CLEVELAND, Ohio - How many times did you shout, "Oh, my God!" (or, of course, worse) while watching the team formerly known as Ohio State beat Maryland, 52-51, last Saturday in overtime?
The Buckeyes won only because Maryland's quarterback missed an open receiver on a game-deciding 2-point conversion play.
The average fan's meltdown total - somewhere between 1,223 times for the two teams' total offense and 54 for their total first downs - probably resembled that of the Arctic ice shelves. Fifty-four would've shown great restraint, in my view.
Other than Cinderella, aka Cardale Jones, and the Little Lowest Seed That Could in 2014, Ohio State has seldom been a plucky underdog.
But the Buckeyes will be Saturday at the Horseshoe against Michigan's top-ranked defense. 52-51 is not an option.
Revenge of the patsies
Even when Ohio State was losing to Michigan with coach John Cooper and getting taunted (Desmond Howard's Heisman pose) in the process, the Buckeyes routed everyone else.
As my friend and former Houston Chronicle columnist Fran Blinebury said while the Ohio State band performed "Script Ohio" before OSU fried Rice, 70-7, in 1996, "That guy down there dotting the 'i' is better than anybody Rice has."
The sousaphone player is a linebacker for Ohio State now.
No team with a loss of 20 points or more has ever made the College Football Playoff. Purdue beat Ohio State by 29 in October.
Did you know Purdue apparently has a campus in Maryland?
Cooper's party poopers
The Buckeyes lost The Game under Cooper on a fluke (Shawn Springs' slip), and they lost it on bad, bad, baaaad judgment (Stan Jackson's pick-six pass).
Jackson was so close to the ground on a sack when he threw the ball that you couldn't have put a Block O cap between his facemask and the Big House turf for Woody Hayes to stomp to death.
One of the Buckeyes' surreal Michigan moments under Cooper was a tie. Former school president E. Gordon Gee, whose bow tie obviously had been knotted too tight, declared it "one of our greatest wins."
The Buckeye century
Ohio State is 15-2 since 2001 against Michigan,8-0 at home. Urban Meyer is unbeaten in six tries.
It's usually close. Even with Luke Fickell as the interim coach in 2011 and players in and out of the lineup because of suspensions, Michigan only won, 40-35.
Unbeaten Ohio State only won, 42-41, when Wolverines coach Brady Hoke emptied out the playbook in vain in his last Game.
Hate's spur.
If Michigan won the Big Ten and beat Ohio State, Michigan fans didn't care if Ohio State won its other games.
Ohio State loathes Michigan, though -- yesterday, today and tomorrow, now and forever, amen.
"Here's my dream: We're up big, we score late, go for two, make it, and then we onside kick," said Steve Snapp, the late Ohio State football sports information director."I think it would enhance the rivalry,"
When it came to Michigan, "Snapper" was nuttier than any tree in Buckeye Grove. Ohio State officials once subjected the entire Michigan traveling party to all but body cavity searches before a game at the Horseshoe, thus throwing the Wolverines' warm-ups off.
"We have to make sure everybody is safe," Snapp said sweetly.
The year of the alphabet's 13th letter?
ichigan is so reviled at Ohio State that every letter
on signs at the Woody Hayes Center is taped over this week. Typography is only a
odest inspiration, however.
It's not per
issible for
ichigan fans to sing" Hail to the Victors" yet. But they can hu
it.