Nothing But Iron: A Penny for Your National Championship by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. January 9, 2007 Like Troy Smith before me, I am short on time, so you’ll have to excuse a few miscalculations. Not for him–he’s a Heisman Trophy winner–but for me, a trophy-less amateur sportswriter not trying to make a buck. Monday night for me, was about as big a sports night as there could be because I replaced my first-generation TiVo box, whose hard drive was failing to the point that I never did see the replay of the Capitol One Bowl, with a brand new TiVo with a competent hard drive. The new one cost me $69 after rebate, has 20 hours more capacity than its predecessor and a dual tuner. The dual tuner was important because I was able to pause the Tostitos Mythical National Championship Bowl and switch over to Figure Skating on ESPN 2, without missing any of the bowl game. I did this several times until the second quarter when I stopped pausing the football game. I felt like it was only prolonging the agony for our Big Ten cohorts. Much was said of the 51-day lay off for the Buckeyes, but let us not forget that the Gators were off for month as well. The way Ohio State played, you might think its players were not only off, but comatose that whole time. They played pretty well for people just emerged from comas. Nonetheless, someone should be neutered without anesthesia or at least fired for making the Buckeyes wait that long. That was very impolite, not to mention unnecessary. Let me guess, you didn’t want to steal fans from the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Much was said of the killing speed that Florida players seemed to possess, relative to their plodding prey. Blah blah blah. (There are actually four blah’s in that sentence, but I said it with such speed you could only see three). For cod’s sake, you would think we are talking about cheetahs and hippos. What I saw was one football team that was a lot better than the other. Yes, speed is a part of that, but there are many other factors of equal importance: balance, strength, agility, strategy, anticipation, preparation, stamina, emotion, control of emotion, body heat dissipation, oxygen carrying capacity and cardiac index and luck to name a few. Oh, and let’s not forget what might be the biggest motivating factor in all of sports: disrespect. To attribute it to speed is a silly oversimplification made by silly oversimplifying oversimplifiers. Were the Buckeyes overconfident? I think they were. If you were a 20-something-year-old kid on a top-ranked, undefeated football team, with 51 days to hear everyone and his brother and his brother’s third cousin’s uncle proclaim your team is the best since groups of cave men first fought over sabertooth tiger claws (yes, cave men did that), would you not be overconfident? We know the Buckeyes are losers. We know the Gators are winners. We can debate what they won and lost until the cows tip over, but that’s a waste of time when there are so many other losers and winners to appreciate. Losers: 1) any advertiser outside the state of Florida who bought airtime in the second half, 2) the hey-help-me-get-this-egg-off-my-computer BCS, 2.5) college presidents, 3) Boise State football, ranked No. 1 in the NBI/BBS poll, but no crystal football, 4) bored fans of football outside the state of Florida, 5) Florida State Seminoles–I hear Montana has some good players to recruit, 6) Wisconsin Basketball. Let me explain the last one. I hope hope hope it doesn’t matter, but do you think any Ohio State player in any sport is going to suffer from overconfidence any time in the next three decades? My guess is that we will see a hard-working bunch of Buckeyes, who take nothing for granted, on the Kohl Center hardwood tonight. Did I mention I hope it doesn’t matter? I did not include Troy Smith as a loser, because he will still go on to have a stellar NFL career because he is not likely to see defense that good in the pros, especially if he plays in the NFC North. Even better, the pros play almost every week, so there is precious little time to forget everything you ever learned about quarterbacking . Just kidding, Troy. You just lost a lot of millions of money, but there is always Canadian ball if you don’t get drafted. Winners: 1) ESPN advertisers who bought air time during figure skating or the Georgetown-Villanova basketball game, 2) fans who want a playoff, 3) Boise State football, 4) Wisconsin and other 1-loss teams, but I am not sure why, 5) people who don’t really care if OSU, sorry The OSU, wins or loses. Perspective question: Who would have guessed that the Seattle-Dallas NFL game would have achieved a higher drama rating (92.1) than the so-called college national championship game (0.055)? Have you noticed something is different this year? Never before have I heard so many media personalities calling for a playoff. It’s about damn time. I heard one report that even a BCS official, who spoke on condition of us not revealing him for the moron he really is, was talking about a "plus one" game, the equivalent of a four-team playoff. You might think I would call that inadequate, and it is, but what they don’t realize is that any kind of playoff will be like crack cocaine, a relentless addiction that must be fed. Soon after there will be eight teams, then 16, then 32, then 64. By the time I am a full-time paid professional sportswriter the playoff system will be expanded to 128 teams. It will stop there because it would be really hard to fit more than six games in the 51 days between the end the regular season and the championship game. Besides, a larger playoff might compromise the precious study time of student athletes. For sure, the official said, no changes will be made until the Fox Sports contract is up. That will mean another four years of BCS embarrassment, but for the first time ever, I am gaining confidence and excitement that logic and fairness will ultimately prevail. To fans, media, players and the few coaches who are rocking the boat, I say, keep up the good work. _____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column. It’s sloppy, but it’s done. ©2007 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.