Bill Livingston talks about Ohio State's spring game.
View full sizeJim Tressel and his coaching staff get an early look at their team today.Columbus -- From the south, at night, is the best way to approach the behemoth. Out of the tangle of interstates and four-lane roads, the sign suddenly glows in the distance, like a huge promise. "Ohio State," proclaims the massive scoreboard in the gigantic stadium.
This is where the big time becomes the big-as-it-gets time.
A handful of schools have even bigger stadiums -- Michigan, Penn State, Tennessee. But few command the same attention in a populous state as Ohio State.
Penn State comes close. But the University of Pittsburgh is three hours away by mountain roads. The Big East is hardly as potent as its BCS brethren, but Pitt still claims a share of the fans' loyalty in Pennsylvania. Cincinnati, a Big East program only two hours from Columbus, cannot rival Pitt in the game's lore or records.
Michigan has Michigan State, and even Tennessee has Vanderbilt as in-state major conference rivals. Nebraska, the Big Ten's shiny new member, is its state's lone major power. But it is Lord of the Corn Stubble in a rural state.
The fish bowl lifestyle of Buckeyes players is daunting to some would-be recruits. The enormous pressure players and coaches face to win every game isn't for everybody. Neither are the NASCAR-sized crowds, which require fans and reporters to get to the game two hours before kickoff, or else get there, their shirt-tails flapping, 10 minutes before it.
But it is my idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon.
I grew up with the vast scale of University of Texas football. I can vouch for the reach of such teams. When Texas played Arkansas in tense, bitterly fought Saturday night games in the early 1960s, a boy might listen on a cheap transistor radio to Kern Tipps doing the play-by-play -- "Texas comes up to the line, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looking to glue the bits and pieces of its power jigsaw together" -- while willing himself to stay awake as the drama crackled out of the tiny speakers. When the Longhorns won, angels (and probably wingless ones, given Darrell Royal's conservatism) sang that boy to his rest.
I grew up to cover Penn State for three seasons a generation ago. The enormous scope of the program there was similar to that of Texas. I had simply traded Royal's drawl for the swift rhythms of Joe Paterno's native Brooklyn. "Joe Pa" is now a monument as enduring as the stadium that was expanded many times around his team as his success grew.
When Penn State joined the Big Ten, I interviewed the veteran coach at length. The core of the story was Paterno's avowed fondness for the classics. I knew the Latin epic poem the "Aeneid" was a Paterno favorite, so I cast Penn State's turn from the East Coast to the Midwest in terms of the invasion of Italy by Aeneas and the other Trojans, who had escaped from their burning, doomed city.
It was as romantic a view of college football as NFL Films gives to the pro game with its sound tracks of military marches and bugles blowing. But I stand by the treatment because the most important readers are the small (and not-so-small) boys and girls who see the game through the same prism.
On a crisp autumn morning, there is no better walk in Ohio than the one over the Olentangy bridges, with Ohio State's crew teams skimming down the river amid swirling mist, as fans pour into the mammoth stadium on the east bank.
I do not think such a feeling makes me a Pollyanna. Over the years, in the Maurice Clarett, Troy Smith and Terrelle Pryor et al. scandals, I have pounded more nails than most into the Ohio State football program.
The current memorabilia sale scandal is big in possible NCAA punitive measures, especially for coach Jim Tressel. But it is grubby and small in spirit. It devalues the tokens of football success and distances the players from the fans' passion. It stands apart from the colossal triumphs and the seven Heisman trophies. It commands headlines, but it cannot erode the red cliffs of the packed stands in the scarlet-fevered stadium. It is a stain, and a serious one, but it cannot leave the "i" undotted or the alma mater unsung.
Saturday afternoon, Ohio State concludes spring football practice with the intrasquad game. A crowd of 95,000 attended a few years ago in beautiful weather. The predicted wet conditions will hold the crowd down Saturday. Still, as a University of Texas publicist named Jones Ramsey once said, "There are two sports in Texas. Football and spring football."
True there. True enough here.
Source: http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/index.ssf/2011/04/spring_football_game_at_ohio_s.html
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