When it was announced that Penn State would be joining the Big Ten beginning with the 1993 football season, Buckeye Nation had already figured that regardless of records, the yearly battle with the Nittany Lions would usually rank second only to the Michigan game. In fact, to this day Penn State and TBGUN remain Ohio State’s two ‘protected’ Big Ten

In his book “The Big One”, a game-by-game history of the Ohio State/Michigan rivalry, author Bill Cromartie felt that only on three occasions from the end of World War II until 1987 had “THE GAME” been upstaged. In 1950, the legendary “Snow Bowl” game was played (although it never should have been) in a blizzard. This didn’t keep over 50,000

In 1955, Ohio State had followed up their national championship season of ’54 with another outright Big Ten title, although they were denied a second straight Rose Bowl trip due to the league’s “no repeat” rule. “Hop” Cassady had won the school’s third Heisman Trophy, and things couldn’t have been any better for Woody Hayes and his charges. But the

Whenever a sports fan, writer or broadcaster comes up with some “all-time greatest” list or countdown, there’s always a tendency for the list to skew to modern times. As seasons pass and years roll, records are broken and memories of yesteryear’s heroes fade. In this day and age of 24-hour sports channels on TV, a good portion of airtime is

A big part of Ohio State’s football tradition is its pantheon of great offensive players, including five Heisman Trophy-winning running backs, not to mention two other runners and an offensive tackle that were Heisman runners-up. The galaxy of stars from “Chic” Harley to Troy Smith is bright, but Ohio State has always had a constant thread of defensive excellence as

Ohio State has not had many rollercoaster seasons like 1990. They had bounced back from a three-game skid and headed into Iowa City, unbelievably, with a chance to get back into a Big 10 race that they had been all but written out of just a month earlier. The Buckeyes had gotten off to a slow start in the opener

Ohio State had been rolling along with a dream 1964 season as the calendar flipped to November. They were 6-0 and ranked #2 in the country, just behind resurgent Notre Dame, and only two sub-.500 teams- Penn State (still an independent at the time) and Northwestern- stood between OSU and a showdown in the ‘Shoe with TBGUN for the Big

It had been a generation since Ohio State had a new football coach. Seven U.S. Presidents had served while Woody Hayes stalked the OSU sidelines. America had gone from “I Love Lucy” and the Korean War to disco and Iran. Now, as the Buckeyes finished off the winningest decade in school history (the 1970’s would produce 91 wins, which would

With 18 starters returning and a boatload of senior experience at their disposal, Ohio State was a no-brainer pick to win the Big Ten in 2008, but the jury was still out on their national standing. Back-to-back BCS Championship game losses had, fairly or not, made the Buckeyes the main whipping-boy for the entire Big Ten, a league that was