The ‘O’ in Ohio State is for ‘Oligarchy.’ Root for the impossible, a Notre Dame win Monday

Criticizing others for irrational hate is hypocritical, probably, since we all may have some. I know I do. It’s for Ohio.

(No, I don’t really hate Ohio, not at all. But I’m committing to the bit.)

Monday night, Ohio State plays Notre Dame for the College Football Playoff championship. The Buckeyes will win, because that’s how things work in this life. Ohio State is Amazon. It’s Google. It will have an occasional hiccup because everything does, but it gets what it wants and squashes those who dare defy it.

The Buckeyes play in Ohio Stadium, a 103,000-seat monstrosity as gray as the gray in the team’s school colors. Another is scarlet. The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives one meaning of scarlet as “grossly and glaringly offensive.”

Who am I to argue?

Ohio Stadium looks like a place where lions would have mauled decent, unassuming citizens had it been built 17 or 18 centuries ago. Instead, the Buckeyes are today’s lions and their victims are Akrons and Kent States in September and the Big Ten’s warm bodies like Rutgers and Maryland after that.

Of course, there is a huge difference between wild animals attacking people in ancient Rome and football in modern-day Ohio. Namely, the football has brought in big television money.

Ohio State had the nation’s largest athletic budget last year, $275 million. Last summer, school athletic director Ross Bjork said donor-led collectives and whatnot paid “around $20 million” to Buckeyes football players over the past year.

The funny part? At 7-2, Ohio State finished fourth in the 2024 Big Ten football standings! You could look it up.

Ohio State calls itself The Ohio State University. Which is pompous and ludicrous. Ohio has 14 other four-year public research universities.

One, in fact, is called Ohio University!

Ohio University has 22,000 students and is just 75 miles from Columbus, yet the snobs up the road say they’re THE Ohio State University. Arrogance, thy name is Brutus Buckeye.

Urban Meyer coached at Ohio State. I thought I’d just throw that in to support my case.

Those of us who have driven across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio know the rides and the views aren’t much different in any of them. Farm fields are farm fields. Flat is flat.

It’s what lurks in the shadows once you exit the freeways that is troubling about Ohio. It has economic woes, educational deficiencies, healthcare challenges, high crime rates, and infrastructure in disrepair. If any of those are exaggerations, know that I am just throwing statements around without fact-checking. It’s all the rage.

What is 100 percent true is serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer grew up in Ohio. Charles Manson was born there

Elon Musk wasn’t, but he is from Pretoria, South Africa, and Pretoria sounds like the sister city of Fostoria, a city in northwest Ohio.

Musk is worth $400 billion. He is an oligarch know-it-all, which makes him a kindred spirit to Ohio State football.

This says Ohio State football as much as anything: After the Buckeyes buckled against Michigan in Columbus on Nov. 30, Wolverine players tried to plant their flag at midfield. It set off a brawl between the teams. Police set off pepper spray. That’s not the weird part of the story. It’s this:

Two weeks later, Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams introduced a bill called the O.H.I.O. Sportsmanship Act Tuesday that would classify flag-planting at Ohio Stadium around Buckeyes football games as a felony.

According to Williams' bill, "No person shall plant a flagpole with a flag attached to it in the center of the football field at Ohio stadium of the Ohio State University on the day of a college football competition, whether before, during, or after the competition. Whoever violates this section is guilty of a felony of the fifth degree."

That would carry a penalty of six to 12 months in prison, a fine of up to $2.500, and up to five years’ probation.

Williams got his law degree from the University of Toledo, but said he is "a Buckeye, through and through.“ Pandering to Toledo Rockets football fans doesn’t get you many votes.

Ah, Ohio. Never trust a four-letter state with three vowels. Er, wait, what?

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com