My Favorite Things: Episode 22, The Lone Star Heist

by Ramzy Nasrallah April 02, 2025
Jan 10, 2025; Arlington, Texas, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes defensive end Jack Sawyer (33) returns a fumble recovery for a touchdown during the fourth quarter of the College Football Playoff semifinal against the Texas Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl at AT&T St
Jan 10, 2025; Arlington, Texas, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes defensive end Jack Sawyer (33) returns a fumble recovery for a touchdown during the fourth quarter of the College Football Playoff semifinal against the Texas Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl at AT&T St

Every human desire can be distilled into one of four categories.

If that feels like a small number, you're forgetting we humans are a hilariously basic species. Four is all we need capture every bit of what spikes our pleasure centers. We chase, crave and consume the same fuel to feel and stay alive.

Human bodies have been downloading firmware updates ever since we first slithered out of the ooze and spent the millions of years which followed evolving into upright beings who can pick pears off branches and properly shoot a basketball. The engine of progress is rooted in desire, and human desires come in four flavors.

First and foremost, humans need to be fed. Food enriches our brains, bodies and thirst for more. Once upon a time, the sun never set on the British Empire because the English were obsessed with finding spices unavailable to them at home. So they traveled to faraway distant lands, met exciting and unusual people and conquered them. For herbs.

This was not to bring flavor to their famously bland food, but to stimulate their poetry-based economy. Economic sustenance is nourishing, too. Some foods just can't be digested.

Our second category comes from the primal fact we are wired to want and need, uh, let's call it food's cousin. Not food. A different f-word. The f-word, actually - an activity which technically exists to repopulate our species but usually just ends up producing guilt, regret, soiled bedding and billable hours. Humans crave other humans.

PREVIOUSLY ON MY FAVORITE THINGS When Winter Came for the Volunteers

Third, we need to be loved. A baby's first terrifying butt-naked moments outside of the womb are pacified by skin-to-skin contact with the closest available human being, traditionally the mother. We're evicted into the world and, if fortunate, greeted with immediate and unconditional love.

This type of love is available in many forms, such as respect, adulation, coaching, caring and a high playoff seeding despite losing at home to a 21-point underdog playing at partial strength. Esteem. Skin-to-skin contact. Wholesome appreciation. Love is innumerable. Hate is just a rancid form of love, and the opposite of love is indifference. So hate and love occupy the same category.

Finally, we need to be left alone. Solitude and attention are humanity's irreconcilable twins - and sometimes we don't want any attention. Our brain's hedonistic pleasure centers reward us whenever Food, Food's Sexy Cousin, Love or Solitude hit with the right timing. Four categories capture everything humans have ever wanted.

But what about recreational drugs? Good question, make-believe reader - drugs are a toxic way to manufacture pleasurable feelings. Healthier vices like art and books can not only be invigorating, they're easier on your vital organs and don't show up in your urine at the doctor's office.

Music is another effective and natural drug. If you can't think of a song you have vibed to a trillion times to get your soul thumping, keep looking for it. Here, try this one. Actually, hold on for a few more minutes. We'll play it later in the column.

Speaking of thumping, you were led to believe what you clicked on would be about the 2025 Goodyear Cotton Bowl, which - spoiler - it 100% is. You chose to read this article nearly three months after that game happened, because you loved that game.

You love the Buckeyes. You cherish their best moments. You re-cherish them forever.

The moment from that Cotton Bowl you keeping coming back to is Jack Sawyer scoring his second scoop-and-score touchdown in two months; a glorious fragment of your life and possibly the top highlight of a national championship campaign. Bottle those seconds and keep them handy when you need them again. That's what you clicked on.

That 4th down is not the first Ohio State snap you've run back more than once; it's just one of the most recent. As the 2024 Buckeyes barreled toward the conclusion of their Natty or Bust season, we all believed they would stack six consecutive bangers to reach their rightful destination.

It was reasonable to assume we'd be served memorable plays during a stretch so daunting. Six games is half a season, and this one would feature undefeated Indiana, The Game, the B1G championship and three CFP clashes all bound to produce moments worthy of psychological distillation and digital bottling.

That stack only ended up going four games deep, thanks to rivalry malpractice combined with Penn State's softer conference schedule. But what transpired created a fresh new crop of Ohio State snaps we're putting into permanent stimulation syndication. So many moments worth bottling.

Buckeye fans are fortunate to have a library of these moments. Here's my all-time favorite.

Holy Buckeye. This 23-year old (what?!) play was more than just a completed pass in a football game against a team Ohio State should have beaten by four touchdowns. It's a tension collective followed by a seismic release, manufactured through an impossible prescription: Jim Tressel dialing up a deep ball on 4th down with an undefeated season on the line.

The spontaneous auditory accompaniment from Brent Musberger on the broadcast became its own language in Ohio's virtual holy book, a two-word expression which took on a deeper meaning better sportswriters would spill thousands of words proselytizing the agnostic among us into devoted believers of Tresselball.

That embedded clip above is part of a full Holy Buckeye documentary which you should watch, and not because you have to tolerate me reliving that moment from my vantage point. But I can still hear that play as it happened in my head 23 (what?!) years ago, which was through a Nokia phone talking to a friend Michael Jenkins was running toward at Ross-Ade Stadium as he caught that pass.

Sawyer's strip, fumble recovery and touchdown gained folklore status while he was still chugging across midfield on his way to ending Texas' season.

A deadpan prophesy amidst one second of ambient silence when nobody around my friend was able to exhale. He just muttered touchdown to me on his phone, with awkward, split-second silence all around him. My eyes were still watching Craig Krenzel take the snap from under center on television hundreds of miles away.

And then, analog pandemonium in my ear. A few TV delay seconds later, visual confirmation my friend had called it right while the ball was still in flight. I nearly passed out.

You just read six consecutive sentences about sound. We're talking about a football play, and the way I lived that moment through my ears will accompany me to my grave.

Sawyer's touchdown in Arlington, a year removed from the best individual effort of his life on the same field which nobody outside the state of Missouri ever needs to think about again belongs on the same shelf as that version of Krenzel-to-Jenkins.

Neither play clinched a title. Both were enablers. Their folklores needed other games to take root.

There were many other Krenzel-to-Jenkins moments during the 2002 stretch in which Holy Buckeye was tucked into, notably the following week in Champaign followed by a connection which extended the title game on 4th and 14 in Tempe. Neither of those completions ever got a nickname. Both occurred closer to the final trophy presentation.

And yet, one afternoon in West Lafayette overshadows them both, as well as just about every other pivotal moment that season. Their final completion of the 2002 season saved the BCS title game from going Miami's way, but it was never granted folklore status. Holy Buckeye is folklore.

And that's what you clicked today, to revisit another piece of Buckeye legacy which gained rarified status while Sawyer was still chugging across midfield on his way to ending Texas' season. This is a celebration of that highest shelf in the library of cherished Ohio State moments.

Every human desire can be distilled into one of four categories. Texas' final 4th down of its 2024 season fed you and loved you. It pretty much fucked the Longhorns, and as the play concluded - Sawyer was alone with the ball. He had all his boys chasing him and millions of us cheering.

All four categories, technically. Welcome back to My Favorite Things. Let's go back to Arlington.

Episode 22, The Lone Star Heist

Three national titles later, we can probably admit Holy Buckeye has an inflated grade.

Unclutch your pearls, we're detracting nothing from the 2002 season. A dry piece of bread tastes like nirvana after a week without food. Ohio State won 22 straight games between 1967 and 1969. In the three decades which followed, nothing but fits and starts. We didn't know how badly we needed Holy Buckeye.

The program's gilded memories were confined to the pages of books, or tucked within the plaques and tangles wrapped around the memory stores of our gray-haired fans. Winning all 14 in 2002 was a supernatural event for the era, and it would never have happened without King Right 64 Y Shallow Swap in West Lafayette.

So yeah, we inflated the grade - it was deserved and overdue. Holy Buckeye: A+.

And it happened against Purdue, literally the Purdue of college football programs. They had the lowest bar to clear - if Ohio State could pull off a play like Holy Buckeye against Alabama or Texas in a postseason game, that would be a standard for big plays in big moments.

They did it against Miami in Tempe. But by that time, we had our folklore moment for 2002 and it happened in West Lafayette. Krenzel-to-Jenkins on 4th and 14 still lives in Holy Buckeye's shadow.

Ohio State was ending a 34-year title drought that season, and has come a long way since Tressel broke the immortality seal. This brand of folklore is holistic, hits all of the senses and requires more than just a football play. They deliver the right mix of sight, sound, context and feeling. They're nourishing to the soul.

The series you're reading kicked off with Ezekiel Elliott's unique perspective of every Ohio State fan's favorite snap from the 2010s. Zeke never looked over his shoulder because he didn't have to.

hey look at me go
Ezekiel Elliott watching himself run 85 Yards Through the Heart of the South on the big screen at the Louisiana Superdome.

That snap joined Holy Buckeye the moment the CFP title game ended a little over a week later, because without a championship capstone on the season 85 Yards just becomes an exhilarating play which fed our pleasure centers for the first few days of 2015.

If the Buckeyes didn't clear the rest of the 2002 regular season slate before knocking Miami off its perch, King Right 64 Y Shallow Swap lives only in that year's playbook. Holy Buckeye becomes something closer to Justin Fields hitting Chris Olave in the same endzone Zeke galloped into five years earlier.

That play was enormously satisfying and Olave is still a top-three Smoothest Buckeye Ever (Ted Ginn Jr. and Terry Glenn are the other two, different column). But leaving aside the title game against Alabama with a third of the roster unavailable due to contact tracing, just listen to how this play sounded.

That fucking pandemic. A jam-packed Superdome would have hit 85 Yards decibels.

JK Dobbins gashed Clemson a year earlier for a long touchdown which barely registers because of how that game ended, and this is the inescapable misfortune of elite plays in losing efforts. They are indigestible football fiber. We don't need them. They're sadness mementos we just evacuate like last night's delicious burrito.

I've seen Jordan Fuller being robbed of the same type of glory in Glendale that Sawyer enjoyed in Arlington more times than I've watched that Dobbins touchdown from the same game. If the Buckeyes win that Fiesta Bowl and then take down LSU, JK is still running in our minds.

Defeats are meant to be forgotten, and for programs like Ohio State - so are marginal wins. Raymont Harris rushed for 235 yards and three touchdowns in a bowl game, but it's barely remembered for two reasons. It came against BYU in the Holiday Bowl, which took place one game after he rushed for just 65 yards in a 28-0 loss in Ann Arbor that wrecked an undefeated season.

I loved that Holiday Bowl. Two football seasons later, I could barely remember it. My brain put it in a box somewhere in my memory's basement that I rarely ever feel like revisiting.

Zeke's folklore run came in a game that delivered a bouquet of memorable highlights, courtesy of Cardale Jones, Devin Smith, Michael Thomas, Evan Spencer - but it contained an abundance of misery too. How many times have you rewatched the whole 2015 Sugar Bowl? Ohio State couldn't stop punting out of its own endzone for most of the 2nd half, it was agonizing.

Zeke didn't end the contest, either - Bama scored quickly and got the ball back with a chance to tie or win it outright. Tyvis Powell did the honors on the final play of the game. There are so many plays Ohio State would have wanted back if the Tide had completed the comeback.

Regret is something Zeke wasn't contending with entering that night in New Orleans, which is also important context for Sawyer's touchdown in Arlington. Elliott was a sophomore who wasn't laying it all down for what could have been his final outing as a Buckeye. He had more time. Hell, he thought he was getting two natties. We all did!

What happened in this past January in Arlington carried a full backstory the 2014 team didn't have at its disposal or burden. We'll get to the 2024 seniors shortly - but first let's lay down some rules for what constitutes a folklore play in an era where Ohio State actually contends for national titles, instead of having to rely on the elders among us to tell us what they were like.

Relevant sample from the same game! TreVeyon Henderson's touchdown to end the 1st half has a cousin from that night in New Orleans when Zeke ran into Ohio State folklore, and it's Evan Spencer hitting Michael Thomas for a touchdown just prior to halftime to take all of the momentum into the Buckeyes' locker room.

Touchdowns before halftime count for six points too. But 4th quarter touchdowns with single digits remaining on the clock in big games deliver a completely different type of euphoria.

Timing is as critical an element to these plays as circumstances. One player owning an entire play is a special and rare event. Pick-sixes are fairly common, but laying a hit, causing a fumble, recovering and taking it to the house has a high degree of difficulty.

Prior to Sawyer in the Cotton Bowl, this was the most renown hit, fumble, recovery and house call in program history. It's still celebrated today. And it never technically happened.

That sequence is so unique that even when officiating ruins it, it's still revered. The shelf just below the Holy Buckeye one is loaded with pristine moments which did count. Joey Bosa putting Ohio State up 38-0 before halftime of the 2014 B1G championship game is on there. Jerron Cage's scoop and score against Penn State is too (it's a reinforced shelf, love you big fella).

Keith Byars running out of his shoe against Illinois. J.T. Barrett running faster than the entire state of Minnesota. That penultimate shelf from the top is crowwwwded. The one above it is spacious.

Texas drove inside the Ohio State 10-yard line courtesy of chunk plays and several Ohio State penalties. The Longhorns kept getting 1st downs on merit and flags, which made their game-tying touchdown seem inevitable.

This was the type of game Ryan Day's teams had grown too accustomed to losing. They bucked the trend in State College earlier in the season, but they fomented it in Eugene. Their two previous Michigan losses felt squandered in the waning moments as well.

This Cotton Bowl was not playing out like the 1st round route of Tennessee or the 1st half subjugation of the previously undefeated Oregon Ducks. Solace came from scrimmage being near the goal line. This was another Ohio State trend.

Goal Line Stand University had been granted accreditation during the regular season and was still offering classes in January. After running directly into Tyliek Williams and JT Tuimoloau on 1st down for no gain - bold move, Cotton Bowl - Texas ran wide and put itself in a big hole.

This had become The Usual for the Buckeyes in 2024, but for Day's teams in talent-equated games something had to give here. Either the Buckeyes would produce another memorable goal line stand, or they'd give up the lead once again and be tied.

Texas had scored both of its touchdowns earlier in similar fashion, isolating a running back on a linebacker and using precision through the air. The extra space afforded by the Silver Bullets blowing up that 2nd down sweep created a better opportunity for a third. Their fans hated that play call but it probably benefited the Longhorns against this defense.

The problem was Ohio State was already burned by it twice and was looking for it this time. The fact it had given up those two consequential scores the same way pierced the veneer of inevitability which had begun the weekend prior to Christmas when the Buckeyes beat Tennessee so badly it actually called the quality of the Volunteers into question.

The visitors that night looked like a pudgy junior varsity program. Oregon in Pasadena was different; the Ducks were just ambushed under perfect conditions by a team that wasn't going to cede a single advantage in their second meeting. The undefeated B1G champions and No.1 seed were title-worthy, but they had zero shot of winning that day.

Sometimes juggernautery happens and it's unstoppable. That's not a word only because dictionaries sometimes make mistakes.

But Texas was different. They had lost during the season and had no entitlement to contend with, they looked the part and had consumed every snap of the Volunteer and Duck destructions prior to arriving in Arlington.

Their coaches called a smart game plan and stayed on-strategy for the evening, and the Longhorns' quarterback was familiar both with Day's QB room and Ohio State's senior defensemen.

So on 4th and goal down by seven with 2:29 left to play and the winner advancing to the national championship game to face Notre Dame, of course the ball was going to be in Quinn Ewers' hands. Of course he was going to look left, as he had all night. Of course he had a hot route and a backup plan.

And he had about three seconds to process his options. You know what happens next, so let's not jump right to that just yet. Instead, let's step into the Q Row of TBDBITL and watch the final two plays of that drive.

Q is the second row of bones, behind F Row. Here's how it looked and sounded to them.

Remember earlier when we talked about a song you vibe to a trillion times just to get your soul thumping? That's mine. Buckeye Battle Cry. My all-time favorite song.

And not just because it's elite musical composition I've enjoyed my whole life. It's because my emotional response to hearing it is Pavlovian. TBDBITL plays Buckeye Battle Cry every time Ohio State scores points. Of course we love hearing it.

That's a song my heart associates with six points. Sometimes three. After a PAT, the band plays it again - but twice in a row - because there's some space to fill ahead of the kickoff.

Ohio State's marching band playing Buckeye Battle Cry twice for every special teams or defensive touchdown is one of the very stupid hills I'm willing to die on. I'm not sure why I cannot just type that into existence. Play it twice, you beautiful cowards.

What I adore about this view from Q Row is how emotionally invested the band is in the game, watching them suffocate on euphoria and then immediately having to gain the composure to play my favorite song from memory while screamlaughshakingcrying.

Watch it a few more times and focus on a different band member. Some of them are laser-focused on the task and get high marks for stoicism, which - great job being a disciplined robot - that will serve you well after graduation. A few of the others absolutely fail to keep it together and cannot maintain their composure. My people. Those are my favorite.

It's been said that humans don't deserve dogs, and that's probably true. We don't deserve marching bands either. Marching bands are the best. I'm glad they've existed my whole life.

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So now let's talk about the guy who made that moment happen all by himself, who now occupies a shelf in Ohio State folklore forever. Sawyer's senior year was a redemption slog for a local star who had spent more time at Ohio State trying to catch up with his potential than exceed it.

At that moment, he and his classmates were fighting for a legacy worth remembering. Seconds after he captured it and wrote his legacy epitaph, the production crew trained a camera on him for the final minutes of the game. Listen to it, below. This is what relief and anticipation sound like when they're intertwined.

No matter what the CFP bracket looked like, Texas was the final boss for the title. Slicing up Tennessee and humiliating Oregon were both necessary, but the Longhorns had the talent and gumption to advance to Atlanta. Notre Dame wasn't beating this team. No one said it, but everyone knew it. Listen closely. It's a joyous exhale.

Sawyer had gotten three snaps in Pasadena as a freshman in the Rose Bowl before getting thrown out of the game for targeting on his fourth. Sixteen snaps in the Peach Bowl, when his unit could not get a stop when the team needed it - and it cost them the national title.

He was a one-man wrecking crew in a Cotton Bowl no one wants to remember as a junior, which might have sent him to the NFL Draft in any other era. It's an incredible career stat: Sawyer got four postseason snaps as a freshman and four postseason games as a senior.

By the time he ascended to that playoff stack of winter challenges, he was arguably the most important figure on the team. That's not the same as player but he was in that conversation too.

Sawyer was the ringleader who kept his classmates in the NIL salary band one final season, and it turned out to be more of a victory lap than a last hurrah, which was what they wanted anyway. They all deserved this outcome, but Sawyer probably deserved it the most, if only for dulling what had been the highlight of his legacy prior to the playoff, which was preventing Michigan players from planting a flag at midfield. Again.

Cody Simon was Block O. Sawyer was all heart. Block H. Not a real thing, but it should be.

To translate this immortal play into Gus Johnson-speak: Quinn Ewers had barbecue back there, and he didn't invite his old Ohio State roommate. That hurt his feelings. Ballgame.

You can pick up some crowd noise in that shot, but what's unexpectedly fun about living in this somber Memes Are a Legitimate News Source Which Help Us Process Reality Era is the technology to replace ambient sound with other soundtracks. Somehow, this doesn't feel blasphemous at all.

Another dumb hill I'll die on is that every consequential sports moment looks and sounds great when set to that Titanic song by Celine Dion. You can disagree, because being wrong is an inalienable right.

YOURRRRE HEEEEERE, THERE'S NOOOOOTHIIINGGGG I FEEEAR perfect song. Perfect crescendo. Flawed ship; look it up if you haven't heard about it. The movie is fine. Stop hating or loving it too much.

As that bloated iron metaphor for man's hubris sank into the chilly North Atlantic 113 years ago this month, no one could have imagined how that moment would inform one small but important segment of how we would celebrate the 2025 Cotton Bowl.

If you can't get behind the Titanic song (I know it has a formal name, but it's Titanic song to me) then perhaps the main theme from Pirates of the Caribbean is closer to your liking.

If you haven't seen those movies, the protagonist is played by Johnny Depp and is named Jack Sparrow. He's a pirate. Captain Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack. Get it? Of course you get it.

BAH GOD, THEY'RE PLAYING MY MUSIC - Hans Zimmer, literally.

So to recap thus far: Ambient crowd noise is good. Fight songs are good. Band members keeping their composure is good. Band members losing their shit and playing their instruments poorly is better. Pirates of the Caribbean was good but the subsequent IP-based money grabs left something to be desired.

What if we took the aggressive pacing from Zimmer and BBC and slowed it all the way down to a song I've sung to my children when they were teething infants? A song sung with hats removed prior to football games, after football games, at weddings and funerals, or pretty much anywhere in the state of Ohio without dissent?

It turns out you can set this moment of Buckeye football folklore to Carmen Ohio quite effectively. That's harder to do with 85 Yards. Don't even try to do this with Holy Buckeye. I mean, you'd still watch and enjoy it but it's the sideline jubilation set to auditory solace about seasons changing and the circle of life that does it for me.

You don't get that with Holy Buckeye. You don't get Maurice Clarett, not only welcomed back to the program but on the sideline for every playoff game jumping up and down while Sawyer rumbles past him - slowed down and set to Carmen like that.

Here's a callback - in Clarett's final college game 23 seasons ago, two former and esteemed Buckeyes were on the Ohio State sideline cheering on their alma mater while Ohio State was manufacturing a national title in the desert. The image of them celebrating resonated in what was still Early Sports Internet, but it has since faded a little.

Perhaps you remember that moment. I thought of that snapshot while watching Clarett - who was playing in that game - celebrating on the sideline as Sawyer rolled past him. The layers to this are rich and inspired.

This play works when you set it to Sinking Ship music. It works set to Disney Pirate music. It obviously works when set to Ohio State music. Would you believe it even works set to Baseball music? Of course you would.

Moneyball was a great book and a better movie - and bless Jonah Hill for accepting to star in a movie next to Brad Pitt. Hill was typecast as Hollywood's Polar Opposite of Brad Pitt and he still took a job where they shared a couple dozen scenes together. That's courage.

Mychael Danna composed that piece of music, and it works equally well for Sawyer racing 82 yards through the heart of Texas and Scott Hatteberg going yard against the Orioles. Or Chris Pratt playing Scott Hatteberg in Moneyball. The point is the song bangs as well as the plays it's been set to.

Let's stay in the cinematic universe. I'm incapable of explaining the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar without violating 11W's already-generous word limit, so let's stick to just the bare essentials here.

In this scene, Matthew McConaughey's character is in a wormhole viewing a screen showing him scenes from his own life. At this moment, he's watching his younger self leave his daughter behind - and it's understandably unnerving and distressing for him.

McConaughey the actor, the Austin resident, the UT alum (and fellow Delta Tau Delta fraternity brother - ski free, brah) is the Longhorns' most conspicuous fan of late. So inserting Sawyer's touchdown into that scene from Interstellar...oh man, get it? Of course you get it.

We could do this all day, but let's pause and pay homage to the spontaneous, authentic and ambient sounds which accompanied Sawyer's play. First, there's the view from wherever you were watching the game - which will probably not be covered here. There are the sounds you made and heard as the play happened.

There's the view from Q Row among the Ohio State marching band. We have the sound of Chris Fowler on the main ABC/ESPN broadcast which included Kirk Herbstreit quietly losing his shit in his head to maintain the veneer of impartiality.

And then there are the views from inside of Jerryworld from Buckeye fans who had their phones upright to capture what they were sure would be a significant play - like another goal line stand to add to the 2024 season collection.

The other possibility was a 4th and goal TD. Please, no - WAIT OKAY THAT KIND OF TD IS FINE.

Pretty good view! If you paid less for your seats, you had a more expansive shot of the action and more of the jumbotron at your disposal. It was just quieter with all that sound beneath you.

No bad views exist of this play. Your departed loved ones with whom you wish could have enjoyed this moment had a great view from wherever you believe they are spending eternity. They watched this game from inside your heart. Best seat in the universe.

One of the first Ohio State bars I ever attended was Not Al's on High Street, named to signal to the community that the establishment was not owned by - hey, a guy from my old neighborhood, the late Albert Desantis. Not Al, get it? Of course you get it.

Al owned a bunch of campus bars and, well, some stuff happened. The disassociation made sense at the time. I don't think I ever entered Not Al's as myself, since my age began with a number one during that era. My ID had me as R.G. Hallarsan, which you might notice contains every letter of my last name but in the wrong order. It was easy to remember under questioning.

Not Al's 2, or Toos took its place. The name means Also Not Al's, but pulls double-duty as a misspelled sequel - get it? Of course you get it. I was legally myself at Toos, but that was a brief moment in time. Threes and Fours have been regular haunts for me. Desantis died in 2009 but bars are still actively promoting they don't belong to him.

I watched the 4th quarter of JT Barrett's final game from Threes, which is to say I left Ohio Stadium before Carmen played. This was a violation of my personal code, but I had reasons - the first being that High Street was under 12-18 inches of water that afternoon and sitting in that rain - in a blowout - felt unnecessary.

Second, I spent every one of Barrett's 37 years as an Ohio State football player aggressively defending him, with the summary of those screeds being we don't deserve JT so you watch your whore mouth if you're even thinking about being critical.

We held onto 16 as long we could. I left the stadium when Dwayne Haskins came in to mop up the Illini, and he immediately gave up a touchdown to the Illinois defense. So I left, feeling my emotions and every bit of the water soaking me and went to Threes. This place:

Look at those friends and acquaintances watching that play unfold while consuming drinks and mirth. They'll have this moment forever. Our moment. Their moment. Thanks you, Threes. Forever.

And thank you to Will Howard for being the first One-Hit Wonder the program has ever had under center. Leaving campus with four bowl game victories, a national championship ring and no gold pants has never been done before.

Not even going to look that up to see if it's true - fact-checkers, you can kiss JT Barrett's ass.

Here's the full recap of the game, heavily produced and full of behind-the-scenes stuff. You can pick up little edited bits of ambient humanity in the clips here, and that's the only intervention which siphons off the authentic energy from these moments.

Some highlights should be minimally manipulated and allowed to breathe, like a fine wine or a whiskey which needs nothing more than more whiskey or a little frozen water to open it up. I appreciate highlight montages. But there's no Holy Buckeye montage that beats Holy Buckeye, and the same goes for 85 Yards and the night Jack Sawyer ended Texas' national championship aspirations.

This is like putting the whole game into a blender and making a highlight smoothie. It's fine.

Every human desire can be distilled into a few categories, which include wanting to be fed, loved and left alone. We'll close with the last one, which is the first time we'll mention Caleb Downs, the team's most talented defender.

Downs and his secondary mates are the reason Ewers needed more than three seconds to process a winning option for the Texas offense. This view of his view of his unit scoring a touchdown on 4th and goal is strangely pacifying amidst the pandemonium happening all around him.

He could have raced down the field with the other 10 guys, but he didn't. He just stood his ground in the end zone and watched the play unfold by himself. If you stack every player, coach and fan watching this play and ranked them by animation, Downs would be near the bottom of that list.

Texas might have won this game a couple different ways on a couple different plays if not for Downs, who prevented what would have been touchdowns against just about any other defense including his own. He was a quiet hero that night.

But on this play, it was a teammate preventing the Longhorns from scoring. He was grateful and savored the moment alone. Downs and Sawyer were in opposite end zones when Ohio State folklore happened.

Sawyer was completely out of gas before that 4th down play, which put him in danger of passing out after he had scored the touchdown. Downs took the opportunity to conserve his own energy.

They would celebrate together at midfield once the game was over. Downs put it on ice with an interception on Texas' final drive, and then sprinted down the field in jubilation. When you win, nothing hurts.

A few days later, the Buckeyes were national champions. Sawyer's play was enshrined into the folklore realm, and his graduating class which had stayed one final year to accomplish a whole list of unmet objectives had achieved the one with the highest degree of difficulty.

That play didn't cure everything. It didn't beat Michigan, despite Sawyer overdelivering on that awful Saturday. It didn't beat Missouri, though Sawyer might have actually turned in a better performance on that same field a year earlier with far less at stake.

And it didn't win the conference title, which the Buckeyes ended up degraded spectacularly in Pasadena on New Year's Day. It was 34-0 in the 2nd quarter! I should write that one up.

That play did lock up and propel the Buckeyes through their only real moment of adversity during the expanded playoff, and it permanently enshrined Sawyer in Buckeye folklore despite what his teams weren't able to accomplish during his four years on campus.

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It's an achievement unlike any other in the history of the program. Overshadowing 11 unrealized program goals out of 12 in a four-year span shouldn't be possible, but the 2024 Buckeyes pulled it off.

And when history distills the impossible down to a single play as this season fades, it will do so in Sawyer's hands, chugging down the sideline in Arlington with all of his boys and every fan behind him.

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