Ohio State Hosts USC for Shot at Redemption

Jim Tressel, destiny is paging you: after a series of high-profile losses on national television in huge games (let's forget about a victory over Texas in 2006, because everyone else seems to), Ohio State has the opportunity to reclaim much of its lost credit score as national title contender in the form of the USC Trojans, their guests this weekend in Columbus.

Eleven Warriors, the superb Buckeye site, goes into this with no illusions about the Buckeyes' chances against what has been the best college football program of the new millennium.

It pains us at the 11W headquarters to have to pick against the Buckeyes, but with a young team struggling to find their identity early in the season things do not look good for the Buckeyes. We think the game will be close and a turnover or a single possession (like a certain dropped pass against Texas in 2005) may indeed decide the outcome of the game.

Preparing for the worst is the theme in Columbus this weekend in every sense. One logistical problem with big games in Columbus has been the lack of bathrooms, something local officials have prepared for by increasing the number of bathrooms and hopefully preventing creative improv by the locals. 

Ohio State hopes so and says it has learned its lesson from big matchups such as the Texas game in 2005, in which cleanup crews found several soiled shorts and a few coolers filled with poop.

Imagine the unpleasant surprise when they called out the bomb squad to investigate the suspicious object, and found a destructive device of an entirely different nature waiting inside.