I’m not an Ohio State fan, but I’m in love with Ohio State

I am not an Ohio State fan by any means. I have seen my teams lose violently to the Buckeyes too many times. I have met Ohio State fans, and well ... let’s just say my experiences are primarily negative.

And yet I can’t recall a college football team I’ve wanted to watch more than this year’s Ohio State squad, a garden of destructive flowers each capable of ruining an opponent in its own way.

Ohio State’s 2014 was one of the most fascinating championship runs in recent college football memory, as the Buckeye Hydra kept getting its quarterback heads chopped off and kept growing new ones.

Ohio State’s 2015, however it ends, is something equally fascinating: all those heads, with each spitting its own brand of fire. Perhaps there’s a Hercules out there capable of slaying this beast. Until then, I want to watch it lay waste to everything in its path.

Cardale Jones! A conspiracy theorist once told me a lie about Switzerland: that although it acts neutral, it’s prepared for any form of war, and that it has a stockpile of nuclear weapons stored in giant man-built caves in the Alps where the rest of the world wouldn’t care to look. I did not believe this until I saw Jones, a mountain with built-in nuclear weapons. I am glad the Buckeyes chose to go with the untackleable giant with a trebuchet who slings flame-rocks 40 yards with no effort.

Opposing fans have taken to calling Jones stupid and making jokes about his spelling and reading ability because of something he tweeted in 2011. My first instinct is to lambaste these people for their unoriginality. In the four years since, Jones has proved he’s smarter and funnier than the idiots with the “COME TO PLAY SCHOOL” signs.

But then I feel bad for them. What do you do when you see the Death Star approaching your planet? You know your demise is imminent, so you might as well spend your last few moments making fun of something, like the Stormtroopers’ dorky-looking uniforms. “They look like such goofba- [/death ray destroys planet].

Zeke Elliott! When Nick Saban can’t stop you, that’s when they gotta start coming up with rules about your clothing. No, it won’t prevent you from destroying the souls of everybody you encounter, but at least they won’t have to look at your six-pack before and after the soul-destruction.

Braxton Miller! Gosh, you look better at wide receiver than most wide receivers!

Two things are fun about watching great receivers: the “Wow, he just got that ball” factor, and the “Wow, he just ended that defender’s life” factor. In his first-ever outing at receiver, Miller displayed both. He showed great hands with a diving snag on his first reception, and later sent Virginia Tech’s entire defense straight to hell:

That’s one of the great spin moves of all time. He doesn’t break speed. He never gets touched. One instant he’s where he’s supposed to be, the next he’s five yards away and running in a different direction. I think my colleague Zito did a spectacular job writing about this spin move, but the person I really want to hear describing how this person started out in one place and ended up in a different place is Michael Caine from The Prestige.

He has no trick. It’s real magic.

J.T. Barrett! You’re a Heisman-worthy quarterback, and on this team, you’re boring! That’s wild and unfair, to you and every other team in the world. Well, I guess it isn’t that unfair to you, because you get to win.

I’m not even going to talk about the weaponized heat-seeking missiles of Ohio State’s linebacking corps, led by Raekwon McMillan. We didn’t even get to see the briefly suspended Joey Bosa, a defensive end so dominant that he is famous for shrugging.

Ohio State is a cornucopia of things other teams wish they had.

I don’t know if Ohio State will win the national championship. This is college football, and crazy things happen. There is no better example of this than Ohio State, which just won a national title with its freakin’ third-string QB.

What I do know is that Ohio State is appointment viewing from here until January. I say this in spite of the fact that Ohio State’s schedule is a heaping pile of garbage supplied by one of our nation’s most wholesome garbage suppliers, the Big Ten.

Would I normally watch a great team drop 50 on Rutgers? No. But I will watch Ohio State drop 50 on Rutgers. Would I normally watch a great team shut out Illinois? No, but I will watch Ohio State shut out Illinois.