Twelve years ago next month I had an unforgettable epiphany after watching Ohio State lose at State College: That realization was that some of the best football games you’ll ever see must involve witnessing your beloved team losing in agonizing fashion.  The 1997 OSU/PSU game was one of those games.  Until that day, I had written off every loss as a bad football experience, allowing the outcome to overshadow the three hours of brute poetry – offensive prowess, determined running, broken tackles, mistakes (they’re committed in 100% of football games, in varying quantities) and high drama; I’m still unsure if it was delayed maturity or just numbness developed over the previous decade.  It would be the only loss the Buckeyes suffered during that regular season until the annually-scheduled squandering to Michigan, and regardless of the vanquished zero in the L column, it was a game to be appreciated.  It’s healthier and more enriching as a fan to be able to walk away from a loss in total agony but with gratitude of having been a witness to an epic gridiron fight.

Saturday was among the very best experiences I’ve had in Ohio Stadium.  I sat in the rain during the 1985 Iowa game with my dad, saw Eddie break 300 yards rushing against Illini in sealing up the Heisman, watched Will Allen pick off John Navarre with no time left and attended #1 vs. #2 three long seasons ago.  The Saturday night football experience against Southern Cal, despite all of the depressing implications of what’s already been depressingly established and what I’m about to regurgitate, is right up there with those games.  You should stop foolishly hoping that Jim Tressel is going to somehow decide to stop being Jim Tressel.  What happened Saturday night against an elite opponent will ruefully occur again, and then again, as it already has repeatedly, until he’s regrettably not running things at Ohio State anymore.  Since you’re still depressed (SC ‘09 is going to be one of those games, like Texas in ’05 that you won’t ever emotionally recover from – so stop trying) let’s discuss why Tressel staying Tressel is mostly good news:

Ohio State was a football behemoth long before Tressel ever arrived in Columbus.  He saw a program steeped in tradition, and found ways to improve upon it.  He saw strong football infrastructure and developed a plan to enhance it.  He inherited a disgusting trend of losing to Michigan annually and deployed a culture shift to reverse it.  He was handed a program with rotting character and instituted a framework for revitalizing it.  In every single area of program management and overall strategy, down to how he chooses to win games with ferocious defense, special teams and tilting the field on the opposition, he has been an unqualified success.  This is why his stubborn insistence of also taking on the job of offensive coordinator and play-caller, where he has been a high-profile failure, is exasperating.  It’s like one of the best chef restaurateurs in culinary history adamantly also demanding to wait tables.  If you want to build football dynasties, become a head coach.  If you’d rather decide what play to run inside the five-yard line on third down in the third quarter, become an offensive coordinator.

Ohio State had every reason and advantage to win on Saturday and they found themselves clinging to the one reason they’ve consistently lost these games against worthy opponents or continually escaped ones who should have been exterminated prior to halftime.  Exhibit A: Offensive schemes that ignore competitive advantage, defensive formations or basic situational tactics.  Exhibit B: Play calling fatigue that sets in during the first drive of the second quarter.  Exhibit C: Predictably retreating to the same handful of telegraphed plays for the final 30 minutes of any game.  Exhibit D: Arbitrarily sprinkling in an unconventional play at some point not because of the situation on the field or what the defense is presenting, but just because it’s an arbitrarily unconventional play at a time in which sprinkling just sort of feels like the thing to do out of a grab-bag of potential plays to call.  Exhibit E: Wasting a herculean effort by the defense and its coaching staff by forcing them to keep the opponent out of the end zone every time when the team’s own offense only manages to get in once, despite being delivered the fruits of a masterful game strategy that kept the ball on the right side of the field virtually the entire game.  Oh, Saturday night has happened before and it will continue to happen on stages like this.  Try and remember that these stages are as large as they are because of that same man behind the curtain.

Contrary to what the shrinking club of optimists still defending Tressel the Tactician like to believe, if Ohio State had held on and beaten Southern Cal we would still be talking about play calling.  We would be discussing about how much easier of a win this should have been, for all of the dominance the Buckeyes enjoyed with owning field position and dictating much of the game, and how Tressel’s worthy game strategy was complemented and elevated to victory by sound tactical planning.  Instead we’re trapped once again beneath a giant boulder trying to comprehend how the Buckeyes still found a way to lose to the Trojans with every conceivable advantage in their favor.  In the Fiesta Bowl, the Buckeyes held Texas to half of their average scoring output and lost.  They held Penn State to one-third of their average scoring output and lost.  Southern Cal should average 35-40 points a game this year.  Ohio State held them to 18 and still lost.  It’s the lowest output for a Pete Carroll USC team in a game played outside of California in his career, and it was still enough for them to win.

The Buckeyes have often won despite the flawed tactics, dating all the way back to Tressel’s triumphant Michigan debut which saw a 23-0 lead turn into a harrowing 26-20 victory.  You might remember Ohio State was leading Miami by two scores in the second half and settled for a couple of field goals before the Hurricanes stormed back to tie the game at the end of regulation.  The Buckeyes led Texas in 2005 and in 2009 and kept Texas in position to have the last shot at scoring.  The coaching fatigue and general decline of the play calling is easily recognizable in game after game; it’s like the opposite of making in-game adjustments.  Rarely is a lead ever comfortable, as those five inadequately measly points on Saturday were like weapons-grade hemorrhoids that you knew were going to eventually rupture and spoil the end of an otherwise marvelous evening.

It played out like a movie we had seen before, back in September of 2005.  I couldn’t have been the only prescient Buckeye fan as the Trojans took the ball for the final drive down by not nearly enough points, expecting the inevitable.  There’s a very little difference between good and great, and Ohio State has been stuck on very good.  The only thing obstructing Tressel’s head coaching immortality is Tressel’s offensive coordinating banality.  If he could pry his own fingers off of those controls and bring in an average-to-Hall-of-Fame offensive tactician – you know, the type that Ohio State is more than well-equipped to employ – the Buckeyes could finally benefit from sturdy game manager that finally adequately compliments and leverages the sound program stewardship and game strategy it already enjoys and has ridden to multiple conference titles.  The fantasy of that ever happening in Columbus is exactly that though, just a fantasy;  it’s similar to when children go through an independent phase where they insist on doing everything by themselves, without help, regardless of their capability.  That’s how Tressel will likely end his head coaching tenure at Ohio State someday, hopefully in the very distant future, stubbornly clinging to the reigns and controls of his offense.  He’ll walk away as the second greatest coach in Ohio State history, denied the top spot on account of his own hubris.  There is no adversary more fearsome to being great than being very good.  Very Good wins a lot of games, but Great beats Very Good most of the time.  You might have read in a few places or seen on a few shows that in its last six games against Ohio State, Great has won all six.

We have discussed historically the Buckeyes’ failures in other areas of football, most notably the inability to stop the zone-read or defeat SEC teams in bowl games, but those are elements of football that both transcend Ohio State and the Big Ten; it’s not as though every other team in I-A is regularly thwarting the zone-read and besting the better SEC teams in January playing in their own geographical footprint.  What we’ve suffered in following our mandate of Winning the Game or Knowing the Reason Why is how to parse the latter.  Tresselball is not the problem: Playing field position and controlling the ball is a proven way to win games.  Similarly, being conservative is not the problem either.  The problem is that Tressel is frequently pedestrian at being conservative or controlling the ball when it matters.  Having your athletic 6”6 quarterback slowly give a long handoff at the goal line behind a pulling guard is not conservative, it’s risky.  Throwing on third down with seconds left in the half against USC with the lead is not conservative, it’s foolish.  Running into the teeth of the Trojan defense instead of giving the ball to players who are totally uncovered is not conservative; it’s stubborn and short-sighted.

This isn’t Monday Morning quarterbacking.  Even if those plays happened to work (they didn’t) they’re still poor tactical decisions in any reasonable football model.  It’s really easy to confuse conservative play calling with the low probability, unsuccessful offense Tressel frequently deploys.  And it’s like any football game, really – every play presents an opportunity that could swing the game in a different direction - the key is to putting yourself in better position to swing those opportunities your way more often than theirs, and it just hasn’t been done in these types of games.  The blame game in football is a funny thing; it is like getting struck by lightning while swallowing a live grenade, stepping on a landmine and slitting your throat all at the exact same time, and then only blaming the lightning for your demise.  There are a whole host of reasons, but overwhelmingly it was because you put yourself in position to allow for those things to happen.  It’s a mixed bag of Awful, which also happens to describe Tressel’s play calling.

Keith Uecker is the offensive quality control coordinator for Ohio State, a fascinating and frustrating title.  He has the unenviable job of overseeing a facet of the Buckeyes that has significant aspects lacking quality that are way beyond his control, issues which are both current and predate him, issues that will continue to haunt and disrupt games as long his boss is directly responsible for its execution, from regularly occurring false starts to late play delivery from the sideline to inconsistent pace and flow of ball control.  Tressel is very unlikely to relinquish or delegate that power, or update his failed tactics.  Uecker might as well be the quality control coordinator for the weather on game day.  It’s going to do what it’s going to do regardless of what he does.

Yes, Ohio State definitely could have beaten Penn State back in 1997.  A win would have made an already great game legendary, but it was a great game nonetheless despite the Buckeye loss.  It is a defining moment when you discover the capacity to elevate the football fan that resides within you above the passionate Buckeye fan that totally consumes you.  Tressel wants to beat every team on Ohio State’s schedule far worse than you do, and do it his way – and his way works.  It’s won championships on both the national and regional level wherever he has coached.  But there comes a point where you find yourself at a crossroads choosing between your own ambitions and that of your team.  Tressel developed Ohio State back into an elite program that is still very good.  There probably isn’t a magic or defined number for consecutive big game losses until a light goes on, but there should come a point where Tressel has the opportunity for his own defining moment to find the capacity to elevate the program steward ahead of the impassioned play caller.  If that happens and he puts Ohio State ahead of his own self-admitted micromanaging tendencies, he’ll bring in a game manager whom he will then manage.  As stated, I just don’t believe that will ever happen; Tressel isn’t the type to change or relinquish control.  If that’s depressing, then it’s time to elevate the football fan in you above the passionate Buckeye fan that totally devours you, and remember that there are far worse alternatives than having to settle for supporting a head coach that deliberately settles for just being Very Good.

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