More than a game

By any reasonable yardstick, no college football game can be worth 1,000 a ticket. But Saturday's game between The Ohio State University Buckeyes and the University of Michigan Wolverines came about as close as any game could.
Ask any of the 105,708 in attendance -- well, excluding a few thousand who bleed blue and mauve. OSU's 42-39 victory over Michigan had been billed as the "game of the century" and it lived up to the billing (hey, it's a young century). The century title might also be appropriate given that this was the first time in the 102-year-old rivalry that the teams faced each other being rated 1 and 2 (although we're pretty sure ratings weren't a big deal in the first half of the 20th century).
Actually, a lot of things besides the price that game-of-the-century tickets fetch on e-bay are out of whack in college football today. Coaches salaries, for instance. Michigan's Lloyd Carr will pocket about 1.5 million this year; OSU's Jim Tressel about 2 million. Graduation rates for student athletes aren't what they should be in almost any big-college sport. And too often college football and basketball programs seem to be operating as much as a farm team for professional teams as anything.
Sunny side of the stdium
But then along comes a game like yesterday's and suddenly it's easier to look on the bright side.
On the field and on the sidelines there are enough positive images to make all but the most cynical bystander readjust his or her attitudes.
Whether you were at the game or watching on TV -- and just about everyone in Ohio, it seems, was one or the other -- the positive scenes far outweighed the negatives
The coaches were intense but professional. The players exhibited team unity that was inspirational. The band, the cheerleaders, the ROTC cadets doing push-ups after a touchdown, the students in the stands responding with healthy, youthful exuberance combined to blot out any negative images.
Was it all a bit over the top? Yes. But it was hard not to get all caught up in it (even for crusty editorial writers, apparently).
And, of course, here in the Mahoning Valley, there will always be a special connection with Jim Tressel. We knew he was a winner before the rest of the country knew his name.
Ohio State is No. 1. Quarterback Troy Smith is a shoo-in for the Heisman Trophy. And Tressel, with a Big 10 championship and three straight wins over Michigan in his pocket, is already ensconced in OSU's athletic history book.
Now we get a breather until the BCS game Jan. 8.