Sunday, October 24, 2010
Trainwreck At the Shoe... No One Cares
The Buckeyes put 42 points on the board in the first half and coasted to a 49-0 victory over Purdue yesterday. The Boilermakers are not the cream of the Big10 crop, but they're certainly not the Little Sisters of the Poor either and OSU destroyed them. At no point during the game did Purdue look anything except completely over-matched. The first drive of the game: 5 plays, 60 yards, touchdown, ALL hand-offs to Boom Herron. The Bucks toyed with their opponents and, outside of 2 TP picks (ugh), looked like world beaters. The D produced 4 takeaways, Andrew Sweat flew all over the field and Orhian Johnson continued to emerge as a the next big thing in the secondary. All of this and nobody gives a damn. It was, by far, the most unenthusiastic and robotic crowd that I have ever been a part of on campus. The south stands NEVER filled, the place was half empty during the 4th quarter and barely anyone stood during the second half. Compounding the issue was an utter lack of coverage by the national media. In my mind a 49 point shutout win, over a quality conference opponent goes a long way toward establishing the Buckeyes as the best 1-loss team in the nation, but the game was glossed over in many halftime shows without a single highlight, barely mentioned at all. Seemingly the team has become an afterthought. OSU simply is not sexy enough to hold the attention of the pundits or their spoiled "fans" once they have dropped from the peak of BCS championship contention. That's a shame because, before the loss of Tyler Moeller, this team was better than any of the others that played for the crown over the past decade and, even now, is of such quality to deserve a level of recognition that many are unwilling to give.