GO BUCKS! See you in Pasadena!

On a cold and rainy day in Ann Arbor, the Ohio State Buckeye football team once again defeated our arch rival Michigan Wolverines! Whoo-hoo! It wasn’t pretty, but Coach Jim Tressel is now 6-1 against them. On the flip side, that also means that Michigan has lost six of the last seven games against us. I do have a little twinge of empathy for them. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that we were suffering through John Cooper’s dismal record against them. 2-11-1 was really difficult to take.

I watched the game at a bar in Hollywood at OSULA's annual Beat Michigan party. We hold it at one of our club's official viewing sites, charge a cover for brunch and the pleasure of watching the game with other like-minded folk. It's biggest fund raiser each year, and preliminary figures show that we raised over $3K for our scholarship fund! The attendees really seemed to like the venue and the restaurant owner seemed really pleased as well. So a good day for everyone.

And the win also means that it’s almost certain that the Buckeyes will be playing in the Rose Bowl on January 1. At the beginning of the season, that was my hope. We really had no idea what to expect of this team. They had lost so many key players last year to graduation and early entry into the NFL that there was no way to know just how good or bad they would be. The fact that the team was ranked number one for several weeks until our unfortunate loss to Illinois last weekend was nothing I could have ever hoped for. Like many Buckeye fans, I thought that next year was when they would make a run for the national title. Anyway, there is a very slim chance that they could still play for the BCS title, but too many things would have to happen to make it more than a remote possibility. So Rose Bowl, it is likely to be. It’ll be great to have the Buckeyes in town. And since they’re scheduled to play USC here in LA in the 2008 season, that’ll be twice in one calendar year! How cool is that?!

And Then There Was One...

I had actually thought up the title for this post prior to last Saturday’s game and loss to Illinois. Now it occurs to me that it still is apropos – the Buckeyes now have one loss, but there is still one game to go. One game for all the marbles - Big Ten title, Rose Bowl birth, bragging rights. And as everyone in the Buckeye Nation knows, Saturday’s game, The Game, is the one that really matters. The E=mails and the rhetoric are already flying in and around cyberspace as each side strives to outdo the other in displaying their scorn and disdain for the other side. Here's a particularly good one that landed in my inbox today:

For the uninitiated, the sign reflects the fact that Jim Tressel has only lost once to Michigan since he became the Buckeyes' head coach in 2001. We have every confidence that that streak continues on Saturday.

Despite the results of last Saturday’s game, or perhaps because of them, I think we have a very good chance to win. And should that come to pass, the Buckeyes would likely play in the Rose Bowl on January 1. Frankly, that’s what I had hoped for all along. They haven’t played in the Rose Bowl since 1997 (we won a thriller against Arizona State), and it would be very nice not to have to travel to see a game. On the other hand, as the president of the LA Alumni Club, a Rose Bowl would mean a lot of work for us. But it’s work we’d be more than happy to take on. Plus, it would be great practice for next year’s regular-season game against USC.

So come Saturday, I'll be at the bar watching the game with about 120 other crazed Buckeye fans, cheering our team on to victory. Well, my cheers will have to be silent as I can't risk straining my voice before Candlelight on December 1. But that will not dampen my enthusiasm one iota. We can do it!

GO BUCKS!!

It's Been Too Long

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve put up a new post, but I’ve been plenty busy. I can hear all of the chants of ‘excuses, excuses,’ but really, I’ve had a lot on my plate. Here’s a brief rundown:

I became president of Los Angeles Ohio State Alumni Club (OSULA) in August.

I’m looking for a new job as my current boss is retiring at the end of January. Sadly, the HR department has been of little to no help. It’s basically up to me to find my own position if I hope to stay with the company. Thus far, nothing yet, but I still have a little less than three months to go before she leaves and they show me the door too.

Candlelight rehearsals began in September. This is my sixth year in the employee choir, one of many that perform an annual Christmas program at Disneyland the first weekend in December. Someone was kind enough to post a snippet of last year’s performance on Youtube. If you look very, very closely at the bottom row of what we call the tree – the green-robed singers in the center of the stage – you can catch a glimpse of me. I’m on the right side of the very bottom row of the tree, the second person if you count back from the center. If you’ll notice, there is a tall candle in the center at the bottom of the tree, and I’m the person just to the right of it. It would be impossible know that’s me if you, well, didn’t know that it was me. As we are placed on the tree by height, I will likely be on the bottom row again or one row up. I’m too tall to ever be any higher than that. But as long as I can see our conductor, I don’t care where I stand.

Attended not one but two(!) Ohio State football games out of state. I traveled to Seattle in September for the game against the University of Washington and in October went back to Columbus for the Kent State game. Oh, and while in Columbus, also attended the Alumni Leaders Conference at OSU.

As usual, the college football season seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. There are only two more regular-season games for my beloved Buckeyes before we go to whatever bowl game we end up in. Before the season began, the best I thought I could hope for was that we would play in the Rose Bowl this year. In no way did I think that another MNC (aka mythical national championship) game might be a possibility this year. But as anyone who has been following college football this year knows, it’s been a bizarre year. Michigan loses to Applachian State the first week of the season. Notre Dame is currently 1-8, and lost to Navy for the first time since 1963! Defending ‘national champion’ Florida already has three losses. Pre-season favorites LSU and Oklahoma each have one loss, while another perennial favorite, USC, has two (so far!). Before we took over the number-one ranking, there were several weeks in a row in which the number one team lost. It’s been strange, to say the least.

I’ve never been a proponent of the current system in which attempts to pit the two best teams against each other in the MNC BCS bowl game. This season is a good example of all of the things that I don’t like about it. Before the season starts, the football writers and so-called experts decide who they think the ‘elite’ teams are. This year, those teams were LSU, Oklahoma and USC. The purpose of the BCS is to have the two best teams play each other, the winner achieving the MNC. Sounds good, but who determines who ‘deserves’ to play in that game? Well, there’s a complicated formula involving polls and power ratings that take in to consideration win-loss records and strength of schedule. But when you have a wacky year like this one in which the ‘best’ teams lose, you end up the Boston College, South Florida, Kansas and yes, Buckeye teams who manage not to lose and by their success make it impossible for the pundits to get the match up they want in that MNC game. (yes, I know that BC and SF have lost recently, but I think you get my drift). So for the last several weeks since Ohio State ascended to the top spot, we’ve had to listen to the grousing and complaining from the experts who are just mad because we’re seemingly preventing them from getting what they want. It’s like they’re a bunch of two-year-olds who have been denied a cookie and are threatening to hold their collective breath until they get their way.

So two weeks from today, Ohio State will have either won their last two games and be on their way to their second MNC game in a row, or the college football world outside of Ohio and the Big Ten Conference will breathe a collective sigh of relief that their little party can go on as planned with either LSU, Oregon or Oklahoma crowned as the champions of college football. We’ll see!

One last thing. Below is a brief video that I recorded after the OSU/Washington game. At the end of each game, the team comes over to the stands and sings the alma mater with the band. The regular band was not able to be there, so a group of alumni band members played at the game, and that's who you'll hear playing along. Enjoy!