COLLEGE FOOTBALL 2015: OHIO STATE vs THE FIELD

Green for Oregon fans, red for Alabama, light blue for Ohio State, orange for Florida State. via bleacherreport.com

Only one group gets to knock the defending national champion in big school college football.

Alabama stays down after the Ohio State Buckeyes rolled them in last year’s semi-final at the New Orleans Super Dome. Florida State, the defending champ in 2014, got run out of the Rose Bowl. No word from them.

That leaves Oregon as the only team authorized to trash talk, and since the Ducks are too busy getting ready for Michigan State, I’ll help out.

Ohio State finished last year at #1. This year? #1, but a special #1. The AP Top 25 gave them 61 out of 61 first place votes for a total of 1525. Alabama got blanked at #2.

The Coaches Poll gave Ohio State 63 out of 64 first place votes for 1599 points. Alabama got the stray at #2. Does this mean Ohio State is far and away that much better than everyone?

More important, are they that much better than Oregon?

The Ducks come in 7 on the AP and 5 on the Coaches. They finished last year as the second best team in college football. Does Marcus Mariota leaving for the NFL mean that much in the polls?

It happens when someone called a football savant wins the Heisman Trophy and skips his last year of eligibility. Quarterbacks and Heismans can carry teams.

Call it the Johnny Football effect.

If Vernon Adams, Jr. hauls the Ducks to a rematch in the last game of the 2015 season you can call it the Vernon Effect.

Ohio State has two or three Heisman caliber quarterbacks. Cardale Jones was all you could ask for at the end of last season when he went from Cardale Who to running through everything in front of him on one play and showing his delicate passing touch on the next.

What made Cardale rise to the top of Buckeye Nation’s dreams? He played behind Braxton Miller, a two time Big Ten offensive player of the year, and J.T. Barrett.

Both guys came in fifth in Heisman voting, Miller in 2012, Barrett in 2014. Both guys are bruisers at better than 6’2″ and 220 lbs.

Cardale shapes up at 6’5″, 250 with the sort of arm NFL scouts want.

Now ask yourself if the Ohio State Buckeyes are that much better?

They are.

They could go back to back, maybe run a string of titles out to finish the decade. Alabama will challenge year in, year out.

Flavor of the year teams will show strong early and fade. Notre Dame’s $400 million stadium project will keep recruits playing in front of Touchdown Jesus.

Who knows, Texas might even show up again. But every season one team climbs the rankings and lights it up.

Oregon brings the sort of surprises you wait all year for. You know what to expect from Ohio State and every team in the SEC. Schools in the ACC catch fire now and then, but no one does it like the Ducks.

When the right mix of players and coaches hit the field, Oregon is the team of reckoning.

They are the team you remember beating.

Unlike the traditional powers who eschew names on jerseys, just numbers, Oregon leads the fashion parade. It’s not the uniform that makes the team, but the players who wear the uniforms.

No one comes to Eugene to take their place in a long and storied football program. It’s not there.

Instead they come to build the road to football’s future. Through conditioning and diet, stress and rest, the people running football at Oregon created a high tech laboratory for human performance.

Come to Oregon, they say, and you’ll find out how good you can be, then how much better you’ll get.

Call it the Oregon Football Effect, then look around at who is following that game plan.

And now a Public Service Announcement:

Oregon and Ohio have more in common than throwing an O. Both states have a reported heroin problem that needs more educational light.

Black tar heroin flows into both states at a rate that creates more OD deaths than car accidents.

via pbs.org

Since it’s from 2006 you’d think the black tar heroin market might be slowed. And you’d be wrong.

A recent report from the Columbus Dispatch details the epidemic.

Sports fans in general, and fans of college football in particular, want a clean game on clean campuses. That’s the ideal and we all support it.

The urgency demonstrated by fans of Ducks, Buckeyes, Crimson Tide, and Seminoles on game day is a model for those working to stem the reach of black tar heroin.

We don’t live perfect lives. Everyone can agree to that, but we wouldn’t mind perfect teams. When that doesn’t happen we learn to live with the outcomes the college football season delivers.

One thing you can’t live with is a heroin overdose in the fan family. If it hasn’t happened yet, it will.

The road to ruin for some is paved with tar. It’s hard to ignore when the road runs by your house.

And it runs by all of our houses.

via pbs.org