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.

It is time.

I've been meaning to start an Ohio State football blog for a long time. As a drive-by commenter on various CFB blogs for the last year or so, I've come to know and appreciate understand acknowledge the art personal pastime (like masturbating, but with something less meaningful to show for it at the end) of blogging. So, I'm giving it a shot myself.

Let's get a few things out of the way first: I am an Ohio State football fan, and have been for all of my adult life. Why not all of my life, you ask? Because I was the fat geeky kid in elementary school who got picked on by the Youth Boosters football players for being fat and geeky. I'm not bitter; I deserved it. Were I in their position I can't say with any authority that I would have done any differently. Picking on fat people is funny, damn it. Don't chastise me, you know for three years or moe you've been cracking fat jokes every time Notre Dame, Kansas, Maryland, Toledo, or Tennessee hit the field. Don't be frontin'. Anyway, I was butthurt about the fat jokes as a kid and thus didn't care much for the sport they played. I was young, and that means I was dumb.

Anyway, I became a football fan at the right time: 2001, on the eve of the Greatest Football Season Ever in the History of Sport (Marty Schottenheimer Call It Sport, so I Call It Sport). Sure, we had to watch a second straight heartbreaking loss to an SEC team in the bowl game (ARGH FORESHADOWING ARGH), but we beat Michigan with our backup quarterback we're pulling in the No. 1 guy on the FBI's most wanted list Scout and Rivals' player rankings, and boy oh boy Mike Doss was coming back and something special was brewing.

Fourteen straight coronaries later, Jim Tressel and the ragtag band of overperforming misfits known as Special K and the Silver Bullets were hoisting the trophy at midfield in Tempe, Arizona. I was hooked.

I'd say that I've been with this team through thick and thin, but I have to be brutally candid with you: I've never seen thick. The worst season Ohio State has endured, record-wise, since 2001 is a middling 8-4 season with a young team and an upset win over the Dread Hosts of Lloyd the Deceiver Michigan. When your toughest times are ugly losses in national title games, you've got it pretty good, comparatively. While I hesitate to call this a golden era of Ohio State football, it's something special that relative newcomers like me should appreciate. This blog will do all it can to do just that, hopefully with humor, candor, and a realistic perspective on the Best Damn Football Team in the Land.