I spent more than half of my childhood living one hour from the biggest college town in America.
Columbus, Ohio, has become the largest city in the state and has been the state capitol since early in the 19th century. It’s a metropolitan area of more than 2.1 million people, but more than anything else, it’s a college town.
I saw a stunning statistic a few years back. A survey of Columbus adults said that nearly 90 percent of them had attended at least one Ohio State University football game in their life, and more than 50 percent said that OSU football was their main topic of conversation with their friends — year-round.
There are few football programs that can compare with OSU. The Buckeyes have won eight national championships, including as recently as 2014. Until an upset loss in the snow at Michigan yesterday, they were strongly in the running for a spot in this year’s four-team playoff.
One of the best friends I ever had was a rabid Ohio State fan. Tom died in August 2016 of a brain aneurysm. He had tickets to that year’s OSU-Michigan game that upcoming November.
So OSU won’t be in the running for the national title this year, but as a top 10 team, the Buckeyes will almost certainly be in one of the New Year’s Day games. Maybe even the Rose Bowl, which for many years as the ultimate goal for any of the Big Ten conference teams.
Saturday was the first time since 2011 that the Bucks lost to the School Up North.
It’s funny. The last year we lived in Ohio was 1962, and one thing started happening that was sort of funny. The word out of Columbus was that the official name of the state’s primary public university was not “Ohio State University,” it was “THE Ohio State University.”
I was just in junior high then, but I remember we laughed about it.
I was surfing through the Amazon website the other day, though, and I saw that the fuss about “THE” apparently never went away. Following is one of the OSU flags you can buy.
Some things never change.