O-H-I-O H-A-T-E

The presents are unwrapped, the tree is looking a little brown, and you’ve spent most of the day unsuccessfully attempting to hide in a dark room. After a day of gluttony, you are now preparing for some leftover alchemy to continue to fuel your expanding waistline. The kids (if you’re so blessed/cursed) have played with their new stuff all day and are now SUUUUUPER bored and trying to set the house on fire. You drank about 3 too many glasses of eggnog last night and the aspirin hasn’t managed to quell the jackhammering in your brain. It’s the day after Christmas, and it’s time to put away all “good will towards man” and focus on the enemy. The nuts from Ohio are looking to keep Clemson out of our rightful place in the CFP Championship Game. Let’s get to the hating.

Urban Meyer:

Plutarach wrote a book a long time ago (like before the internet at least) called “How to Tell a Flatter From a Friend.” In it he states, “Beware of one who is too eager to seem a friend and who works too hard at gaining your trust.”

Urban Meyer spent his transition year between Florida and Ohio St., ahem, I mean, his year where he focused on getting his heartburn under control and hanging out with his family (except when he was gone every weekend working for ESPN) fawning all over Clemson. He loved Dabo. He loved Chad Morris. He loved everything about Clemson. I’m fairly certain he had a tiger paw tattooed on his left butt cheek…..and we (at least some of us) ate it up. The Clemson message boards were filled with “Urban Meyer gets it!” and “Urban Meyer is the best announcer in college football!” posts. Meanwhile, Urban was developing his plan for Ohio State to become “Clemson of the Midwest” and he wanted our coaches and recruits to make it happen. That’s right, while Urban was flattering our program; he was taking notes on our recruiting and writing love letters to Chad Morris. My inside sources managed snap a picture of one of these letters when Urban got up to use the bathroom and get some nachos (wait, I thought he had a career ending case of GERD) at halftime of one of our games.

Dearest Chad,

It’s Urban again. The more I watch your offense, the more I fall in love. You remind me of a young me, and there is no one I love more than myself. I’m just worried that your talents are being wasted on these yokels in Clemson. I know, Chad, I know, you’re a loyal guy, but let me tell you, loyalty is as worthless as telling the truth in college football.

Look how I played Florida. I brought in Tebow and surrounded him with a squad of criminals. I won a bunch of games, and then when Tebow graduated and I couldn’t use him to distract people from all the arrests and failed drug tests, I got “sick” and got out of town one step ahead of the posse. Now that clown Muschamp is left with a bunch of strung out guys that have never been disciplined in their lives. I didn’t have any loyalty to Florida, and look, I’m just sitting in this booth waiting to take over Ohio State, and I want you to come with you.

Think about it Chad, you could be done with this Dabo guy and his “discipline” and play for a real winner like me. We’re going to need a quarterback, so if you could bring that Watson kid with you I would appreciate it.

Watson is a great kid. We can use him like I used Tebow at Florida; to both win games and get us positive press while the rest of the team wreaks havoc in Columbus. Player arrested for stalking his girlfriend and sending threatening text messages? Suspend him for a game against Southwest North Dakota State Tech and have the press run a story about Watson building a Habitat home…problem solved.

Anyway Chad, I’ve got to get back to calling this game and stroking these hicks’ egos, but please, just think about it. I’ll be thinking about you.

Love Always,

Urban

Urban Meyer spent a season flattering Clemson, knowing the entire time that he was going to try and take what we had built as soon as he had the opportunity…and for this (and a bunch of other stuff) I hate him.

Below: Have you seen Chad?

Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

The Big 10:

I actually write for Purdue’s SB Nation site. If you follow me on twitter (twitter plug Drew Schneider @drewtigeralum) you’ll see a weird mash up of Clemson and Purdue tweets. Subsequently, I watch a bunch of Big 10 games, and let me tell you, the Big 10 finally figured out the SEC formula this year. You take 2 good teams (Ohio State and Michigan) two flawed teams (Penn St. and Wisconsin) and then fill in the rest with run of the mill bad football teams.

The key to this strategy is bad quarterback play. You can’t beat a good team without a good quarterback. Subsequently, if there are no good quarterbacks in your league, the good teams are safe at the top. I’ll give Ohio State credit, they went on the road and beat a bi-polar Oklahoma team with Baker Mayfield, but after that, the only team with a decent quarterback they faced was Penn State, and they lost. Wisconsin took them to overtime with 3* freshman Alex Hornibrook going 16-28, 1 TD and 1 INT. Michigan State played them to a 1 point game with Tyler O’Connor going 6/16 for 105 yards, 1td and 2ints. Michigan almost beat them with a one armed Wilton Speight going 23/36 for 214 and 2 TDs and 2 INTs and, and probably would have beaten them, if not for a couple of mind numbingly stupid throws that resulted in the INTs.

Here is the Big 10’s secret. It’s the same secret that the SEC has attempted to hide for years. Their top teams get to play a bunch of offensively inept teams and then get to beat their chest and talk about their dominant defense. It’s easy to play defense when the other team can’t throw the ball. It’s easy to stuff the run when you can walk both of your safeties into the box and dare the other teams mediocre quarterback to beat you with his mediocre receivers on the outside. I’ve watched bad Big10 football all year while hearing about how great Big10 football is, and I hate it.

Below: J.T. Barrett goes airborne to defeat a 3-8 M.S.U. team by 1.

Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images

The Ohioan Uniform:

Did you go to a beach in South Carolina this summer? I did, and I kept running into the same guy,. He wears knee length cargo jean shorts, a braided leather belt, a grey tank top that doesn’t contain his side moobs, and a faded O.S.U. tattoo on his grey right shoulder. Let’s delve a little deeper into this sad creature known as an Ohioan and his uniform.

The jean shorts are the staple of any Ohioan wardrobe. These jean shorts are not to be confused with the Florida jort. The Florida jort is an organic creation caused by the erosion of fabric due to submersion in swamp water. True Floridians start out with jeans, and they slowly dissolve into jorts. The Ohio jean short is a different animal. These are shorts are made with denim so thick they double as body armor. They are designed to fall mid knee, giving the appearance that they aspired to be actual jeans, but gave up early.

The cargo pockets are the true key to the Ohio jean short. Much like kangaroos, the male Ohioan actually carries their offspring in his cargo pocket for the fist year of their life. The braided leather belt is a necessity if you’re going to carry around more than 50 pounds in your shorts pocket. This belt is made for both strength and endurance. If one strand snaps, the other strands hold fast until another braided belt can be procured. If you meet a guy wearing this short and belt combination, there is a 90% chance he is from Ohio. There is a 10% chance he is from Indiana, but lives close to the Ohio border.

The stretched out tank top is another must have for any Ohioan. This tank top might have started out grey, but it’s now the color of sadness. This tank top never leaves an Ohioan’s body. He is presented with his tank top on his 21^st birthday in a strange coming of age ceremony that includes eating a bathtub full of Skyline Chili. Once an Ohioan puts on his tank top he never takes it off. He eats, sleeps, and bathes in it, which is how it develops its grey, deathly color. It doesn’t matter how much weight an Ohioan gains, the tank top is never removed. His gut hangs out of the bottom and his prodigious moobs flop out of the side in a truly horrifying display. If an Ohioan ever loses his tank top, he is banished from Ohio and disowned by his people.

Finally, every Ohioan has a faded O.S.U. tattoo on his right shoulder. This isn’t a Terrelle Pryor, professional level tattoo, but instead, a faded mess of red and green. The tattoo looks like it was done by a guy named “Shaky” Pete who may or may not have been fighting through a bad case of the DT’s during its application. This tattoo, and its faded, nearly indiscernible appearance, only draws attention to the strange shade of grey skin only obtained those who spend more than 30 years in Ohio. It is a little known fact (Ohio tries to hide this information) that the sun only shines in Ohio for a total of 2 weeks a year. The rest of the time, a thick layer of Virginia Slim and Marlboro Red smoke blocks out the sun. This unique combination of grey skies and cigarette smoke combine to produce the unnatural grey tones of an Ohioan’s skin.

I love the beaches in South Carolina, but I have a hard time enjoying them when I’m surrounded by Ohio ugly, and I really hate that.

Below: The Ohio jean short....cargo pockets are smaller during non-child carrying years.

Dotting the “i”, Spelling Ohio, and Brutus Buckeye:

Is there any sport “tradition” more over hyped than dotting the “i” in Ohio? You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t get super pumped up by Sousaphone player goose-stepping across the field to finish the spelling of a 4-letter word and then taking a dramatic bow like he’s really accomplished something important. Honestly, I attempted to watch “the dotting of the eye” on YouTube a few times to make sure I hated it and I kept falling asleep in my chair. The “dotting of the “i” ranks slightly ahead of the “extinguishing of the chicken” and slightly behind “long lines at the concession stand” in terms of college football traditions in my book.

Inevitably, when 4 people from the state of Ohio end up in the same place, they get together and try to figure out how to spell Ohio with various body parts. Now, we already know that they are from Ohio because of their Ohio uniform and grey skin but they want to make sure we all know that people from Ohio know how to spell Ohio. The process of 4 Ohioans getting together to spell Ohio is often fraught with violence. There have been over countless disputes, often leading to murder, over who gets to prestigious first O position and who is relegated to the ignominy of being the final O.

Finally, let’s talk about Brutus Buckeye. The tree species Aesculus glabra is the inspiration for the Ohio State mascot. The Aesculus glabra produces a fruit known as a buckeye, that all Ohioan’s love. Much like Ohio St. fans, the Aesculus glabra is not something that you want around your property.

The USDA provides this warning regarding buckeyes, “ The Ohio Buckeye is highly toxic when taken internally. All parts of the plant (leaves, bark, fruit) are highly toxic if ingested – because of the glycoside aesculin, the saponin aescin, and possibly alkaloids.”

That’s right; Brutus Buckeye is the personification of a poisonous fruit that causes things like diarrhea, vomiting, ataxia, and paralysis. I can’t think of a better representative of Ohio St. football.

Below: Follow me to the “i” it’s going to be super exciting!

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

Woody Hayes:

It wouldn’t be a Clemson v Ohio St. article if I didn’t mention Woody Hayes. I will start by saying 1 nice thing about Woody Hayes. He was a good football coach…and now I’m done with nice.

Woody Hayes was a bully with a hot temper who had no qualms about putting his hands on people. Hayes would never make it in coaching today, not because he was “politically incorrect” but because he couldn’t stop hitting people. In 1959, after a loss, Hayes threw a punch at a reporter, missed, and hit another reporter. In 1965 he had to be restrained from going after Iowa’s athletic director. In 1971 he went full nuclear after what he thought was a bad call in the Michigan game. He tore up sideline markers, threw a penalty flag into the crowd, and threw a first down marker. Before the 1973 Rose Bowl he shoved a camera into the face of a photographer. In 1977 he went after an ABC cameraman during a game after an Ohio St. fumble.

Finally, in the 1978 Gator Bowl, after Clemson nose guard Charlie Bauman intercepted a pass and was run out of bounds on the Ohio State sideline, Woody Hayes punched him the throat, starting a bench clearing ball, during which, Hayes went after a referee, and then turned on his own player that was attempting to restrain him. Ohio State would go on to lose the Gator Bowl to Clemson and Hayes would subsequently be relieved of his coaching duties. Hayes never owned up to punching Bauman and said he was just “trying to grab the ball away”.

Along with these easily verifiable incidents, according to the 1994 HBO documentary “American Coaches: Men of Vision and Victory” Hayes was reportedly placed on “probation” by Ohio State for punching one of his own players during practice.

Woody may be a legend in the coaching community, but his on and off the field actions brought disgrace to Ohio State and college football in general.

Below: I don’t have a good pic of Woody (that I can use), but I’m sure someone can find one.