It’s been almost two months since the Ohio State Buckeyes lost a shocking National Championship Game to the Florida Gators and its clear the pain hasn’t gone away:
Tressel spoke to a crowd of about 400 at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Luncheon Club, one of the few speaking engagements he’s had in Ohio since the national championship game Jan. 8.
“We were busy recruiting,” said Tressel, who did say that one of the tougher appearances he had to make was at the American Football Coaches Association convention in San Antonio, two days after OSU’s shocking 41-14 loss to Florida.
“I’m on the AFCA board, so I had to make a presentation,” he said. “I left (for San Antonio) the day after the game. Let me tell you, that wasn’t easy … showing them how my stuff works.”
Tressel also acknowledged that the pain from the loss hasn’t gone away — and likely won’t for some time.
“We know we’re hurting,” he said. “You don’t really get rid of that hurt until you hit someone, and we can’t do that until September.
“We all have to grow from it.”
Tressel doesn’t go into much detail about what he thinks went wrong, but the factor that everyone keeps citing is the 51 day break that Ohio State had between the Michigan Game and the National Champioship:
While refusing to place blame on the 51-day layoff the Buckeyes had from the season finale against Michigan until the meeting with the Gators — “Give Florida all the credit” — Tressel did say that managing the long break was a challenge.
“We felt we wanted to give the kids time off for finals and then send them home for Christmas — as we have in past years,” Tressel said. “During the time leading up to that, I felt we were getting better every day and progressing.
“When we returned … if you asked me did we practice as well on Dec. 31 as on Dec. 21, I don’t think we did. Then, the day we were supposed to be good, we weren’t as good as we needed to be.”
Yet Tressel says that doesn’t mean the Buckeyes weren’t ready to play.
“The first 12 seconds we looked real ready,” he said. “Then after that …”
It was in the first 12 second of the game, of course, that Ted Ginn returned a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown.? Like Tressel said, after that………..
It’s hard to say what impact the layoff had, but it clearly had some impact
