The Pattern is Full (but there’s room for quality)

There was a moment when I realized that going to see Maverick was a good choice. It was when Maverick stood outside the bar he’d just been thrown out of and watched through the window as Rooster played the piano and sang Great Balls of Fire just like his father did in 1986. In that moment, we saw for the first time the humanity of an older, wiser, more world weary, more flawed, more filled with regret Pete Mitchell. But none of that would stop Pete from doing what he’s always done best, which is just be the best. 

It’s a good place to find him. Many of us loved what Maverick did in 1986, but we also knew that Maverick did not have the attributes of someone who was destined to play the role of his superiors like Viper in Top Gun….or even the role that peers like Iceman would assume. 

Mav has regrets, but it doesn't cause him to question what he does better than anyone else.  Nor does it cause him to temper that drive to do it when he knows it will cost him. And damn, maybe a movie about dogfighting in a fighter plane is a throwback to another era, and damn if that isn’t still a lot of fun, but doing what you know you are right about when the wind is blowing way too hard in another direction is exactly the kind of movie we need to get excited about right now. 

See Top Gun Maverick. See it multiple times. Turn your brain off and have fun, but also hear that voice that tells you that you may be the only person that knows what to do when everybody else is mired in bureaucracy and covering their own ass.  That’s what we’ve had more than enough of. That’s what I’ve had more than enough of. 

Go Bucks!

A long time ago the Big Empty editor in chief (yours truly) gave a very eloquent, thoughtful and reasoned explanation as to why he hates the University Of Michigan athletic program and why you should too.  It's a two-part series that serves as a reminder of things that can easily be overshadowed by decades of success.  What he also promised in that series begun 8 years (and counting) ago, was a promise to share the story of how a native New Englander (whose heart still resides there) became an Ohio State Buckeye Fan after moving to Ohio.  On the heels of Ohio State's first loss to the University Of Michigan since that series was written, it is now appropriate to pick this up and carry on.  Here now, is Pt 3.

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It was some time in the third week of November 1992 that I was asked a simple enough question: "who are you rooting for?"  I had graduated from high school in Hamden Ct. 5 months earlier and began my college career at Heidelberg University (then Heidelberg College) in Tiffin Ohio at the end of the summer.  GO STUDENT PRINCES!  In Connecticut, our home team for college sports was the University of Connecticut Huskies and that is a basketball school and markedly not a football school.  If we wanted to get pumped about college football in Connecticut, we could root for Rutgers I suppose.  They were kinda good back then in a not so memorable way.  We could get excited about Yale, which is rich in football tradition and has a great tailgate environment.  Or we could jump on a bandwagon and root for Miami (the one that isn't in Ohio), Florida State, or USC.  If you just cared about football however you could get it, well the Patriots were horrid then and endured a few winless seasons even IIRC (which I may not, but there was definitely at least one winless season and I recall the season ticket holders showing up to games with paper bags over their heads).  The Giants!  They were good.  Phil Simms! Bill Parcells!  LT!!!  So there you had it.  If you wanted local football greatness, look no further than the Giants...and if you did look further, the view wasn't pretty.

That was my mindset when I was asked the question that would influence Fall Saturdays for the rest of my life.  

Dorm buddy: "So?

Me: "What?"

Dorm Buddy: Who you rootin for Saturday?

Me: Does it matter?

Dorm Buddy and a couple of other people who's antenna were suddenly up: "WTF DO YOU MEAN 'DOES IT MATTER?!'  YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE DO YOU?  YOU'RE INVOLVED NOW."

Me: Ok.  Well I live in Ohio now so Go Bucks!  Screw blue!

Assembled crowd: "whooo!.........I like this guy.......You're alright........" with a couple of "boo, bad choice" type comments thrown in.

And they were right.  Whether I knew it or not, I was involved.  It reminded me of how fellow New Englanders get when it comes to the Yankees vs Red Sox...it's the kind of thing where upon meeting someone, a friendship is either born or never will be.

I didn't care who John Cooper, Gary Moeller or Kirk Herbstreit were at the time.  John Cooper just might be the second most famous coach in the history of Ohio State football, and for all of the worst reasons.  His record was fine: 112-43-2.  But his record against Michigan in those 13 years was 2-10-1(emphasis on the 1 is mine, I'll explain).  Prior to The Game in 1992, Cooper had played Michigan 4 times in his horrific tenure and his record against Michigan was 0-4.  On November 21, 1992, the Michigan Wolverines traveled to Columbus Ohio to meet the Ohio State Buckeyes for their 89th iteration of The Game and the two teams played to a tie.  Ohio State University President Gordon Gee referred to it as a "great victory."  That tells you a lot about the state of affairs at the time.  So in a way, the Heidelberg freshman from Connecticut was a good omen right?  Things were trending in the right direction right?

Well no.  Not really.  Not yet anyway.

Over the next 8 years, I watched very promising Buckeye teams lose to Michigan 6 of those times.  Some of those Michigan teams were lousy all season only to look like a super bowl team when they played the Buckeyes.  How could that be?  It didn't make sense.  But the worst part of it was how insane it felt to watch those games.  In college, the Wolverines would score to go ahead, and just as that dagger pierced my soul, all the UM fans would be yelling and screaming running up and down the dorm hallways pounding on the room doors saving their most intense pounding for any door that had a block O on it.  Damm were they ruthless.  Cooper's most upsetting defeats occurred in 1993, 1995, and 1996 when OSU entered The Game undefeated and ranked in the top 5.  Two of those three losses cost Ohio State a trip to the Rose Bowl, at the time the Holy Grail of College Football.  After college I married into a family that has no shortage of Wolverine fans in it and with the exception of 1998, they made sure to let us know all year long that the Buckeyes lost to their team again.  When asked why they were so quiet that one year, one of them said "because Michigan played like Ohio State instead of like Michigan."  Wow.  Come up with that yourself did you?  By now I cared about who John Cooper was and I'd had enough of him and his "Michigan is just another game" mentality.

How badly I just wanted to see how THEY would handle losing on a regular basis.  Let them see how this feels for an entire year, only to have their hopes dashed again.....and then again the next year....and then again the next year...all the while spending the other 364 days in between each heartbreaker being reminded that their team sucks by a fan in scarlet. 

January 18, 2001.  Enter Jim Tressel being introduced as the new head coach at Ohio State during halftime at a basketball game between OSU and the University of Michigan:

"I assure you that you will be proud of our young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially in 310 days, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.......on the football field" is a long cry from "just another game."  Brings a tear to my eye.  And boy oh boy did Tressel deliver a nice freaking tall glass of Shut-The-Fuck-Up!!!!!!! to all of the loud mouth obnoxious Michigan fans that I'd grown to know and love over the last 9 years.  For the next 9 years, I got to watch The Game confident that Michigan fans would once again spend the Winter, Spring, Summer and most of the Fall wandering in the wilderness wondering if they would ever beat the Buckeyes again.  For this he will always hold a very special place in my heart.  It was just icing on the cake that he delivered a national championship in 2002, took a selfie with my daughter much later while she was a student during his tenure as the YSU President, and then shook her hand while delivering her diploma to send her on to medical school.

As of this writing, the University of Michigan Wolverines have beaten the Ohio State Buckeyes exactly 4 times in the 21st century. One of those victories occurred in 2021. You have to go back 10 years to find the last time this happened. UM fans, the same ones who were so chirpy back when I was in college, were so incredibly beautifully quiet and humble over the last 20 years. But humble and quiet isn’t the nature of the skunk weasel, and one brief moment in the sun has launched them back to type at breakneck speed. The rivalry which inspired this Big Empty posting trilogy was comatose, and fans on both sides were having a sincere debate about whether or not pulling the plug was the accurate and even humane thing to do.  Not so fast folks.  Miracles are real.  Just ask Jim Tressel or any Ohio State fan in November of 2001. 

Ohio State fans allowed themselves adopt a John Cooper mentality, treating Thanksgiving weekend like it was “just another game.”  A funny thing happened on the way to the funeral.  The Buckeyes showed up for a moment of silence, and the Wolverines showed up for revenge.  I didn’t like it, but I like their reaction to it.  Without that 2021 iteration of The Game, you don’t see the Buckeyes string together a glorious Rose Bowl comeback.  And without it, you wouldn’t get the awesome spectacle that will take place this fall in the Shoe.  I for one am here for it.  Ohio State and Michigan fans are blessed to play in a Super Bowl of their own making every single year. Long live the rivalry. Long live The Game!