This has one of the oddest, most strangely unfulfilling Big Ten seasons in quite some time.  With the heartbreaking USC loss came the consolation that the defense was capable of keeping the Buckeyes in any game, yet with the unconventional dispatching of Wisconsin came the ominous warning that the offense could very well keep the Buckeyes out of victory’s reach (as it did, nauseatingly, the following week at Purdue).

The great things that this Ohio State team has been able to deliver cannot seem to fully emerge from the inadequacies that have weighed the team down throughout the season, producing a resume that has had fans at each others’ throats with regard to how to digest it all.  Debating the flimsy science behind the five-second rule is more productive than deliberating over how to grade out this season, still only 75% complete.  The only common ground is that there have been several unavoidable dealbreakers preventing maximum enjoyment of a roster teeming with potential that may or may not ever be effectively harvested.

For your consideration: The near-collapse against Navy was followed by yet another squandered national stage opportunity.  However, half of Ohio State’s subsequent six wins were of the shutout variety; were it not for the annual third-string playing time fourth quarter bonanza against Minnesota it would be more than half.  At the same time, inexplicably getting blasted by the wholly mediocre 65^th ranked offense and defense combination that is the Purdue Boilermakers and ending the streak of seamlessly expunging all bad teams at five years is the season’s low point.  The Buckeyes are on a preposterous 83-7 scoring run since that failure.  Trajectory: Positive.

It’s been so difficult to enjoy the stronger elements of the season because they have always insisted on being paired without something lousy, like they’re being served up by a sommelier from hell.  The offensive line producing false starts in every game as reliably as the rest of the offense manufactures field goal attempts instead of touchdowns, yet also delivering two entire games with no sacks allowed.  There’s been quite a bit of aggravation for our highly refined and constantly discerning fan base, but not enough to overwhelm the positives in our constant wrestling over the topic of is-this-season-bad-or-good.  Fortunately the jury can quit deliberating that decision and the discussion is heretofore tabled until Thanksgiving, as the next three weekends on the 2009 schedule will define the legacy of the season like no other trifecta in the Jim Tressel era.

Until this point and on the surface, Ohio State football in 2009 has been a maddening study in contradictions and inconsistency, just as Terrelle Pryor can make an NFL throw on one play and then completely disintegrate in both progressions and mechanics the following snap.  If Ohio State is going to go 3-0 this month and head back to Pasadena in January for the first time since Pryor was seven years old, they’re going to have to do a few things that would build further on the pattern of inconsistency established thus far in the season:

Bucking the Trend, Part One: Despite the fact that Tresselball isn’t predicated on high scoring outputs, his teams are a perfect 53-0 when they eclipse 30 points.  This year the Buckeyes have met or exceeded the 30 point threshold seven times, producing all seven victories.  They’ve failed to score 30 twice and lost both of those games (actually they failed to even score 20 against either Southern Cal or Purdue).  It is extremely unlikely that Ohio State will score over 30 points at Penn State this weekend or against Iowa the following Saturday – and if history has shown us anything, the playcalling against these relatively worthy opponents will be in full-blown duck-and-cover mode – so it’s probable that winning over the next couple of weeks is going to break the trend of Ohio State scoring big.  Wow, the trend of Ohio State scoring big.  Just typing that is almost arousing.

Bucking the Trend, Part Two: Some people sleep to the pleasant hums of ceiling fan blades spinning around.  Others prefer white noise like distant highway traffic or the gentle wind outside.  Tressel has a tape that plays the sweet sound of a leather boot making swift contact with a football.  His beloved punt and its flameout sister, the field goal will be challenged like never before in his tenure with inconsistent FG kicker Aaron Pettrey sidelined for the rest of the regular season by a deliberate cheap shot which suspiciously arrived after the Buckeyes had successfully converted an onside kick.  Devan Barclay was egregiously shanky in his replacement duties, completing the third unfortunate transformation phase of the field goal at Ohio State from automatic three points, to potential three points, to pin them deep with a short punt.  That variety of the kicking game is even dicier, as Jon Thoma has statistically been one of the very worst punters in all of FBS this year and very clearly the least effective punter Tressel has had to rely on during his tenure.  Winning without the benefit of a strong kicking game is in direct conflict of all that Tresselball stands for, yet it probably will have to be the feature entrée on the menu for the month.

Bucking the Trend, Part Three: Historically Tressel teams have played their best football in November.  Even if you were to remove his wholesale ownership of Michigan from his aggregate record, Ohio State is still 16-3 in the final month of the regular season under Tressel and 6-3 against all ranked opponents, including the Wolverines back in the days when they actually tried to play defense.  However, only once – in 2007 – has Ohio State won at both Happy Valley and Ann Arbor in the same season, a task that would be difficult for any team to accomplish, let alone the Buckeyes with their standard-issue disappointing offensive line, their improving but erratic enigma under center and their continually telegraphed playcalling.  As pessimistic as those variables sound, they’ve essentially been the boilerplate under Tressel and the Novembers have still produced an inspiring 23-4 record.  Maybe there’s something to the whole defense and special teams recipe, but the latter half of that formula is in precarious condition at best.

The first third of the November challenge might somehow prove to be the easiest of the three, as Iowa has proven it can routinely pull absurd wins out of sure losses and Michigan might have hit bottom too soon, with too much time to rally and circle its proverbial wagons.  Penn State lost three all-conference linemen from last year, all of its receivers and defensive backs as well as both starting defensive ends.  Darryl Clark is no longer playing behind an all-conference line or throwing to the most productive triumvirate in school history, and it’s shown.  His pass catchers consist of a former walk-on, a three-star junior and a converted quarterback, and their best win this season was against Temple which, humorously, is currently projected by some pundits to be Michigan’s December in Detroit bowl date, so you know they’re good.  Penn State is a one-loss team because they’ve only played one team that’s even a threat to be decent this year.  The Buckeyes defeat of Wisconsin is by far the most impressive win on either team’s schedule.

The added element of drama on Saturday is Pryor’s return to Pennsylvania to play in his first football game there since winning the state championship his senior year, a subject that ABC television producers will likely insist be obsessed over throughout the entire broadcast at levels rivaled only by anything involving the attention-whoring quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings.  You’ll also have to tolerate jarring, insightful analysis like “he’s a competitor!” while being forced to relive Pryor’s Pennsylvania high school resume as a backdrop against his up-and-down sophomore season, along with the standard, tired, studio debate over the dichotomy of Tressel’s offensive coaching versus Tressel’s coaching resume.  You’ll endure all of that tripe if the Ohio State defense controls the game and the field the way that they should be able to on Saturday.  A win in Happy Valley, regardless of how it transpires, would be the first unrelentingly fulfilling chapter of the season, and it couldn’t come at a more important time.

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