I can’t speak for Ryan Day, who hails from New Hampshire, but as a native Ohioan I don’t feel the Australians, Kenyans or Swiss are out to get me. OK, maybe the French are not big on the Buckeye State, but they’re sour on anyone who butchers “bonjour” by botching the accent. Forget them. The world is not Ohio’s enemy.
That said, I understand why Day went off on the Ohio State haters Saturday after the Buckeyes defeated Notre Dame 17-14 in South Bend, Indiana. The OSU coach wanted to send a motivational message to his team, and to potential recruits, that you can’t spell Ohio State without “tough,” give or take a few letters.
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As Day broke into a genuinely passionate if calculated shout-down worthy of WWE Monday Night RAW, the missive behind his rant was clear: if you aren’t for the state of Ohio, you aren’t for Ohio State.
“It’s always been Ohio against the world, and it continues to be to this day,” Day said after the win, cracking back on criticism of the “soft” Buckeyes.
Always been? Continues to be? What in the name of Woody Hayes is going on? Answer: the name of Woody Hayes. At least that is part of it. If it’s true the entire earth is against Ohio, and by extension against Ohio State, then it is worth working through history to learn why.
Before visiting the past, though, at present I think “Ohio Against the World” is an overplayed trope. But Day, and every other coach who inserts (name of state/school) vs. the world, doesn’t care what I think. The Ohio State coach knows the bulk of his scarlet and gray target audience eats up the us-against-them stuff. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, because circle-the-wagons sermonizing is red meat to the OSU chip-on-the-shoulder crowd.
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“It’s not true (that the world is against Ohio), but if you can make everybody believe that … it’s good motivation,” said Robert Carrothers, assistant professor of sociology at Ohio Northern University. “It fights back against the invaders or outsiders, or whoever. If it’s Ohio against the world, you can do anything you want under that banner, because you’re fighting for your mere existence, because everybody is against Ohio.”
Not just everybody.
“Better watch out for those awful koalas,” Carrothers said, snarkily putting an international Down Under exclamation on his point.
Carrothers likens the “Everyone hates us” motivational coaching ploy to political spin.
“It works the same way in politics,” he said. “If you can convince one side that the other side is all crazy then you’re the normal and good ones. Or if you convince the center of the country that people only care about the coasts, then you’re justified in speaking in extreme measures. Cleveland had a river catch on fire and half the country thinks Cincinnati is in Kentucky. So it’s already ‘Nobody understands us.’ It’s an easy card to play when you’re trying to rally together.
“But when you apply it to Ohio State, which is ranked high every year … it has no basis in reality.”
Or does it? On the surface, Ohio State fans have little reason to feel the world is out to bury their Buckeyes.
Ohio State is actually admired/envied for its consistent success, ranking first all-time nationally in winning percentage (.733) and having had only two losing seasons (1988 and 2011) in the past 57 years. Outsider animosity largely is based in jealousy.
As Carrothers put it, “People were annoyed by Alabama because they won all the time, just like the Patriots and Lakers. When you’re good for a long time everybody is rooting for the fall and come back to earth.”
All true, but there is more to it concerning Ohio State, beginning with Woody.
For much of the first 80 years of the football program, Ohio State blended into the background. Through the first quarter of the 20th century, college football fans were more bothered by Michigan than by the Buckeyes. The Maize and Blue were the big bad Wolverines of the Midwest, loathed because they won so much. Notre Dame soon took over the double mantle of being both most liked and disliked nationally.
Ohio State won its first national championship in 1942 under Paul Brown, but OSU was no more beloved or despised then than Florida State or LSU is today.
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Then Hayes showed up in 1951, and seeds of “Ohio (State) against the world” began to be sown. Initially, rage against the Buckeyes was more of a simmer, based on them winning national titles in 1954, 1957 and 1968.
But things began to change in the early 1970s when Hayes’ sideline tantrums made him a national symbol of bombastic old-school military coaching behavior that contrasted the national culture shift toward anti-war peace and love.
Hayes tore up a first-down marker and tossed it on the field during the fourth quarter of the 1971 Michigan game. At the 1973 Rose Bowl he shoved a camera into the forehead of a Los Angeles Times photographer during pregame warmups.
Most infamously, Hayes punched Clemson’s Charlie Bauman after the nose guard intercepted Ohio State quarterback Art Schlichter late in the game to seal the Tigers’ win in the 1978 Gator Bowl. Ohio State fired Hayes after the loss, but it was too late to stop the school from being ridiculed and mocked for being unable, or unwilling, to control its runaway coach.
Disdain toward OSU dimmed during the Earle Bruce and John Cooper coaching eras – it’s hard to hate 9-3 and Coop’s close-but-no-cigar troops – but the fires of fury ignited again when Jim Tressel arrived in 2001. First came the 2002 BCS championship game, when some felt OSU’s title was stolen from Miami by a late, bogus penalty. Then Tattoogate happened, fueling national antipathy towards Ohio State, even if much of the ridicule was directed at “Saint” Tressel, whom critics pegged as a holier-than-thou hypocrite for lying to the NCAA.
Toss in Urban Meyer’s intensity-tinged arrogance – remember when he called out other Big Ten programs for shoddy recruiting? – and the 1990s introduction of the now ubiquitous “The” preceding Ohio State, and it begins to make sense why the world of college football might be against the Buckeyes.
Day’s volcanic eruption, which called out 86-year old Lou Holtz for saying OSU was not physical enough when playing better opponents, likely played well in Pickerington, Piketon and Painesville, but has not gone over as swimmingly outside the friendly confines of Buckeye Nation. Some critics saw Day’s postgame comments as cartoonish. Fox broadcaster Brady Quinn, a former Notre Dame quarterback who grew up in Dublin, described Day’s diatribe as “bizarre.”
Carrothers asked, rhetorically, “If it’s Ohio against the world, why (on ESPN GameDay) did Lee Corso pick the Buckeyes? Day picked out one old man (Holtz) but actually had the support of the other old guy on ESPN.”
Easy answer. Because loving Ohio when you’re not from Ohio does not fit the anti-OSU narrative fans want to hear. Face it, “You like us, you really, really like us,” does not get scarlet blood boiling – in the locker room or living room. – in the same way as “Ohio against the world … and universe, too.”
@rollerCD
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Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
