In major college football, most states have multiple programs that are part of big-time conferences and regularly duel with one another for annual bragging rights when they meet in rivalry games. If you look at states such as Florida, Texas and California who regularly produce exceptional high school talent, top players have a variety of upper-echelon schools to choose from if they feel it’s in their best interest to stay close to home.
Ohio has a lot in common with these states in that there is a seemingly unending pool of elite-level athletes who regularly get recruited by the nation’s best football-playing institutions. What sets this state apart from many others is the fact that there is only one university, Ohio State, that has the luxury of being a member of the current Power Five conferences, in this case the Big Ten. Ohio also has seven other programs who play at FBS level, six of whom reside in the Mid-American Conference (Toledo, Bowling Green, Akron, Kent State, Miami (OH), and Ohio) in addition to the Buckeyes’ Saturday night opponent, Cincinnati, who compete in the American Athletic Conference.
Why am I telling you all this? Because such a situation gives OSU a significant talent advantage over practically all the other schools in Ohio who are part of college football’s top tier. So much so that they’ve put together quite a lengthy winning streak over their football-playing counterparts in the state.
You have to go back a long way to find the last time Ohio State dropped a football game to another program in the state. The last time they did, the nation was three years removed from World War I. On October 8, 1921, the Buckeyes would play their second game of the season at home against Oberlin College, a school located about 30 miles west of Cleveland. The Yeomen, as they are called, would make the journey down to Columbus and eventually pull off the upset (I’m assuming OSU was favored), 7-6.
Since then, it’s been smooth sailing for the Scarlet and Gray. They’ve won all 45 subsequent meetings with Ohio opposition in the 93 years since that one-point loss to Oberlin and that number takes into account the 66-0 thumping they dished out to Kent State two weeks ago. Between 1934 and 1992, the Buckeyes actually didn’t play a single in-state foe mostly due to their desire to beef up the non-conference schedule. Just to give you an example, in 1975, Ohio State’s non-Big Ten opponents were seventh-ranked Penn State (they were an Independent then), 13th-ranked UCLA and North Carolina.
There have been a few scares over the course of this streak. On September 20, 2003, one year after defeating Miami in the BCS national championship game, they needed an interception on the final play of the game in Buckeye territory to preserve a 24-17 win over Bowling Green. Eight years later, another in-state MAC foe, Toledo, traveled to the Horseshoe and led 22-21 late in the third quarter before a Carlos Hyde touchdown gave OSU a 27-22 lead it would never relinquish.
If ever there was a team capable of reversing nearly a century of dominance from the mighty juggernaut in Columbus, it would be this year’s Cincinnati team. Head coach Tommy Tuberville, in his second year with the Bearcats, has always been known for getting the most out of the talent at his disposal. His Auburn teams regularly exceeded expectations, especially in 2004 when they went 13-0 and were somehow left out of the national championship game in arguably the BCS’ most controversial years.
Cincinnati boasts an immensely talented quarterback in Gunner Kiel, who after embarking on a jet set of sorts as regards the schools he committed to (a list that included Indiana, LSU and Notre Dame) finally settled with the Bearcats. In his first collegiate game, Kiel was on fire, throwing for 418 yards and a whopping six touchdown passes in a 58-34 romp over Toledo. Last week against Miami of Ohio, he came back to earth just a tad, with 271 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions as Cincinnati moved to 2-0 with a 31-24 win.
What might hold the Bearcats back in terms of possibly pulling off the upset is defense. Takeaways have been extremely hard to come by. Through two games, they only have a single interception, tied for dead last in FBS, and also rank 108th overall in defensive efficiency. In most instances, they have played two less games than other schools due to the consecutive bye weeks to start the season, but if you double their total number of picks on the year, it’s still not much to write home about.
This will inevitably be a battle of two relatively inexperienced signal callers with a combined five starts between them. Buckeyes quarterback J.T. Barrett was picked apart, no pun intended, by Virginia Tech’s ball-hawking secondary, giving up three interceptions in the Hokies’ 35-21 upset. Kiel looked stellar against inferior competition but has yet to see a pass rush as wicked as Ohio State’s, Noah Spence suspension aside.
Let’s face it. Multi-generational stretches of disappointment are bound to come to an end at some point (unless you’re the Chicago Cubs, I guess). After 86 years of heartbreak and despair, the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series again in 2004. It took Navy 43 years but eventually their long run of losing to Notre Dame ended in 2007.
Sooner or later, the stars are going to align and the Buckeyes now 93-year winning streak against the state of Ohio will be no more. Cincinnati has some of the tools in place, especially offensively, to hang with OSU, but the other side of the ball could be their undoing in terms of being able to force Barrett into bad decisions throwing the ball as he did against Virginia Tech.
Ultimately, in Saturday night’s tussle at the Horseshoe, Ohio State keeps the streak alive. The game will be closer than the 18-point betting line suggests, but the aforementioned defensive issues for the Bearcats maintains the Buckeyes’ status as overlords of Ohio. OSU wins 45-31.
In conclusion, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Cincinnati football program will be playing with heavy hearts in Columbus as their teammate Chamoda Kennedy-Palmore, a redshirt freshman walk-on running back for the Bearcats, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident on Thursday afternoon. A moment of silence will be held in Ohio Stadium in his honor before the game.
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