Buckeyes in Misery

I know that I said that I would lay off the whole "Misery" thing, but I've been wanting to complain about my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes.

It's been a long year to say the least. Both the football and men's basketball team made it all the way to their sport's national championship only to be thwarted by the University of Florida Gators.

The football team's season started off well enough. They dominated the defending champs from Texas in their own stadium and coasted through the rest of the regular season. They even dominated "the team from up north" once again in what was billed at the time as the game of the century or at least the season.

The defense turned out to be much better than anticipated with the "Little Animal" rising to the top of college football's greatest defensive players. Ted Ginn, Jr. and Anthony Gonzalez became the most feared wide receiver twosome in the country. The Buckeyes had a solid running game with Antonio Pittman rushing for another 1,000 yards, the first to repeat the feat for OSU since Eddie George. Several young players like Brian Robiskie and "Beanie" Wells emerged as future stars. Of course the greatest success story of the season was Troy Smith' Heisman campaign. The Buckeyes looked to be unbeatable.

Then January rolled around, and the Buckeyes forgot to board the plane to Tuscon. Florida, after hearing for a month how they didn't belong in the championship game, thoroughly trounced my Buckeyes. I thought that Florida was good enough to beat the Buckeyes, but I would've never predicted a 27-point thumping. At that moment, I knew 2007 was going to be a long year.

A few days before the football championship, the basketball team ventured to Gainsville to take on the defending national champion Gators. This result wasn't much different than the football game, but I knew there was a lot of basketball to be played.

The rest of the hoops season went well. Freshmen Greg Oden and Mike Conley, Jr. led the Buckeyes to 22 straight victories, including some unbelievable comebacks in the NCAA tournament. Another Buckeye team won the Big Ten and was headed to the national championship game to take on the Florida Gators.

This game was much different. First of all, the Gators were the overwhelming favorite. They really did prove to be one of the top-five basketball teams of all-time. (I'd say that there are one or two UCLA and UNC or Duke teams ahead them, but not by much.) Also, the game was much more competitive as Oden awoke from his foul-prone hibernation to keep the game interesting in the second half. I still think that they should have given him the ball more. But, that's another issue. The Buckeyes once again were dominated by Florida.

So, here I am. My teams keep losing, and my career is going nowhere. This really is misery.

Of course, I could look on the bright side. Both teams did have memorable seasons. They were better than 99%+ of all the schools in their respective sports. A lot of universities would like to finish #2 in anything. So, I'll remember this as a tough period in my sports fan-dom. It's still not the '87 AFC championship (or the next year for that matter). George Bush can't possibly steal another election. We still beat Michigan - four times (1 in football, 3 in basketball).

There's always next year...