At some point, every college football fan base stoops to playing the victim after a heartbreaking or frustrating loss. In a sport steeped in tradition, it’s one of the greatest traditions of them all.
So, a college fan base attempting to explain away a loss or a perceived slight and protecting their fragile psyches with rationalizations barely tethered to reality is hardly a new phenomenon. However, in the aftermath of their, admittedly, heartbreaking 42-41 loss to Georgia last season’s Peach Bowl- a College Football Playoff semifinal – the Ohio State fan base has set a new standard for victimization and has made an art form of self-delusion.
But they need to get over it. And while they’re at it, rejoin us all on planet Earth.
Why, might you ask, am I bringing this up five long months after Ohio State lost to Georgia in the Peach Bowl when we are staring down the barrel at a new season? Trust me, I think it’s as crazy as you do, but I am addressing it now because five months later Buckeye fans are still living in outer space with their delusion that the Peach Bowl was stolen from them because their star WR Marvin Harrison Jr. was concussed and knocked out of the game by a perfectly clean hit by Georgia DB Javon Bullard that Ohio State fans still claim was akin to attempted murder. If they had their way, Bullard would be locked up for 25 to life with no chance for parole.
It was amusing at first, but after coming across one of the most ridiculous articles I have ever read earlier this week on Land-Grant Holy Land – the Ohio State SB Nation site – entitled “‘What if’ Marvin Harrison Jr. Never Suffered a Concussion in the 2022 Peach Bowl?” I’ve officially grown tired of the whining.
Look, I get it. The Buckeyes had the Peach Bowl – and by extension, the national championship – all but won. They had the defending national champions on the ropes. They were on the doorstep of delivering a knockout blow to the Bulldogs that would have made it a three-score game going into the fourth quarter. It would have been game over. They would have been Peach Bowl Champions and nine days later they would have been national champions. Hotels and flights from Columbus to LA were already being booked.
But they blew it.
Georgia came to life, said “hold my beer,” and proceeded to deliver a Kano-esue fatality by ripping the still-beating heart out of the Ohio State fan base with a thrilling 14-point fourth quarter comeback to put the Bulldogs back in the national title game for the third time in six seasons.
So, I get it. That’s real pain. I’ve been there. As a Georgia guy, I’ve been there far more than I would like to admit. I remember collapsing on the beer-soaked floor in my aisle in the Georgia Dome when Chris Conley inexplicably caught a tipped pass at the 5-yard line with six seconds to play and no timeouts left in the 2012 SEC Championship game against Alabama. If we win that game, we go on to play Notre Dame in the BCS national championship and beat the hell out of them just the way Bama did. Sound familiar, Ohio State fans? I also dropped $4,000 to be inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium on January 8, 2018 only to watch 2nd and 26 happen live. So trust me. I GET IT.
The difference is, I didn’t whine like a baby and claim we were cheated out of a national championship. No. We went toe-to-toe with a dynasty on both occasions and just fell oh, so agonizingly short. The bounces didn’t go our way. All you can do is tip your cap and deal with it. It sucks, but you take it like a man and go through life like a zombie for the next four to five months frantically turning the radio or podcast off anytime any talk even remotely related to that day starts because the wound is still far too fresh for you to be able to handle reliving it yet. It’s just part of being a diehard fan. It comes with the territory. Suck it up or take up gardening. Not everyone is cut out for die-hard college football fandom.
But that is emphatically NOT how Ohio State fans handled their heartbreak. No, instead of sucking it up and facing reality, the Buckeye fan base has embarked on one of the greatest campaigns of denial and self-delusion in the history of college sports.
And I don’t say that to be hyperbolic. Seriously, in a sport where a healthy amount of delusion exists within every fan base, I struggle to come up with a parallel for what we have seen from the Ohio State fan base in the five months since their Peach Bowl loss.
You know the narrative; Ohio State fans have made sure of that. The Buckeyes are facing a third down on the Georgia 7-yard line up 35-24 with 35 seconds left in the third quarter. C.J. Stroud has been cooking all game and now the Ohio State offense has a shot to effectively put the game out of reach going into the fourth quarter. Ball is snapped, Georgia pressures Stroud who lofts the ball to star WR Marvin Harrison Jr. in the back of the end zone, Georgia DB Javon Bullard races over and delivers a literal knockout blow to Harrison Jr. as the ball touches his hands. The officials initially throw a flag for targeting, but the call is reversed on replay, forcing the Buckeyes to settle for a field goal and setting the stage for Georgia to mount a miraculous comeback in the decisive quarter.
Again. I GET IT. Watching a national championship slip through your fingers like that is the die-hard fan equivalent of watching your beloved dog get run over. I know that sounds certifiably insane, but insanity is one of the defining characteristics of college sports fandom. A loss like that when you are so close to what you so deeply desire leaves you numb and empty inside. It sends you spiraling into the depths of depression. I get all of that. I get it because I have lived it and will almost certainly live it again at some point.
And I get why Ohio State fans have resorted to rationalizing away the loss. As an amateur psychologist, I understand that sometimes pain is too traumatic for people to face so they have to resort to various defense mechanisms to protect their ego and maintain their self-respect. I get that. What I don’t get is, rationalization or not, how any sane individual can watch the replays of the Bullard hit on Harrison Jr. from various angles and still maintain that it was targeting as vigorously as Ohio State fans do. You can clearly see that Bullard turned his head to the side and drove his right shoulder into Harrison Jr.’s left shoulder. There was no launching with the crown of the helmet, nor was there any helmet to helmet contact made. Don’t believe me? Well, virtually every single authority on the subject, including former Big Ten referee and current ESPN rules analyst Bill LeMonnier, who has been asked about the reversed call has also staunchly maintained the officials got it right, but that’s still not good enough for the Buckeye faithful.
It truly is like Ohio State fans are living in an alternate reality. It’s as though they are trying to gaslight the entire college football world.
But, even if the targeting call had stood, why do Buckeye fans just assume Ohio State would have won the game? Sure, Harrison Jr. got off to a hot start with five catches for 105 yards and two touchdowns, but prior to being knocked out of the game with 36 seconds left in the third quarter, he had been held without a catch since the 10:56 mark of the second quarter. He had gone nearly two full quarters without catching a pass. Is it not possible that Georgia had made some defensive adjustments after Harrison Jr.’s hot start to negate his impact? Would the Buckeyes have gotten him going again in the fourth quarter? Maybe. But also maybe not. The point is, we don’t know.
What we do know is that Georgia lost a key piece of its offense far earlier in the game than Ohio State did when tight end Darnell Washington went out with a foot injury in the first half. Georgia OLB Chaz Chambliss was also knocked out of the game in the first half. Ladd McConkey, Georgia’s top WR was limping around all game after re-aggravating a knee injury in the SEC Championship game. The Bulldogs were also without starting left tackle Warren McClendon and future first-round draft pick Nolan Smith suffered a season-ending injury back in October. The point is, both teams were dealing with injuries to key contributors that were suffered both prior to and within the game. So why is the Harrison Jr. injury the only one that could have impacted the outcome of the game? Short answer: it wasn’t.
The reality that Ohio State fans appear incapable of coming to terms with is Georgia was the tougher, deeper, better team and was able to overcome adversity better than Ohio State was. It really is that simple. Maybe one day Buckeye fans will stop living in fantasy land and rejoin us all here on planet Earth, but don’t hold your breath.