Mardy Gilyard's name rhymes with retar- oh, wait.

So, I was looking to do a very juvenile, sophomoric hitpiece on Cincinnati Bearcats Wide Receiver Mardy Gilyard for his comments in this video:



(I don't know what's with the white space on the video above, apparently directly copying the embed code from palestra breaks the internets)


Having heard of him only in passing ESPN highlights prior to this game, I was getting ready to light into him for calling out a team that met his own as recently as 2006 in a 37-7 Ohio State pasting. Gilyard, for some reason, had redshirted that year (likely out of fear of being covered by the truely fearsome - I'm dead serious raight hurr - Antonio Smith, a former walk-on). Anyway, prior to finding the video embedded above, I found this:



And I stopped. I had an entire diatribe cooked up specifically for Mardy McFly Gilyard. Instead, I'll talk about one thing he said and approach it reasonably. Have no fear: "reason" and "rationality" have little place in Ohio State fandom, and accordingly, will be shown the door - for a while - after this post.

Gilyard alleges that UC is seen as a little brother to big bad Ohio State. Not only has no one on Ohio State's current roster or coaching staff labeled them as such, but Cincinnati football is so far removed from the football consciousness of the state that the last time these teams met, no one considered it a rivalry. Like, at all. Cincinnati scored the first touchdown and immediately began supplying the butt to Troy, Teddy and Co. and Ohio State won in a walk typical of a MACrifice.

This all happened after Cincinnati nearly knocked Special K and the Silver Bullets' title run clean off the tracks in 2002, when a last-minute interception prevented a Cincinnati touchdown and sealed the Ohio State win, preserving the Greatest Season in the History of Sport (Marty Schottenheimer Calls It Sport, So I Call It Sport). This is not a rivalry even on par with the joke that is the MSU-UM rivalry, in which UM dominates and MSU picks up the scraps when UM is down. There is as much of a rivalry between Ohio State and Cincy as there is between Florida and USF. It simply doesn't exist. Don't try to start one by being dbags and calling us out. Penn State has tried that and we (or at least I) still don't really consider it a rivalry game, hurdled bags of piss or no. Don't be Penn State. The next thing you know Brian Kelly will develop an insatiable hunger for brains and half your starting line-up will be behind bars. And Italian. Don't be Penn State.

That's my closest approximation of reasonableness, by the way.