The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Dang, even a hater like me can recognize how close Texas was to winning a National Championship this year. Down by 7 to OSU with 2 minutes left 1st and goal will haunt you guys for awhile. 

ND vs OSU wasn’t even close. 

I need to create a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book for the Texas/tOSU game. At the end, it'll have:

Your power run on 1st down was stuffed for no gain. You're facing 2nd down and goal to go from the 2 yard line. Will you:
Trust in your OL and power, and try to muscle your way into the end zone (turn to page 72)?
Rely on your speed and misdirection to attack the boundary (turn to page 97)?

I dunno what page 72 says. I know page 97 says "You grab the snap from the shotgun. You fake one way, then toss to your fleet RB. The defense, however, is also fast, and they are ready for your misdirection. Your star TE and LG both miss their blocks - allowing the defenders to swarm the ball carrier at the 12 yard line. It's 3rd down, and you're now 12 yards away from a tied ball game!".

Helm missed a lot of blocks that day, and really all season.  He made some great catches and was a net positive at the position, but to say he doesn't excel as a blocking TE, would be an understatement.

Ohio State beat Texas 28-14. But the score was deceptive. TOSU had more yards rushing, more yards passing, and thus more total yards. But only by a smidgeon. Texas ran more plays and probably had more time of possession. TOSU had more yards per play, both rushing and passing. The critical difference was of course the strip/sack/TD return. Take that away and assume that Texas would have scored a TD from 1st-and-goal at the 1, and it's a tie game heading to OT.
Ohio State beat Notre Dame 34-23. The score accurately reflected Ohio State's 3:2 superiority. But, IMO, to say "ND vs OSU wasn't even close" is off the mark. If ND doesn't boink that chip-shot FG attempt off the left upright, just maybe the end result is different, although probably not.
If frogs had wings they wouldn't go through life bumping their asses on the ground.

That’s a lot of words to describe a game that was 1-2 yards from being tied late in the 4th, around 2 minutes. Yards and TOP don’t mean shit, scoreboard is what makes the determining factor. 

Ohio St was running away with it in the 1st half. ND could not stop them on defense, when the game was in contention. It appeared that Ohio St got really conservative in the 2nd half when they went way up, at that point playing “math ball”. Yes, ND had a chance at the end ( assuming they could score and get the 2 point conversion), and all Ohio St needed was a 1st down, they had like a 20-30 yard pass completion to seal the game. So in my mind, even though the game looked close near the end, it really wasn’t. 

And my responses here today are the first time I've even made any commentary/analysis of that game.  Maybe the last time I'll ever talk about it, too.  It really really sucked.

I don't suppose "it could be worse" would help anything.  

Nevertheless, at least the team didn't go out and bizarrely do nothing they did in the regular season, embarrass themselves, fracture a fanbase, poison an administration against the best HC the program ever had, and rip the soul out of every fan and crush it into fine powder.  

Looking at you, 2011 LSU.  

13 years later and it still hurts to talk about.  

Yeah that sucks, too.

But the fact that y'all won another NC 8 years later, just 5 seasons ago, kinda mitigates that.

For Texas it's now been 20 years.  And it's harder now than ever, to win it all.

And yeah I realize plenty of fans of other programs out there would love to be in our shoes.  It can always be worse.

I wish it worked that way for me, and I imagine for a lot of people it did.  I know many Tiger fans personally who felt a lot of redemption in 2019, not only for winning a title, but also for (and maybe even mostly for) finally beating Alabama again.  For me, something had stopped....died....by then, and I clearly remember finally realizing it in 2014, although as I realized it, I also realized it had been going on for a few years.  I think there's a lot of reasons....lots of life events, lots of natural evolution of priorities and interests....just stuff.....but I believe at least a part of it started when that magical season burned to the ground in unexpected, spectacular fashion.  Something inside me never fully recovered from that.  

I enjoyed the 2019 season, but not like 2011.  I liked the NC team, but I loved the 2011 team.  I can still recall the names of backup offensive linemen in any year from sometime in the 90's through 2012 (2012, because it was nearly the same team as 2011).  Other than some standouts from 2019 who also benefit by keeping their names fresh in mind due to their professional success, I don't remember most of the players on that team.  I don't remember a lot of players from the 2013 team, for example.  I knew them at the time, but I didn't realize they weren't going to stick with me like they once did, because I didn't care as much as I once had.  

Your comment about being harder now than ever to win.....I wonder.  The road seems harder because an expanded playoff is that much more of a crapshoot, but also the field is wider and allows for entry into the playoff more often.  I guess we'll see.  Ohio State has won an NC roughly every ten years for the past couple of decades.  If in ten years they've already gotten another one, or fail to get another one, maybe that will be telling.