The BCS Championship - It all just went wrong

Pictures are here...

There were two things that went well regarding the BCS Championship game and preceeding pep rally - the tailgaiting, and Teddy Ginn, Jr's touchdown. In every other respect, though, it was awful. Simply awful.

The pep rally was over-crowded to say the least. Chase field holds about 48,000 people; 35,000 showed up for the pep rally, and the upper bowl wasn't open. The band was too close to the stands so anyone on the wings couldn't hear them. There was about 20 minutes of nothingness in between each 5-10 minute section of entertainment. The pro players didn't even wear OSU colors. The pep rally for the 2003 national championship was incredible...a ten. This was a 1. Total opposite end of the spectrum.

The game...we got outran (except for one), out hustled, outpushed, outcoached. We lost in every facet of the game. After Ginn got hurt it was like a two-starter swing...not only did OSU lose a key part of their offense, but it's like Florida got another starter back on defense. Their defensive ends played stronger, quicker, and faster than we practiced for or expected. Troy Smith picked the worst time to have the worst game of his life. Our defense wasn't fast enough laterally to handle their outside runs, and Leak's passing game was unbelievably on target that night. Plus the UF's receivers ran absolutely perfect routes and destroyed our zone coverage (Tressell was evidently too scared to man up on them - probably recognized the speed and was trying to rely on the boys up front to hurry up the play). Tressell also abandoned our run game which was gashing them for the most part, but when you only run about 6 times with your running backs, that means nothing.

It was just awful. I could have sold my tickets for $2500 cash profit but my aunt would have nothing of it, and since she was the benefactress and purchaser of the tickets, that was that. Sell? No. I get forced to watch the misery from start to finish.

Oh well. I doubted our #1 ranking from the get-go. Troy Smith just had a good game at the North-South bowl this weekend but I strongly doubt he'll do well in the pros. If he's anything more than a reserve QB I'll be surprised (if he can't handle the speed of the UF defensive ends, how is he going to handle the speed of the pros?).

Looking forward to next year already...