A numerical contest like a football game applies a crude but refreshing binary-ness to the world. You can either win or lose. Those are the options.
Sports lack nuance. There is nothing ambiguous about this:
The reductionism of sport brings the world into the kind of sharp, chiaroscuro relief that rarely exists outside of old Westerns. And like an old Gary Cooper movie, sports allow us to see the world laid bare, in the best and worse ways, and in so doing allow us to see broader life metaphors in the simplicity.
You should not be surprised to learn that the current life lesson from the Illini is not a sunny one.
The metaphor of the moment for Illini fans is that, though often you’d like to jump ahead to a later point in your life, that isn’t an option. You have to endure the hard stretches, even, and especially, when you already know what is going to happen through those stretches. Grinding through adversity isn’t a sign of toughness: there is no other option.
Illinois traveled to the Hoosier State on Saturday and took on Indiana in a game that resembled a live staging of a hypothetical question: what would football look like if it was played with two offenses but no defenses. It’s been six full weeks since the Illini won a game, and several calendars since they won a Big Ten matchup. Many, myself included, had flagged the trip to Bloomington as a winnable conference game, and not just because Indiana hosted Illinois’ last conference football win. Though Indiana had notched some wins, their method of winning was to replicate, as much as possible, a basketball score. Rack up a ton of points, let the opponent do the same, and hope for the best. This left the Hoosiers susceptible to Illinois, who, though certainly a struggling team, had shown the capacity to rack up offensive production.
This was a game many had been looking forward to. Illinois’ fans surely wanted to fast-forward after (and likely during) the brutal drubbing at the hands of Michigan State. Holding a lead with about five minutes to go in the Penn State game, there’s no question that Tim Beckmann and his squad would have loved to just skip to the end and call it a day, rather than have to play it out as the Nittany Lions tied the game, sent it to overtime, and eventually defeated Illinois in a game that Illinois had every opportunity to win and seized every opportunity to lose.
Illinois kept searching for the little button with the two rightward arrows, searching for a way to jump forward to the day when Illinois gets back into the conference win column. It cannot be done.
This must be experienced in real time:
And so on Saturday the Illini, behind a ton of offensive production, kept pace with Indiana and kept the score-trading even through 35 points. But some costly mistakes down the stretch gave Indiana a lead and Illinois couldn’t continue the point swaps through the 4th. When you put up 612 total yards of offense and lose, you can be sure that it was not a good outing for anyone’s defense.
So what can we learn from the Illini loss at Indiana? The fact that, in sports and in life, you have to let the clock run out, even though you really want to fast forward and be done with the whole thing. There are no shortcuts: you can’t skim through a chapter and just get to the end. Maddeningly, as time wound down on Saturday, Illinois did not in any sense seem to be in a hurry. Perhaps this was the sign that they had already absorbed the lesson they were teaching us, namely that suffering cannot be accelerated.
And oh how nice it would be to fast-forward a week. Illinois will host Ohio State next Saturday, for an 11 a.m. game. ESPN exercised the option to carry the game, presumably because of some kind of theoretical limit as to how much Lee Corso people can take before they are willing to watch anything, literally anything, else.
Rest assured that the game is not being nationally televised because anyone expects it to be competitive. Ohio State is a steamroller. Having not lost a game since hiring Urban Meyer as the coach at the beginning of last season, the Buckeyes still have a chip on their shoulder and a lot to prove. They were shut out of bowl play last year as part of the hats-for-tats scandal from Terrelle Pryor (who bailed on his teammates and the sanctions he wrought to go pro, and now is playing for the Oakland Raiders, so there is some justice short of the hereafter). Ohio State is currently ranked 3d in the national polls, moving up a spot in their bye week because of Oregon’s loss at Stanford.
But this isn’t just about the Buckeyes looking to make a statement that they would have been in contention for a National Championship last year: this is about this year and making a statement that the BCS committee should consider Ohio State for the championship game in this, the last year where teams won’t play into the big show.
Ahead of Ohio State in the polls are Alabama and Florida State. Ohio State and Florida State are both at scheduling disadvantages to Alabama, since neither has any ranked teams left on their regular season schedule.
Alabama has a lot of opportunities to continue to burnish their resume as the top team in the nation:
they will travel to top-10 Auburn to play the “Iron Bowl” (as that rivalry is called) for their final game of the regular season, not to mention the possibility of an SEC Championship game. Since I think Nick Saban is emblamatic of the scourge that is the professionalization of college athletics (and my sister and brother-in-law are both employed by Auburn) let me take this early opportunity to say WAR DAMN EAGLE.
As for the Buckeyes’ schedule, after Illinois, Ohio State will play Indiana and Michigan, and just beating either won’t impress the selection committee. Ohio State needs to make their case as a No. 2 team by beating their remaining teams and beating them badly, and then make a statement in the Big Ten Championship Game (where, based on the current landscape, Ohio State is almost certain to face Michigan State). Even that may not be enough, but it’s the minimum that Ohio State can do.
While the Buckeyes will continue to pray that Florida State stumbles, you can bet that they will be focused on the things that they can control. And that means not taking their foot off the accelerator, regardless of the score. Florida State has been trouncing opponents, so Ohio State needs to continue to do likewise to stay in the title game conversation.
Ohio State is currently favored by more than 4 touchdowns.
You can make that “F” stand for whatever you like, except “fast-forward”:
Illinois will travel to play Purdue the week after, and Purdue is really atrocious this year. Illinois has a legitimate shot and will likely be the favorite in that game. Really: can we fast-forward a week? Please?