Ohio State - Miami Had Nothing To Do With Revenge

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Outside of the obvious reward of a key win by the Buckeyes, there's another reason why I'm pretty excited the Ohio State-Miami game is now behind us:

The endlessly annoying and entirely inaccurate talk about revenge.

Would the Hurricanes have felt like a more complete program had they earned a win Saturday in Columbus? Would they have achieved some sort of closure to an unfinished chapter in their program's colorful but still young history?

The answers here are no and hell no.

The 2002 national championship game, played in January 2003, was nearly eight years ago. Before you hit up Google, I'll just tell you that Ohio State beat Miami in that game. Fair and square, by the way.

Sure some Miami players from that 2002 squad talked all summer about this being a revenge game. But aren't those guys pushing 30? Is there really some sort of grudge to be addressed this many years later?

In promoting the preseason-opening game between Pittsburgh and Arizona last season, ESPN sold it as if the Cardinals had a chance to even the ledger six months after the Steelers beat them in the Super Bowl. It was pretty weak.

Similarly, reporters last week went for the easy sell and asked current OSU and Miami players and coaches about the revenge angle. Despite their media-coached replies to the contrary, many of the writers still played up the mostly non-existent angle.

So what did we learn Saturday? Ohio State won a big game that had nothing to do with 2002, 2009 or even last week. One team was better than the other on one particular day. It just so happened that it was the same team that was better on one particular day eight years ago.