Illin'

by Knorr the Interpreter

My Buckeyes took a tough loss yesterday to Illinois 28-21. It happens. Illinois has always given us trouble - and this year Illinois is actually good - so my fellow citizens of Buckeye Nation really should have expected this.

Gone are the winning streaks: 14 straight at home, 20 straight in the Big Ten, 28 straight in the regular season. Feh! Those are just numbers. Quoting such gooberishness should be the purview of national sports media and stat geeks - fans don't care, players don't care, coaches don't care, and you can be damned sure that The Next Opponent doesn't care - and The Next Opponent is all anybody should ever be concerned about.

Gone is our shot at the National Championship. Oh well. Did anybody in Buckeye Nation truly think we had a real chance at the title in the beginning of the season? Hell - some of the true-scarlet-and-gray-bleeding fans I know couldn't even spell our starting quarterback's last name until October. (Honestly, I still have trouble remembering how many n's are in Boeckman.) This wasn't supposed to be our year. In August, 95% of Buckheads would have said "Thank you very much!" if the Football Gods told us they'd give us a 10-1 record at this point of the season.

What we are left with is all that really matters - exclusive focus on The Next Opponent. National media bollocks about BCS garbage is gone, and the winner of Next Saturday's Game was going to walk away with the Big Ten title no matter what happenned this week. Now instead of diverting our positive football energies into poll-watching, LSU/Oregon/Kansas/Oklahoma scouting, and defending our right to be in the BCS hunt against the national media naysayers, we can concentrate the whole of our Buckeye Chi for the next six days on one and only one fundamental truth:

Michigan Still Sucks.