Fanatical fans

Dec. 2, 2010

Dear Sally and Doug,

I'm writing out of a concern that being an Ohio State fan has become your religion. It's not just Sally's Ohio State license plates and the fact that we usually buy Doug red Christmas gifts because that's the team color. It's not that your son Kyle graduated from Ohio State. With more than 55,000 students enrolled, many thousands do every year.

But when his sister Kim became a premed student there, choosing the school over others offering more scholarships because she wanted to have the big-time football school experience, I started to wonder.

Not that Ohio State is any Sisters of the Poor academically, but last week when thousands of screaming Ohio State students jumped into a frigid lake in an annual ritual observed before each Michigan game, Kim wasn't exactly in the library studying.

You seem not to understand why her sister Carly attends the University of Cincinnati. Though they did have a good football team last year.

At Ohio State home games, those who want to tailgate must be in place by 7 a.m., five hours before the kickoff. Some people tailgate even though they can't get a ticket for the game. No one remembers the last time a ticket was available for a home game. That's 102,329 tickets. That's devotion.

Watching the college football games on TV last week in Cincinnati, mom and dad and I saw the fervor of the Buckeye cult as you rooted against teams that were above Ohio State in the BCS standings and for the teams whose victories could raise OSU's stock. Is that the Christian thing to do?

The clincher came Saturday morning. You celebrated while Kyle recounted how Boise State wobbled under the pressure and lost in overtime late Friday night. Though they were undefeated, you don't think Boise State belongs in the same sentence as Ohio State because they play weaker teams. To you, the news they'd lost was like waking up on Christmas morning.

A reality intervention might be needed. True believers can be blind to the facts. True, Boise State doesn't play the country's top teams, but Ohio State's supposedly Herculean schedule included nonconference games against Marshall, Ohio University, Eastern Michigan and the University of Miami, not a powerhouse among them. In Big 10 play they beat Indiana, Minnesota and Purdue, all teams with losing records.

Ohio State did thrash very good Penn State and Michigan teams, which is why the Buckeyes deserve to be considered one of the country's best. But everybody in football plays patsies, even Ohio State.

True believers remember what they want to remember. Doug remembers last year's Rose Bowl victory over Oregon as a whipping that proved the Big 10 to be the masters of the PAC 10. The final score was 26-17, and Ohio State led by only two at the end of the third quarter.

Nothing is wrong with believing in your team. I root for the Cape Central Tigers, the Southeast Missouri State University Redhawks, the Missouri Tigers, the St. Louis Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals. A little variety can make feeling like a winner easier.

Mom and dad and I are glad the Reds' Joey Votto won the National League MVP over the Cardinals' Albert Pujols. He deserved it, and the Cardinals couldn't have scored a run last season if the opposing pitchers had been throwing underhanded. But talk to us about Joey when he has won three MVPs and two Gold Gloves and is wearing a World Series ring.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.