Suckeyes? OSU players motivated by critics

Most national pundits expect LSU to win big over the Buckeyes.

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NEW ORLEANS — By the time Alex Boone finished watching a 12-minute DVD of national talking heads trash the Buckeyes, he was left with one opinion of his team.

“We suck,” Boone said, clearly tongue in cheek.

Boone’s grandmother, Nor Sulzer, wanted to watch the motivational DVD with him. So he waited until she was doing something that would occupy her mind and kept something soft in her hands. Boone watched with his 73-year-old granny while she folded laundry.

It didn’t help.

“I swear, she’s crazy,” Boone said. “But I love her to death. ... So we’re watching it, and she’s going off. I mean, 10 minutes straight of bashing us, someone’s gonna get [ticked] off, right? She swears a lot. She’s folding clothes, and screaming at the TV. She’s Irish, so you have to cut her some slack.

“But my grandma she’s going nuts. I’ve got to remind her she’s a little old. Obviously, when you watch a film like that, you realize how much everybody hates us. In the end, who cares? This is our team. None of those people are going to play come Monday night. ... It was a great thing to watch, because it made us more humble.”

The video included plenty of ESPN commentators expressing their opinion of the Buckeyes for their BCS National Championship Game on Monday against LSU.

Essentially, Ohio State is going to get embarrassed by another SEC team on college football’s biggest stage for the second straight year.

Boone has seen that story. Actually, he lived right in the middle of it. The worst game of Boone’s career came in the last year against Florida. He still is criticized for it.

“All the criticism is fair, too,” Boone said. “It’s extremely fair. I take that responsibility. Last year was not my year. We’ve got to come back and show people we’re ready.”

Florida defensive ends Derrick Harvey and Jarvis Moss beat Boone and Kirk Barton for a combined five sacks. Quarterback Troy Smith, hell-bent on not running the football to impress NFL scouts with his passing ability, was knocked off kilter.

OSU’s best counter to Florida’s speed, wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr., left the game not long after returning the opening kick for a touchdown. After hearing how they would kill Florida a month leading up to the game, Ohio State killed itself.

Ginn was hurt in the touchdown celebration.

The offensive line, in addition to being beat physically, missed simple protection calls.

No wonder the pundits think Ohio State can’t win.

“We had to edit a lot of it out, otherwise, [the DVD] would’ve been two days long,” Barton said. “We know what the world thinks of us. It doesn’t surprise us. It’s a good refresher to watch it and see what people think.”

Barton watched it at least five times during Christmas break. Every time he ate lunch, he put it in.

“It wasn’t so much what [Florida] did to us, it was what we did to ourselves,” Barton said. “We weren’t ready.”

Now, Ohio State is living in enemy territory. LSU fans are as common here as crawfish tails and fried alligator.

That is the way the Buckeyes like it. They haven’t lost on the road since October 2005 at Penn State.

“We’re in their territory,” running back Beanie Wells said. “It’s basically a home game for them.”

It looked that way Wednesday when both teams arrived. There was a welcoming party and a sea of purple- and yellow-clad fans that stretched as far as the eye could see at the Marriott where LSU is staying. Ohio Stated entered its hotel to no fanfare.

“It’s kind of like in ‘Rocky IV’ when he goes to Russia, gets off the plane and the KGB is with him,” Barton said. “My favorite scene in that movie is when he’s running down the road, and they get in the car to try to follow him ... and they crash.