Why the SEC (and everyone else) is sick of Ohio State football

Ohio State football and their overbearing leader, Urban Meyer, are among some of the most despised names in college football, and I’m going to tell you why.

Let me open by saying that I’m not singling out Ohio State or their coach. This is not a personal attack or a manifesto of Buckeye destruction. This is merely meant to serve as an explanation as to why fans from all over the nation –particularly the SEC — put Ohio State at or near the top of their most-hated list.

And they do. You know it, Buckeyes…and essentially, you deserve it.

The day that many of us have feared for years is now upon us. Ohio State is once again playing for a college football national championship. And those of us who are singularly and wholly tired of the Buckeye Nation are in a lose-lose situation.

The moment the final gun sounded last week, and the Buckeyes had taken down mighty Alabama and purged the championship game of the SEC, it started.

Every miserable fan in scarlet turned into an Eddie Murphy schoolyard brat caricature and began dancing about as if the ice cream man had only stopped at their home. I have colleagues who are Ohio State fans, and for the most part, they are sane and reasonable human beings.

But give the Buckeyes football program some success, and its as if a microchip planted inside their brain is suddenly activated and they lose all grasp of reality and reason.

Look, it’s great that the Big Ten is getting better and has a shot at the title…but did it have to be THE Ohio State University? (More on that annoying habit later).

Paranoia run amok.

If they manage to upset Oregon and win the national championship, it all just gets worse. Once that trophy is handed to Feldwebel Meyer, the choruses of “the greatest college football program in the history of ever” will be inevitable.

Should they lose, the conspiracy theorists that are convinced that ESPN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the SEC, the CIA, Congress, AA, AAA, and the AARP are all aligned against Ohio State in an effort to suppress their overwhelming opulence will come crawling out again and fill our timelines with ghastly tripe.

Their fans are among the most misinformed and paranoid you’ll ever see. They’re like the Fox News of college football fandom. Everything good that happens to them is because they are the chosen ones, and everything bad is a result of the world being against them.

And let’s just talk about this “THE” Ohio State University nonsense. Really? We need that ridiculous modifier with all the undo emphasis? Why? Explain this to me. It’s not as if there is another university in the state of Ohio competing for the rights to your name. So again, why the paranoia?

There’s a university in the state of Florida in the same situation. They have a “the” in front of their name (officially) but yet nothing drives Seminole fans to shout gleefully “We are THE Florida State University”.

Just drop the pretentiousness of the whole thing. You’re Ohio State, or Ohio State University. Nobody else wants to be you, so quit trying to set yourself apart from an imaginary sister school.

Save some piousness for Notre Dame.

And when it comes to fan bases who are basking in their own righteousness, Ohio State takes the cake. Just try to put together a list of best fans using any quantifier you want. It could be the best fans who wear Birkenstock sandals to games and play vuvuzelas in harmony…Ohio State fans will blast you for them not being on that list.

Look, Buckeyes, you’re not the greatest fans in the world (here’s a secret…nobody’s are). You have absurd fringe fans and disloyal bandwagoners just like everyone else. And although most schools lay claim to having the greatest fans in the world, they generally do it internally…they don’t proclaim it as gospel for all the world to hear.

Stop trying to impress us. It will never work.

As for your coach, Urban Meyer, he’s just a chameleon who happens to hide himself in scarlet and gray at the moment. Stop propping him up as the state of Ohio’s savior. He’s a good coach. He’s going to help your program win, and then (get ready for the gasps)…he’ll move on.

Gator fans, back me up on this.

He’s like Mary Poppins, stopping in where he’s most needed, sprinkling a little magic and singing a few catchy tunes, until unexplained pains and bigger paychecks blow his frilly parasol in a different direction.

But it’s your desperation for some attention and some undeserved credit that are the most infuriating. Yes, you have a good team this year. Congratulations. However, one good season does not wipe out over a decade of football tossed salad containing mediocrity, scandals, and curb-stompings by the SEC. Stop pretending it didn’t happen.

How desperate are the Buckeyes? Their coach had rings made up for a championship they never won for Pete’s sake! So you went undefeated in 2012. That’s nice. You were on probation. Why? Because you cheated. Part of getting your wrist slapped meant no postseason, no bowls, no championships and (this may unravel some of you) no stinking rings!

So Urban Meyer has big fat gaudy rings made up to celebrate the fact that you didn’t lose any games during a season in which you had nothing to lose. That is the definition of desperation.

But God, if they win…

I’m not sure the football world can bear it if the Buckeyes win this game. The fallout will be fantastical and surreal.

Their retribution will be the equivalent of overbearing brats with slingshots in the back pockets of their Osh-Kosh overalls, skipping around the playgrounds of America, attempting to turn the tables on the bullies by blowing one-finger snotballs and proclaiming triumph.

Yet they’ll view themselves as William Wallace.

Perhaps some good could come if it. Maybe Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard would actually come to blows on College GameDay. E-Ticket material there.

Either way, please give up your self-appointed status as the most wonderful and loyal group of college football fans to ever leave a footprint on the earth. Alabama fans are disgusting, arrogant, profane, crude, miserable rednecks…but they don’t try to hide it. They hold their foulness in high regard, out for the whole world to get a big fat sniff. There isn’t this phony, plastic piety and smug indignation anytime their genuineness is questioned

You’re Eddie Haskell in a red toboggan cap and ugly mukluks. Disingenuous to the core, and that’s why we’re sick of you.