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?!