Led by a contrite Terrelle Pryor, Ohio State came together as a team to win the Sugar Bowl in what was one of Jim Tressel's finest coaching jobs.
View full sizeWith the controversy that swirled around his team and the prestige of a humble Big Ten Conference riding on the Buckeyes, coach Jim Tressel did a masterful job of preparing his players for Tuesday's Sugar Bowl against Arkansas, says Bill Livingston.NEW ORLEANS -- On the winner's podium, scarlet confetti swirled around Terrelle Pryor, who was so sore and battered he had to be helped up to the stage in order to receive the victory salute.
Almost lamed late in Ohio State's 31-26 Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas as it concluded Wednesday morning, forced from the game for one snap in the last half-dozen plays, the Buckeyes' quarterback seemed to symbolize the agonizing road his team had taken.
They call this city the "Big Easy," but that is chamber of commerce hokum. Little has ever been easy in a city that survived pirates, redcoats, the Civil War and Hurricane Katrina.
Nothing was easy for OSU here. That was the point. That was the beauty of it.
"It's funny because you always hear stories about adversity and how, if you push through, lessons lie at the end," said second-string defensive end Solomon Thomas. "It's where you have such adversity, it's such a blessing and it's so drastic."
The Arkansas Razorbacks stormed back from a 28-7 deficit in the first half. After blocking an Ohio State punt, they had two chances in the red zone in the last 69 seconds to win the game. Thomas drifted into pass coverage on the second one and buried Razorback quarterback Ryan Mallett's final pass in his belly as he fell to the ground.
"This has really taught me how to deal with adversity next season. I just turned 22, so I think it comes along with age," said Thomas.
View full size"The main thing was definitely I didn't want to let the seniors down," a hobbled Terrelle Pryor (aided by teammates Etienne Sabino, left, and Andrew Sweat after Tuesday's game). "That's a tight group. And I didn't want to be so selfish to not come and play for the guys."The story line before the game began was the suspension of five OSU juniors -- Pryor, Thomas, DeVier Posey, Boom Herron and Mike Adams -- for the first five games of next season for selling OSU championship rings and trinkets for cash and discount tattoos. Would the seniors feel forsaken by or forgiving toward them? Would it break the Buckeyes or bind them together?
The victory will be remembered as one of coach Jim Tressel's finest coaching jobs. By his calm demeanor amid the frenzy of the suspensions, he focused his team on the job at hand. He made the scandal-plagued players' pledge to return next season more about honoring the seniors and less about their own chances on the Sugar Bowl stage. And they delivered for him.
Mawkish as it seems, they actually did put their selfishness behind them and play for such teammates as Brian Rolle, Ross Homan and Cameron Heyward.
Homan is from Coldwater in western Ohio, a small-town guy who could have resented the flash and sizzle of Pryor.
After all, Pryor had been an intriguing disappointment this season, the Iowa game and his dramatic fourth-and-10 conversion aside. No one could have predicted, as the focal point of the scandal, that Pryor would re-assemble the jigsaw of his startling talents in a bowl game, the Rose last season, the Sugar Tuesday, and become the outstanding player again.
Homan, however, supported the star-crossed Pryor, no matter what.
"We came together as a team, over the last couple of weeks, and we came out here with something to prove," said Homan, meaning coach Jim Tressel's 0-3 record against Southeastern Conference teams and Ohio State's overall 0-9 embarrassment against the nation's top league.
"From the top down, we had the mentality that we had each other's back and we were in this together no matter what," Homan said.
Heyward, the senior defensive end, and Dexter Larimore, the powerful senior defensive tackle, got three of the four sacks the Buckeyes registered on Mallett.
"We looked through film. And we saw that he had trouble with his mobility and throwing on the run," said Heyward. "We figured if we got to him quicker, he was going to have a tough time."
Homan's running mate, senior linebacker Rolle -- fast, fierce, undersized, the Florida kid the sunshine schools didn't want -- saw the effect of the pressure.
"After the first couple of series, I kept telling them, 'Keep getting after them.' You could see the [Arkansas] offensive line talking trash to each other. That lets us know they're not in their scheme," he said.
As for Pryor, he showed a sense of contrition that was lacking earlier in his emotion-less apology for the scandal before the Buckeyes left Columbus. He said he knows he is not ready for the NFL, that he needs to grow up more, on and off the field.
Then he said, "The main thing was definitely I didn't want to let the seniors down. That's a tight group. And I didn't want to be so selfish to not come and play for the guys."
"All for one, one for all" is a cliched slogan for teamwork. With a celebrity athlete like Pryor, the "one for all" thing is, like the Buckeyes' hard-won victory, seldom the easiest part.
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