Ohio State ends its SEC title curse and starts a new story
The Buckeyes knocked off No. 1 Alabama in New Orleans to advance to the first-ever College Football Playoff national championship, and now we all have to find something else to talk about.
NEW ORLEANS - When Cardale Jones threw that inexplicable pass 50 yards for an incompletion, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and his staff walked two yards onto the field of play to see if Ohio State's Evan Spencer or Alabama's Cyrus Jones made the catch.
“Incomplete. Incomplete. Incomplete,” a staffer said.
Up 42-35 with 1:50 remaining in the game, Ohio State just needed one first down, or to just run the ball and punt, but throw a contested ball into the end zone? Not that. Not a play that could recreate 2007 vs. LSU or 2008 vs. Urban Meyer’s Florida. Not anything that could risk killing the albatross.
The Buckeyes called timeout. Delany clapped with his fingers spread apart, like Les Miles. To his left was OSU president Michael Drake. Together the pair swayed, folded and unfolded their arms, and touched their faces to fidget away the time between plays. When Alabama sacked Jones to end the drive, Delany was stoic, hand on his chin. When the Buckeyes punted, he broke character.
“Let’s go! Let’s go baby!” Delany yelled.
When Blake Sims built completions and arrived at midfield, no one moved. To Delany's immediate left, the Ohio State bench was unhinged. Even freshman defensive lineman Dylan Thompson, still recovering from a season-ending broken kneecap, tossed his crutches in the air to gig the Buckeye crowd.
Alabama had 15 seconds.
“Two plays? Two plays, you think?” Delany asked the group.
Then Alabama had eight seconds, and then Tyvis Powell landed with an interception of Sims' Hail Mary.
After the back slaps and handshakes from passersby, Delany stood apart from the scarlet mob at midfield.
“I don’t know about the passing of a torch [from the SEC],” Delany said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for SEC football. UCLA [basketball] did it for a period of time. North Carolina had some good years when I was there. The Big Ten has certainly had their days and the SEC has had their day. Maybe it’s a new day. Who knows?
“There shouldn’t be a narrative each year. Each season is different, and this year we won some games. But certainly it’s a been a good New Year’s Day.”
Michigan State had come from behind to beat Baylor right after Wisconsin had knocked off Auburn in overtime, and now an Ohio State bowl that mattered vs. the SEC, and a win. In his moment to bask, the commissioner was as humble as that 42-35 final score might imply, and just as misleading.
This Sugar Bowl was not at all an Ohio State miracle. It was a garbled damnation of the SEC curse. Delany had the luxury of taking the high road. Ohio State had to beat Alabama and its league’s mystique to death in the most dramatic way possible, and that’s what it did.
- A third-string quarterback, Jones, put up 286 yards of total offense against the impregnable Nick Saban With A Month To Prepare. A 20-yard scramble on a third-and-eight. A 26-yard bullet against pressure on a third-and-10, and then another 26-yarder on the following third-and-nine.
- The Buckeyes opened on an 80-yard field goal drive, all on the ground, against a Bama defense that averaged 88 rushing yards allowed per game. The subsequent Alabama lead, as high as 15 at one point, was a function of Ohio State's errors. A fumble and an interception set up Tide touchdown drives of 33 and 15 yards.
- When Bama was forced to drive the field, it struggled on third downs (two of 13) without the safety net of Amari Cooper. The Heisman finalist finished with nine receptions for 79 yards and two TDs, but a combination of defensive line pressure and a rotation of brackets and bumps in by far the best scheme this year to contain the superstar made him invisible when needed most.
- Speed won again, but not as the incumbent. OSU's Ezekiel Elliot all but clinched the game on an 85-yard touchdown by flying past a seal of OSU blocks, but his 54-yard run in the first quarter was the most foreboding. Flushed out into the boundary on a sweep, Elliot turned a corner and leapt over a diving Landon Collins, then jetted down the right sideline. It was the kind of just-that-much-quicker play the SEC has built a cult message out of for a decade-plus.
"We knew we could beat Alabama as soon as we found out we were in the Playoff, as soon as we could watch the tape. I don't remember watching a team on film this year that could beat us," Buckeye defensive lineman Michael Bennett said.
Bennett stood alongside linemate Adolphus Washington, arm in arm, leaning on each other and watching confetti fly. It was their line, with three sacks and pressure to help create three interceptions, that altered the course of the opponent's game plan.
“I saw my teammates tonight. I saw them understand that the only reason we even trailed at halftime was because of our own stupid mistakes,” Bennet said.
“Brotherhood and trust, that got us through this thing today, but we knew we could beat them,” Washington said.
“We didn’t talk about the history of the SEC going in. I think Alabama is a great team. I just think we’re better,” Bennett said.
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The sheer concept of the Playoff -- the fact that OSU wouldn’t have even been here had this been a BCS season, the fact that hey, you beat the SEC but you’re not done yet, that you’ve got to play an Oregon that sliced through undefeated Florida State -- didn’t gel, at least in the early moments of postgame euphoria. The Ohio media so eagerly painted a SEC picture that Delany denounced, but the team happily filled it in.
“Growing up, all of my friends said, ‘I hope you never have to play Alabama, because you’ll lose.’ No. No. Nobody here ever believed that,” the players said.
“I don’t know about the sport being provincial,” Delany said. “The SEC has earned everything they’ve done the last seven to eight years. I always tip my hat to the guys who win. But to win games on New Year’s Day, it’s exciting. It’s a new cycle. It’s a new cycle for all of us. We’re happy to be included. And we’re a long way from September. We didn’t have any predictions, we just wanted to see the season play out. Our kids got a lot better and our coaches got a lot better.”
Just as the Superdome field cleared, Alabama’s players trickled from a tunnel in the north end zone. The Tide players, coaches and staff had to walk across the entire field to catch their bus at the southern side of the stadium. Each carried a boxed meal from Chick-fil-A in a white plastic grocery bag.
As they filed across midfield, two golf carts zipped past, causing the Tide players to change direction. One held a pair of Buckeye players holding the Sugar Bowl trophy, and the other a smiling Urban Meyer.
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