Blind Hate and the NCAA Game of the Year -- Ohio State (5) v. USC (2)

There’s not much to be said about how important today’s OSU/USC match-up is for both teams, for each of their conferences, and for the BCS Championship picture.

But there is LOADS to be said about why USC is favored by so many points in this game, and what we, as wagering Americans, ought to do about that. This match-up gives us two of the small handful of programs expected to contend for the BCS Championship this season, each with rosters packed with NFL talent, each led by two of the best coaches in the game today (aren’t they both certain Hall-of-Famers?). Shouldn’t this be a great game? An instant classic, even?

So why in the name of Jim Heacock are the Trojans favored by a whopping 11.5 points in this game?

We can hear the words coming out of your mouth as we type: BECAUSE OSU SUCKS. That’s what ex-Trojan and current Tennessee Titan Lendale White brazenly declared last week. And that’s what we’ve been hearing in the national media for nearly two years now. OSU SUCKS. Moreover, THE WHOLE BIG TEN SUCKS. One of the nation’s most prominent sportswriters, ESPN.com’s Pat Forde, went so far as to suggest that the Buckeyes be banned from ever again playing for the BCS Title. A leisurely surf on the internet confirms that there is no shortage of folks who purport to agree with this hyperbolic nonsense. As resident Ohioans, we are shocked by how many of our fellow resident Ohioans, upon hearing that we were heading to Mecca this weekend, asked us if we’d place a wager on USC for them while we are here (Don’t these people have computers? Why can’t they just log on to sportsbook.com?). So what ever could be behind such strong feelings?

Hate. Piles, heaps, and loads of hate.

And there’s nothing like college football to bring out the hater in all of us. Because it’s normal to form associations with where we’re from, and for so many of us, where we went to college is a big part of that. And we even care about the schools in the area where we’re from, whether or not we went to these schools. The formula is simple: I feel better when my school wins at football, or when the school from my state wins, because that means that people from my school, or my state, are better than people from your school or your state. This means that I am better than you. And I hate you when my team loses, because while I’m perfectly happy to interpret my team’s success as evidence that I am superior to you, I hate you for trying to judge me based on the results of a football game. It’s a vicious cycle.

For better or worse, the viciousness of this cycle is amplified here in Ohio, where we tend to take these associations at least a little bit more seriously than folks in other places. But we don’t cling to our football (and our guns, and our religion,) just because we’re struggling as a state to find our place in our nation’s new service economy after our role as a hub of America’s former manufacturing economy was rendered so suddenly obsolete. Our football is so important here in Ohio because here in Ohio is where football was born. Folks don’t hate the Buckeyes just because a winner always has a bulls-eye on his back, they hate us even more because, rightly or wrongly, we make so much more of our victories than the average college football winner, certainly a heck of a lot more than a college football winner from Los Angeles. Who cares about football in L.A.?

As if the hate piled on the Buckeyes for their own success (and Buckeye Nation’s unique view of the meaning of that success) weren’t enough, additional loads of hate are dumped on OSU as a result of the failures of someone, or rather, something else. That thing is the organized crime syndicate that is the BCS. Folks who rightly hate the BCS are inclined to direct their frustration at the Buckeyes, whose performance in the last two national title games represent, to them, exactly what’s wrong with the system. We understand why people would believe that if they can prove that the Buckeyes suck, then they can prove that the BCS sucks. But even if this is the case, that the BCS is a failed system, the Buckeyes’ performance in the last two title games could only be a symptom of that failure, not a cause. The Buckeyes can hardly be blamed for doing so well within the BCS. And while the BCS’s suckiness cannot change, the Buckeyes can (and surely did) get better. That the BCS sucks, doesn’t mean the Buckeyes do. Yet the hatred for the injustice of the BCS is so strong that we’re sure that folks tend to overlook the fact that the BCS is not the Buckeyes’ fault, and that the BCS’s awfulness is not determinative of the quality of this, or any Buckeye team. It seems to us that folks are misconstruing their hatred of the BCS for hatred of our innocent Buckeyes.

This profoundly irrational Buckeye hate is both a cause and effect of a fundamental misunderstanding of the Buckeyes’ losses in the last two national title games. First, as much as folks like to speak of how OSU was “thrashed” by LSU in January, the fact remains that they only lost the game by 14 points. While certainly not a barnburner, the game was not out of reach for the Buckeyes until late in the fourth quarter. We must also remember that the Buckeyes weren’t supposed to so much as sniff the championship game. It was a rebuilding year for them. As bad as the BCS might be, it’s hard to see how a program that reaches the title game in a rebuilding year could possibly be deemed to “suck” due to its performance in that game.

As for the game two years ago against Florida, thinking folk ought to recall the effect of the “Game of the Century” against Michigan that was played more than a full month earlier. That game against Michigan might have been the most hyped regular season match-up in college football history. After the Buckeyes won, they popped champagne and smoked cigars. Troy Smith won the Heisman, and he and the rest of the Buckeye stars hit the awards banquet circuit for a full month, still aglow from winning the epic Game of the Century. One who questions why the Buckeyes were so thoroughly whipped by Florida might ask, if you spend an entire month all ‘getting off’ as the Buckeyes did during their Bacchanalian December, how, how are you going to ‘get it up’ for another big go-round at the end of that month? And how are you going to get it up stronger than the guys who lived that very same month without getting off at all, and knowing that beating you would be their only chance at getting off? The Game of the Century and what followed presented remarkable circumstances that provide a much more reasonable explanation for the loss to Florida than any notion that the Buckeyes were a fundamentally unworthy BCS contender.

In addition to all of the hate that’s driven up the point spread for this game, we’re certain that folks are reading too much into last week’s win over Ohio University that did not look as easy as many expected it to. We’ve pointed out that a school like OU is likely to be underrated in today’s rapidly changing college football landscape. More importantly, we think that Tressel and the Buckeyes rightly played the game close to the (sweater) vest. Different teams require different amounts of effort to beat. Teams can’t be on full blast all season. It’s a long road, and there is something to be said for a strategy of conservation. The looks of the Buckeyes’ performance against OU suggests that conservation is exactly what was going on. To that end, we think it’s more than likely that Tressel was overly conservative with his play-calling on both sides of the ball. This suggests that last week’s performance was no harbinger of doom, but rather, a smartly-played tune up.

We understand that the loss of Beanie Wells is a blow to the Buckeyes, but this line was too high even before Wells was injured. This line has been inflated by a substantial amount of hate. There are fewer things that we stand stronger against here at Cleveland Frowns than a world where haters win.

The Pick has to be the Buckeyes, +11.5 over USC.

We’re also picking Akron +7 over Ball State, Notre Dame +2 over Michigan, and BYU -7.5 over UCLA.

We understand that Ball State is one of the best teams in the MAC, and a better team than the Syracuse team that Akron beat last week. But the Zips are well-poised to build on last week’s big win. Other than Syracuse, Akron has only ever beaten one BCS team, NC State, in 2006. That Akron team lost to Central Michigan the very next week. We think that this memory will serve this year’s seniors well, as will the Rubber Bowl crowd, many of whom purchased season tickets in anticipation of the opening of Infocision Stadium in 2009. These folks ought to be especially fired up to greet the Zips in their first home game of 2008 on their triumphant return from the East Coast, and we’re happy to join them by taking the points.

As for Notre Dame, Lou Holtz gives them the edge today.

And, as astute Cleveland Frowns commenter 'paula' pointed out to us, when we first played against the Rick Neuheisel era at UCLA, we neglected to account for the effect of Coach Fulmer’s reign of error at Tennessee. We don’t see any similar concerns with BYU today, so we’ll go against UCLA once again today.

That’s all for today, folks. Enjoy the games. We’ll be back tomorrow for the NFL action.