Why am I getting angry with an increased heart rate watching this? This happened over 16 years ago hahaha. I've seen a lot of football since then, and this is still one of the most high stakes, blood curdling, pant shitting, heart attack inducing games I've ever seen the Buckeyes play.
Oh Lord, I still break out into a sweat seeing Michigan with 1 second left in the finale. I *knew* that was just enough time for UM to break our hearts for the 3rd time in 7 years.
The bucks defense that season won them a lotta nail bitters . Craig krenzel’s offense did just enough to get by although they looked helluva a lot better by the time they met up with Miami
Don’t think they will win the NC in 2002. Miami will just destroy them OSU won’t be able to keep up with them. Boy did the prove the pundits wrong that year.
The Bucks were a dropped pass from Tressel's name being mud and Gino Guliduli being a folk hero in southern Ohio. The supposed fearsome Bucks were not so scary. Everyone overlooks that missed extra point in the first, had that not been missed this game could have went OT. The Bucks swear up and down that they will never come to Cincinnati again and bought out of games in 2008 & 10 to avoid coming to PBS again
In some instances maybe, but I've recently rewatched the entire '02 season and was surprised at how effective Ross and Hall were in their frequent playing time in place of Clarett that year. Clarett had on-field issues, too. He was a tough runner and their best back that year, no doubt, but he was injury prone and had a tendency to sometimes give up on plays and avoid contact by running out of bounds, spinning when he didn't need to, or turning around and backing into defenders. He also lost three fumbles vs NW which could have cost OSU the game, but the D bailed them out each time. They would not have won the NC without Clarett, but he missed so much playing time especially during the mid season grind that year they likely would not have won it without Ross and Hall effectively filling in for him, either. Those two were much stronger runners the more playing time they got with the 1st team and were able to get into a rhythm.
Proving once again that whenever someone uses the expression "With all due respect...", someone is about to get disrespected. In reality, no one, including you, can even NAME every CFB national championship team "ever", much less intelligently evaluate each one and compare them. And even if you could, it would be 100% subjective. CFB isn't science, it's a complicated team sport with almost infinite "what ifs" and variables. In the meantime, no team, including the all-everything team that year (Miami), was able able to wrestle that anaconda and come out on top. 14-0.
I actually think the defense, once Chris Gamble switched to full-time CB, became the greatest defense in college football history. No defensive unit bore the burden of having to stop teams like this OSU defense did and they responded every single time. A couple of notes about this OSU defense: 1) Every single defensive starter, plus the top 3 subs (Will Allen, Simon Fraser, and A.J. Hawk) all played in the NFL. 2) They gave up 20+ points in a game only twice...the season opener against Texas Tech (Both in the 4th quarter after OSU was leading 38-7) and the final game against Miami (FL). They held a very good offensive team in Purdue to 6 points and a very good Michigan offense to 9 points. They were great tacklers and Mark Dantonio was awesome as the defensive coordinator.
