them - but as a high school senior, college football players still seemed like mythical gladiators. It felt jarring to see them in the general population, since they typically existed on television. Now we were all in the same dimly lit room.
While I nerding out and taking roster attendance, my date had a smarter observation. Those guys are huge. Yes, they are. We're in a movie theater. Correct again. Ramzy, their seats are in front of ours. What are you getting at...ah right.
Three body types began filling in the gaps in front of us - speedy little guys, regular thick guys and absolute towering giants. Humans so big they looked photoshopped in a world where Photoshop barely existed. Okay, hopefully Dante Lee and Carlos Snow sit in front of us. I said a quick prayer to the cinema gods for mercy.
Couldn't place the guy who sat in front of her - he was barely 5'10", a secondary guy or a receiver who was shorter than Allen DeGraffenreid. But I immediately knew who sat down right in front of me five minutes before the previews began, prior to my first, and sadly, unsuccessful viewing of the eventual Best Picture of 1991.
It was Alonzo Spellman, whose shoulders were the same height as the top of the screen, which meant his head wasn't actually blocking my view at all. His torso filled the entire frame and occupied every bit of my vantage point, even if I leaned left or right to try and look around him.
THE EARLY NINETIES BUCKEYES HAD FULL PARTICIPATION IN TWO HALL OF FAME BOWLS. Bradley Roby OPTED OUT OF THE ORANGE BOWL A DECADE AGO. Denzel Ward SKIPPED the Cotton Bowl the last time the Buckeyes were invited.
So for the next two hours, I mostly listened to The Silence of the Lambs in a packed, tense theater. Ended up going twice to actually see it once. Sounded amazing both times.
I thought about that 1991 team as the transfer portal opened this weekend and a dozen Ohio State's scholarship players entered it in search of greener pastures, more playing time, less limelight wattage, a fresh start, a last chance or just something they weren't getting in Old Columbus Town.
It's not just Buckeyes peacing out this month. On Monday alone, 530 FBS scholarship players entered the transfer portal. That's six full teams. Include FCS transfers and college football has nearly 13 rosters' worth of players looking to put on a different helmet somewhere else in 2024.
Those early 1990s OSU teams had just one transfer I can name off the top of my head and it was Graham, who had a clear view of Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling that night. He was a 6'5" prototypical drop-back pocket passer and found Ohio State via Notre Dame via Wheaton North in the Chicago suburbs.
And if you think he was ahead of his time in the pre-transfer portal era, you're under 30.
Graham originally chose to play for Lou Holtz, whose offense in South Bend was running out of the wishbone. Triple option, speed option, QB keepers - imagine someone like Kyle McCord but less mobile actively choosing to participate in a system predicated on fast legs and quick decision-making.
Imagine a coveted quarterback like that in the social media and information age committing to a program where he'd be in the same QB room as Tony Rice, who - in the least-surprising coaching decision ever - ended up guiding that option scheme instead of Graham. Imagine what his mentions would have looked like when he announced he would be Square Pegging in a Round Hole for the next 3-4 years.
This sort of mismatch only happens these days when there's a coaching and philosophy change. Graham realized his skillset could thrive elsewhere. So John Cooper got him, and he took on Kirk Herbstreit, legendary recruit Joe Pickens and Bobby Hoying.
Graham won the job, got drafted and played a decade in the NFL while Rice played a couple of years in Europe and enjoys life as a Notre Dame legend to this day. The decision to leave South Bend for Columbus directly led to multiple seven-figure contracts and an NFL pension that likely would not have happened in a world where his highlight reel involves shuffling his feet out of the wishbone or riding the bench.
This transaction took place in an pseudo-innocent world where coaching staffs routinely handled cinematic entertainment for their players on Friday nights in February. The amateurism myth was still thriving, transferring schools was designed to be as difficult and cumbersome as possible for the student-athlete and a career playing professionally was framed as a remote possibility.
Which, mathematically - yes. But no one achieves their wildest dreams by avoiding long odds. Graham had three to get ready for what he hoped would be a shot at playing professionally.
Which he did - he went to the NY Giants while Hoying platooned with Bret Powers, who had transferred in from Arizona State. Hoying then went to the Oakland Raiders and his backup Stanley Jackson platooned with Joe Germaine, another Arizona import. Thirty years ago we had transfer quarterbacks on the roster every season.
Transfers in and out of Ohio State are not new at all - you're thinking of the portal, an online marketplace for fresh talent in search of greener pastures, more playing time, less limelight wattage, a fresh start, a last chance or just something they weren't getting at present.
No more one-year probationary period before playing. No more amateurism myth. Progress!
No more mythical national champions, which was very much a thing back in the early 1990s - Colorado and Georgia Tech both claimed that season's crown while Washington and Miami would both "win" the one that followed.
Players were formally compensated with tuition. Universities and corporations pocketed the millions, which became billions. NIL was university property - that red jersey in the shop window had no name on it by design.
And that's how we got here. Friday night at the movies were always my happy place - $3 tickets, transformational storytelling, creaky, uncomfortable seats and 6'6" giants blocking your view.
Currently, an evening at the movies is conservatively a $70 affair all-in, the film is generally a bunch of celebrities in leotards and capes cracking inside jokes at each other about the 11th installment of a series - that was three sequels ago, keep up - all shot almost entirely against green screens.
But theater seating is now luxurious and the views are unobstructed. This is progress.
Progress is why the corner of Lane and High is now called Undisputed Way. It's how an Oklahoma running back set the all-time single-game rushing record for Ohio State. It's how the stars of the shows everyone watches on Saturdays are now compensated in currency instead of just credits toward a Communications degree.
It's also why conventional bowl games have become glorified scrimmages for programs who fail to reach their undisputed championship aspirations. The Buckeyes played in the Cotton Bowl, Liberty Bowl and two Hall of Fame bowls when I was in high school - and opt out wasn't a phrase, an option or even an idea.
It's now been a decade since Bradley Roby decided he wouldn't play in the Orange Bowl, which holds more prestige than those four early 1990s games had combined. Denzel Ward opted out of the Cotton Bowl the last time the Buckeyes were invited.
This doesn't happen without an undisputed championship, which makes it progress. McCord taking his game elsewhere is progress. The secondary players recruited by Matt Barnes and Kerry Coombs market corrected by guys who showed up after them - and hitting the portal instead of toiling on the sidelines - is progress.
Accelerating game action through clock rules is progress. Preserving broadcast length through added banter, covert in-game ad reads and unending hot take bloviation programming is impossible to extricate from that.
It's a hard bargain to pick and choose the best elements of every era to create an optimized college football landscape because those elements are often at odds or incompatible with each other. You're asking for purity in a depraved world. All you're going to do is get mad at your unfulfilled and impossible wishes.
Which leaves you with two choices for consuming what college football is rapidly becoming, whatever that is: Tap out of this bizarre religion you've long held sacred because it's become unrecognizable to you.
Or, you can find a way to still enjoy it. Perhaps with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.
