Ohio State Has Its SEC Skeptics as Team to End SEC's Title Run

Ohio State has never defeated a Southeastern Conference team in a bowl game. To hear some SEC folks, the day that changes, cows and other barnyard animals will fly from Gainesville to Baton Rouge, after stopping in Tuscaloosa for grits.

Saturday in the citadel of northern football -- Columbus, Ohio -- a longtime power from the New South will come calling on the Buckeyes. Although the Atlantic Coast Conference-dwelling Miami Hurricanes aren't to be confused with SEC heavies such as Alabama or Florida, they are ranked 12th in the country and represent precious opportunity for the Buckeyes.

Ohio State's only national title in the last 40 years owed to an upset of Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl. Should the No. 2 Buckeyes tame the Hurricanes again, as surely as sheep say 'baaah' the national media will cast Jim Tressel's team as prominent contenders to reach a third Bowl Championship Series title game in five years.

Expect the SECessionists to roll their eyes, whether Ohio State prevails or not. I know their skeptical look, for when I recently asked five SEC alums who play football whether any team could end the SEC's run of four consecutive national titles, Ohio State drew zero recognition as a viable choice to raise the crystal in Glendale, Ariz. in January, 2011.

The five players are members of the San Diego Chargers. Two, Brandon Siler and Jacob Hester, were starters on SEC champions that soundly beat Ohio State in a recent BCS title match.

"I would never say Ohio State," said the linebacker Siler (above), who also told FanHouse the SEC title streak "definitely" will reach five.

Hester bruised the Buckeyes as a tailback three Januarys ago in LSU's championship romp, the second of the SEC's four consecutive wins. When asked to ponder threats to the SEC's run, he never mentioned Ohio State. He chose Boise State, even before the No. 3 Broncos outpointed Virginia Tech on Monday. Told that the Buckeyes are ranked second, Hester shrugged. "They're always ranked second," he said.

"Put it this way," said Chargers wide receiver Buster Davis, an LSU alum. "If you put Ohio State in the middle of the SEC, what would they do?"

The skepticism from SEC alums in the NFL is polite compared to what Ohio State's best player, defensive end Cameron Heyward, has heard from his friends who play in the SEC. Not to mention the chatter from SEC fans near Heyward's home in Georgia.

Named as Georgia's Class 5A defensive player of the year in 2006, Heyward well knows that Florida trounced favored Ohio State in the 2007 BCS championship, Siler and his fellow Gators holding OSU to 82 total yards. A year later, Heyward played as a true freshman in New Orleans, against favored LSU. There, the Buckeyes gave up 31 consecutive points. Outside of the south, halftime was met with snoring.

Has Heyward been reminded of the whuppins' that the SEC boys put on the Buckeyes? Are there Waffle Houses in Georgia?

"I still have a bunch of friends that go to the SEC schools, and I hear from them about it, but I try not to pay attention to it at all," Heyward told FanHouse. "They always refer back to the national championships, and how the SEC has won it, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what they think."

For all the flak he takes from his fellow southerners, Heyward conveys no regrets about moving to Ohio. He said he also considered signing with Florida, which would win the SEC's third consecutive title by defeating Oklahoma; and LSU, which hasn't been back to the BCS title game since it beat Ohio State. The homestate Bulldogs also wooed him.

"I thought Ohio State had more to offer," Heyward (right) said in late August, after the team's final scrimmage. "They weren't just worried about football. It was preparing me for life. It just felt like a family here, with all of the tradition that goes around here."

He added, "If we take care of all of our games, we'll be in Glendale at the end of the day."

As Buckeyes senior guard Justin Boren spoke likewise, I could hear groans from fans in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana. Even Idaho.

"I think we're capable of winning it all," Boren told me. "If we don't make mistakes and we play 12 good ballgames, I think we definitely should be in the national championship. But that's not how football works. You have to go out there every day and perform."

January is as distant now to SEC teams and Ohio State as is the Yukon, given the unpredictably of a college football season.

Indulge for a moment, though, the prospect of Ohio State reaching Glendale opposite, say, No. 1 Alabama, which defeated Texas in the previous title game. The media's questions would be as repetitive as Brent Musburger's waxy commentary. How to explain Tressel's 0-4 record against the SEC? Or Ohio State 0-9 mark against the SEC in bowl games?

Poor Boren would be under siege, for he is the lone Buckeyes player to experience victory over an SEC club. He started for the Michigan team that defeated Florida in coach Lloyd Carr's final game, staged in one of those redundant Florida-based bowls.

Boren, who transferred a year later, said it would be "unfair" to depict Ohio State as an unworthy BCS opponent to an SEC champion.

"You can win, or lose, on any given day," he told FanHouse. "If you don't put it together, and if you make mistakes and turn the ball over, you're going to lose, whether it's against the SEC, MAC or Pac-10. I was on the Michigan team that beat Florida. The first game of that year, I was also on the Michigan team that lost to Appalachian State.That's why I say, on any given day."

As a writer who covers sports as viewed from the West -- West Coast Bias, if you will -- I see why the SECessionists doubt Ohio State. Last time the Buckeyes and SEC met, in the same Arizona stadium as the next title bout, Florida's pass rush made OSU's blockers look like Vanderbilt Lite.

"I was on the Michigan team that beat Florida. The first game of that year, I was also on the Michigan team that lost to Appalachian State.That's why I say, on any given day."
-- Justin Boren, Ohio State guard who transferred from Michigan Boise State, which blends creativity with speed and verve, might be the more entertaining foe. "Boise State has some scary athletes," said the NFL receiver Davis, whose fellow Chargers receivers include Boise State alum Legedu Naanee. Said Hester: "Boise State, all of those formations and that style of play would be tough to defend."

On the other hand, each team and season has its own personality. What follows are points bullish and bearish regarding this Buckeyes team.

* Beef

Eyebrows arched all the way to the Pacific Ocean last winter when Jim Heacock, the Ohio State defensive coordinator, told visiting coaches that OSU's defensive line in 2010 could be the best he's coached. You wondered if he'd been conked by a stray football. The OSU defensive line in 2002, coached by the under-rated Heacock, disrupted the great Miami offense like no opponent had. Last we saw the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl, Heyward and mates led the clampdown of Oregon's fastbreak offense, which hadn't been contained that well since Boise State applied a hammerlock in September. "The Oregon game really got the monkey off our backs for our program," Heyward said, "because a lot of people were writing us off and saying we can't win the big games." From that stellar defensive line however, the Buckeyes lost four players.

Heacock isn't prone to bloated commentary;.so, we'll buy that if the Heyward-led front can stay healthy, Ohio State's line could surpass the great lines of 2002 and 2009. As for OSU's offensive line, Miami's formidable front will tell a lot on Saturday. Potentially though, it's the best blocking front of the Tressel Era, which began in 2001. Which isn't saying a lot.

• Feet

Quarterback Terrelle Pryor is tight end-sized, yet a zephyr when he needs to be. Pryor's deceptive speed, empowered by a stiff-arm that spiked several Oregon defenders, makes Ohio State a wild card when the stakes rise. The 6-foot-6 former basketball star can turn a bad play into 20 yards, even against roadrunners such as the USC defenders who pursued him as a freshman in Los Angeles two Septembers ago. Now in his third season as a starter, Pryor represents Ohio State's best chance to make plays against an elite defense. He can't do it alone with his feet, but the feet open up the chessboard. Can Pryor and OSU grow the passing game? The Hurricanes will tell us on Saturday.

* Big Ten

As a Michigan man, Boren heard a lot of media jabber late in the 2006 season about how the No. 2 Wolverines and the No. 1 Buckeyes were the best teams in the country. Even after Ohio State beat Michigan in a game where both defenses stunk, Big Ten media trumpeted the silly idea that the two rivals should meet in the national title game. As if USC and the SEC powers were tomato cans. "Then we went out to the Rose Bowl and USC kicked our butts," Boren said of an outcome that surprised no one in California. A few days later against Florida, Ohio State gave the country a dud. Point being, the Big Ten still hasn't lived down the ridiculous media inflation of 2006. Big Ten inflation reminiscent of many other years.

The media doesn't like its stupidity to be exposed, and it hasn't balked at bashing the Big Ten ever since, often for good reason. But did the perception pendulum swing too far? The Big Ten is coming off its first winning bowl season since 2002, the same year that a schedule-toughened Buckeyes team upset Miami. Wisconsin manhandled the Hurricanes in a bowl game last winter and will test the Buckeyes this year in Madison. Iowa isn't a cupcake, either, and gets a visit from the Buckeyes. Too, Michigan may be finally rising off the mat. If Ohio State reaches Glendale, it probably will have learned more about itself than the 2006 and 2007 Buckeyes did en route to the title game.

The bearish points:

• SEC coaching. The signature win of the Tressel Era came against a great Miami team, yet a Hurricanes team coached by Larry Coker. No one would confuse Nick Saban or Urban Meyer with Coker, a fine defensive coordinator but not a great head coach. Ohio State, playing offense as if Xs and Os do not exist, couldn't beat Pete Carroll's worst USC team in Columbus last September. Why expect it to beat an SEC champion coached by Saban or Meyer?

• SEC talent. The conference's 4-0 record in the last four BCS title game speaks to what it means to be an SEC champ. Here, we'll give the microphone to former Auburn guard Tyronne Green, a fourth-round draft pick of the Chargers in 2009. His concern is that the SEC will beat up on itself, opening the door to outsiders to hog the title game. But based on merit, he sees no cause to fret.

"I don't think anybody can end the SEC's streak," he said. "I think the SEC is going to keep taking it year after year. Ohio State, no. If I had to pick someone, I'd take Texas."