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Football
Eat Your Hearts Out Buckeye Haters
By John Porentas

Recently SI.com's Lang Whitaker wrote a column which appeared on the SI Web Site on April 30 entitled Five Sports Franchises We Love to Hate. Whitaker picked out five franchises as likely targets of the hate of the American sports fan. Four of them came from the professional ranks. The fifth one was your Ohio State Buckeyes.

Whitaker lumped the Buckeyes in with 1) Any Major Team from Boston (Patriots, Red Sox, Celts), 2) the New York Yankees, 3) the Los Angeles Lakers and 4) Chelsea. For those of you who are not soccer literate, Chelsea does not refer to the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton. It is a European soccer team.

Whitaker's piece asked readers to comment on the list. Interestingly, they had a few of their own nominees, most notably Duke, Notre Dame, and a smattering of people professing Dallas Cowboys hatred.

"Hatred" is probably the wrong word to describe this dynamic. The more fitting word is probably "envy", because what all the "hated franchises" have in common is winning, more specifically, winning coupled with a fan base that is really, really glad their team is on top. What makes everybody else so mad is that their own team is not achieving to the level of the teams most "hated". The lone exception to that is probably Notre Dame football which seems to earn its hatred another way, namely by having a lucrative TV deal for what has recently been a pretty bad football program.

As for the Buckeyes, its pretty trendy right now to take shots at them because they didn't win the last two national championship games. That, my friends, is all about spin. Let me put a little different spin on it for you. The Buckeyes have been eligible for the BCS National Championship game in three of the last six year and have won it once. That it pretty darned good really.

National championships are just part of the measurement of a great college program. Sure, you've got to win one now and then, but what programs such as Duke and Ohio State have accomplished is to consistently be in the hunt for a national championship for a long period of time. They may not always win it, but every year when you start talking about the elite, the contenders, like it or not you are probably going to have to talk about the Buckeyes in college football and the Blue Devils in college basketball.

OSU's consistency as a national contender has spanned generations, lots of them. At the suggestion of the-Ozone reader Russ Klein we took a look back to see just how many times OSU has been "In the Hunt" for a national championship late in the football season. We defined "In the Hunt" as being in the running with two or fewer games left to play in the regular season. What we found was incredible, and explains why so many of those non-Buckeye fans are envious.

The first national poll was the AP poll in 1936. Since that time the Buckeyes have been named the national champion in the AP, UPI, or USA Today poll or by the BCS five times. In 19 other seasons OSU was "In the Hunt", right there in contention for a national championship right up to the end of the season. Over that 72-season span, OSU has been "In the Hunt 30.55 percent of the time, or roughly once every three seasons.

The results are even more startling if you consider the period 1960 through the present. Since 1960 OSU has had all 19 of their "near miss" seasons and two national championships. Put another way, over that 48-season span OSU has been "In the Hunt" 43.75 percent of the time, or quite nearly every-other year.

OSU "Near Miss" seasons:

1960 – OSU was ranked No. 3 and lost at No. 5 Iowa 35-12 to in the second-to-last game of season and fell to No. 10. The Buckeyes then defeated Michigan 19-10 the following week to finish No. 8 in polls.

1961 – OSU finished second in the polls after defeating Michigan 50-20 but was denied a bowl game when the faculty voted not to send the team to the Rose Bowl. OSU finished second in the polls. Though a loss did not prevent this team from winning a national championship, it deserves to be mentioned as a “near-miss” team. Ohio State claims this as a national championship team, but it did not finish No. 1 in either the AP or UPI poll.

1969 – The Buckeyes were wire-to-wire No. 1 before losing to Michigan at Ann Arbor 24-14 in last game of season. The Buckeyes did not participate in a Bowl game since the Big Ten rule at the time allowed participation in the Rose Bowl only and Michigan was the Big Ten rep on the strength of their win over the Buckeyes. OSU finished 4/5 in polls.

1970 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 2 going into Rose Bowl and lost to No. 12 Stanford 27-17 to finish 5/2 in polls. OSU claims this as a national championship team though it did not finish No. 1 in either the AP or UPI poll.

1972 – OSU was ranked No. 3 going into Rose Bowl and lost to No. 1 USC 42-17 to finish 9/3 in the polls.

1973 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 3 the first two weeks of season and rose to No. 1 in week three. They held that spot for eight weeks but tied No. 4 Michigan 10-10 in Ann Arbor to fall to No. 4. OSU defeated No. 7 USC 42-21 in Rose Bowl to finish 2/3 in polls.

1974 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 3 going into the Rose Bowl and lost to No. 5 USC 18-17 to finish 4/3 in polls.

1975 – OSU was ranked No. 1 going into Rose Bowl and lost to No. 11 UCLA 23-10 after having defeated No. 11 UCLA 41-20 at UCLA in the fourth game of the season. The Buckeyes finished 4/4 in the polls.

1977 – The Buckeyes entered the last game of the regular season ranked No. 4 but lost at No. 5 Michigan 14-6 to fall to No. 9 in polls.They then lost to No. 3 Alabama 35-6 in the bowl game to finish out of the top-10.

1979 – In Earle Bruce's first season as the OSU Head Coach the Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 but lost 17-16 to No. 3 USC in the Rose Bowl to finish 4/4 in the polls.

1980 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 5 but lost to No. 10 Michigan 9-3 at home to fall to No. 11 in the rankings. They then lost to No. 10 Penn State 31-19 in the Fiesta Bowl to finish out of the top-10 in the rankings.

1985 – OSU was ranked No. 3 nine games into the season but consecutive losses to Wisconsin (12-7) and at No. 5 Michigan 27-17 led to finish out of the top-10.

1995 – The John Cooper led Buckeyes were ranked No. 2 but lost at Ann Arbor to No. 12 Michigan 31-23 to fall to fourth. They then lost their bowl game to No. 4 Tennessee 20-14 to finish 6/8/6 in the polls.

1996 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 2 and lost to No. 21 Michigan 13-9. They rebounded to defeat No. 4 Arizona State in Rose Bowl to finish 2/2 in the polls.

1997 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 4 headed into the last game of the regular season and lost at No. 1 Michigan 20-14 and then to No. 4 Florida State in a bowl game to finish out of the top-10.

1998 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 for the first nine weeks of the season before a 28-24 loss to Michigan State. They won their last three games including a Sugar Bowl win over No. 8 Texas A&M 24-14 to finish 2/2 in the polls.

2003 – OSU was ranked No. 4 before the Jim Tressel led Buckeyes lost at No. 5 Michigan 35-21 to fall to No. 7. OSU finished 4/6 in the polls after defeating No. 8 Kansas State in the Fiesta Bowl. A win over Michigan would have put them into the BCS national championship game.

2006 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 and lost in National Championship game to Florida 41-14 to finish 2/2 in polls.

2007 – The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 and lost National Championship game to LSU 38-24 to finish 4/5 in the polls.

* OSU's National Championship Seasons:

1942, 1954, 1957, 1968, 2002.

* The OSU department of athletics also claims the 1961 and 1970 seasons as national championship years though the Buckeyes did not finish No. 1 in any of the major polls. In 1961 they were named No. 1 by the Football Writers Association of America. In 1970 the National Football Foundation named the Buckeyes No. 1 in a poll that was conducted before the bowl season and OSU's loss to Stanford.

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