OSU seeks redemption

The Buckeyes want to make up for their 41-14 flop to SEC Florida last year.

GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

NEW ORLEANS — On a five-hour plane ride from scenic Phoenix to gray, cold Columbus, few words above a whisper were spoken. The Ohio State team charter landed to mild fanfare, few were there to greet the Buckeyes after their 41-14 flop last year against Florida.

In essence, they were alone.

“We let our entire state down,” left tackle Alex Boone said. “You’re coming back and you’re hoping to see all those fans, and nobody’s there. Nobody wants to talk to you, nobody wants to be your friend.”

Tonight at 8, the Buckeyes are back in the BCS national championship game against LSU with something to win — and maybe more than that, something to prove.

The lasting impression college football fans around the country have for Ohio State is when the Buckeyes were left in the dust of Florida’s SEC speed. In order to regain their standing, the Buckeyes have to beat the best of the SEC once again.

“Every time you have a chance to go out and compete, you are adding to the creation of an impression,” Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said. “When you’re giving a positive impression, it only lasts as long as until you give a negative one. I’m sure when we left Tempe, Ariz. in January ’03, we had a good impression. Everyone said, ‘Oh, these guys are OK. ... So the impression ebbs and flows.

“The only impression I’m interested in is the one [tonight]. Is it unfair? No, we didn’t leave a very good impression last year.”

Tressel said just because he’s older and wiser than players, getting over the Florida loss wasn’t any easier for him.

“Let’s pretend I was the guy who dropped a pass. I don’t care what game it was, and we could have won,” Tressel said. “I’m not sure that ever goes away. Every time I run into a guy at a reunion, he says, ‘You dropped that pass.’ It gets brought back up, and it’s like, ‘Hmmm, you’re right, I dropped that pass.’

“It’s the same thing with a tough loss. I guess our loss last year has been brought up quite frequently.”

Ohio State is in New Orleans for redemption as much as for this team’s place in the storied history of the program.

Before Ohio State left Columbus, former Buckeye linebacker Mike Vrabel told the team not to play for the pundits, but to play for each other. He said in 20 years at reunions and weddings, they have to be able to look their teammates in the eye.

Nothing went right a year ago.

The Buckeyes spent more than a week in Arizona preparing for Florida. They got fat off the banquet circuit and big-headed off a wire-to-wire run as the No. 1 team in the country.

Is it unfair to judge a team on one bad night in Phoenix?

“The only chance we had to play ... we didn’t get it done,” Tressel said. “That’s to me the beauty of sport. I guess [Roger] Bannister had that one chance to run that sub four-minute mile, and he did.”

The Buckeyes are battling their memories of Arizona. Their hotel felt like vacation. They lined up for spa treatments.

Ted Ginn Jr. returned the opening kickoff for a 7-0 lead, and the predictions of an Ohio State blowout looked like reality.

That was their only lead.

“Complacency was an issue last year,” linebacker and Butkus Award winner James Laurinaitis said. “We were satisfied with what we’d accomplished.”

Tressel changed everything about bowl preparations. Ohio State wore its white jerseys last year. They’re wearing scarlet tonight. They arrived in New Orleans on Jan. 2 as required not five days before. The players have self-imposed a 9 p.m. curfew from Bourbon Street.

Yes, Tressel said, bowl preparations have gone well.

“Very, very good,” Tressel said.

Every player who was there a year ago remembers the feeling of walking off that field. They remember the silence of the plane ride and the feeling of abandonment when they returned.

All week long in the Big Easy, Ohio State has had to answer for its letdown last year as well as its resurgence this year. It is a game Ohio State can’t, perhaps won’t, shake until it wins another national title.

That is the bar that Tressel has set.

“We’re two days away from the biggest game of our life, and we’re still reminded about 363 days ago,” co-captain and right tackle Kirk Barton said Saturday. “That’s life. When you go through something like that, they’re never going to let you live it down.”

ESPN analyst Mark May said Ohio State “moonwalked into the game like Michael Jackson.”

Ohio State, without the Heisman Trophy quarterback, the speedy receivers, the veteran tailback, is back. Who are these guys?

“It’s like we have nobody,” Boone said. “We’re a bunch of nobodies, and we don’t amount to anything. You hear that for a while, and you start to want to play so bad. I can’t wait for this game.”

But LSU back-doored its way into the national title game every bit as much as OSU. The Tigers jumped five spots in the final poll for beating Tennessee in the SEC championship game to get to No. 2.

LSU is the favorite, but coach Les Miles, the Ohio boy who went to Michigan, doesn’t buy the notion that one team is an underdog and one team is the favorite.

“The way I’ve got it figured, it’s going to be two damn fine football teams playing,” Miles said. “Maybe they [Ohio State] need to hear that [they’re the underdogs].”

Ohio State has to earn back the respect and do it in enemy territory. Running back Beanie Wells said the New Orleans people have treated the team well, but every friendly greeting ends with, “You know what’s going to happen to you guys [tonight].”

“We know the feeling of losing a national championship,” Wells said. “All your hopes and dreams go right down the drain. It was devastating for us.”