The Gators and the Girl
http://www.atomicsportsmedia.com/articles/803/1/The-Gators-and-the-Girl/The-Gators-and-the-Girl.html
Nate Carlile
By Nate Carlile
Published on 04/10/2007
It wasn't just Florida who broke Atomic Sports columnist and lifelong Ohio State fan Nathan Carlile's heart twice this year. But after breaking up with his girlfriend during both Buckeye defeats, he says there's still solace to be found in sports... and a few cold beers.
It wasn't just Florida who broke Atomic Sports columnist and lifelong Ohio State fan Nathan Carlile's heart twice this year. But after breaking up with his girlfriend during both Buckeye defeats, he says there's still solace to be found in sports... and a few cold beers.
The Gators and the Girl
Ohio State played for two national championships this year against Florida, losing both. On those same days, I was in the process of being dumped by the same girl.
Talk about being owned.
I feel confident, and at the very least hopeful, in saying no other Buckeye fan had a similar experience. Instead of hearing about the Florida Gators and visualizing Chris Leak completing one more ridiculously improbable jump pass for a score, or picturing Joakim Noah bark while wearing what appears to be a training bra under his jersey, I’ll forever recall a uniquely beautiful brunette with an impeccable sense for the moment. Tiger Woods has nothing on her.
It’s for this reason that I may be exactly the wrong person to write about the fallout from the Buckeye Nation’s unprecedented disappointment at the hands of a school previously best known for providing the sports world with White Chocolate. Never before had the same schools met in the same season for the basketball and football championship. Never before had the same school lost.
But my heart was being broken, while it was already being broken.
Having grown up in Columbus, I am an OSU fan above all else. The school was for many years Columbus’ only “professional” franchise. And so it comes with a sad sense of irony that the two sports that were my first adolescent loves were diluted by a romantic love that did, and then didn’t, and finally did, die.
In the interim, I’ve fallen back on the words offered by my favorite writer, Dr. Hunter Thompson: Buy the ticket, take the ride.
The journey, the Good Doctor would tell you, is more thrilling than the destination. Which means I’m doing my best to remember the last few months for the experiences rather than the climax. (Plus let’s face it, while Ricky Bobby might say second place is the first loser, it sure as hell beats being a Minnesota Gophers fan.)
My two favorite teams had phenomenal seasons. I met a girl. And somewhere between Thanksgiving and Passover my expectations for each changed. This, my friends will tell you, is the biggest difference between the pain felt from losing the football title and losing the basketball championship. Great expectations.
When the Sweater Vest lost to Urban Meyer, I was in shock. So, too, was the entire state of Ohio. OSU wasn’t supposed to lose that game, and I was supposed to be getting back from a ski trip in Utah with my girl. Neither happened. (Making it worse was the knowledge that if Florida fans had lost, they still would have had beaches and bikinis to fall back on. In Ohio we have pullover sweatshirts and pale, pasty bodies.)
Three months later my eyes were wide open. Not only about the girl, who was back, maybe, but also about Gator basketball. Everyone knew Florida was the better team and that it would take a Villanova-over-Georgetown-sized miracle for OSU to win.
Watching the game next to me was a girl no longer interested. A realization resulting in the acidic taste of rot found in the core of one’s stomach that rejection injects. Escape was possible only when glassily watching images like that of Al Horford shimmying for the camera, like a fat, beached sea walrus, after a particularly vicious dunk. This was a bad night.
After enduring the carnage, I was resigned to fate. OSU was not winning that game, no matter how many times Greg Oden made Noah and Horford look like WNBA D-League reserves (although picking the national championship to have your worst 3-point shooting night of the season was just a touch unlucky). Florida had too many answers.
There was also no way my relationship was going to work; too many obstacles. When you’re beat, you’re beat.
Recovery from heartbreak, as everyone knows, is a process. One I’ll be sure to facilitate in much the same way I’m writing this article: with sports conversations over alcohol. Seriously. Taking yoga to clear the mind or learning to appreciate the ability Aaron Copeland had to evoke the great American landscape with changing melodies, all in an attempt to “better myself,” just isn’t happening. I’m from Ohio.
When trying to medicate the girl, and the Gators, I’ll be enjoying more than ever the important, hypothetical, Molson-addled questions my buddies and I will ponder in the coming days.
Because with sports, unlike love, there’s always next year: If Beanie Wells doesn’t get his Goose on, then the football team could be Rose Bowl bound. Or if Oden pulls a Duncan, then OSU should be slotted for a two seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. Forget about the Final Four.
The Gators? The girl?
Buy the ticket ...
Talk about being owned.
I feel confident, and at the very least hopeful, in saying no other Buckeye fan had a similar experience. Instead of hearing about the Florida Gators and visualizing Chris Leak completing one more ridiculously improbable jump pass for a score, or picturing Joakim Noah bark while wearing what appears to be a training bra under his jersey, I’ll forever recall a uniquely beautiful brunette with an impeccable sense for the moment. Tiger Woods has nothing on her.
It’s for this reason that I may be exactly the wrong person to write about the fallout from the Buckeye Nation’s unprecedented disappointment at the hands of a school previously best known for providing the sports world with White Chocolate. Never before had the same schools met in the same season for the basketball and football championship. Never before had the same school lost.
But my heart was being broken, while it was already being broken.
Having grown up in Columbus, I am an OSU fan above all else. The school was for many years Columbus’ only “professional” franchise. And so it comes with a sad sense of irony that the two sports that were my first adolescent loves were diluted by a romantic love that did, and then didn’t, and finally did, die.
In the interim, I’ve fallen back on the words offered by my favorite writer, Dr. Hunter Thompson: Buy the ticket, take the ride.
The journey, the Good Doctor would tell you, is more thrilling than the destination. Which means I’m doing my best to remember the last few months for the experiences rather than the climax. (Plus let’s face it, while Ricky Bobby might say second place is the first loser, it sure as hell beats being a Minnesota Gophers fan.)
My two favorite teams had phenomenal seasons. I met a girl. And somewhere between Thanksgiving and Passover my expectations for each changed. This, my friends will tell you, is the biggest difference between the pain felt from losing the football title and losing the basketball championship. Great expectations.
When the Sweater Vest lost to Urban Meyer, I was in shock. So, too, was the entire state of Ohio. OSU wasn’t supposed to lose that game, and I was supposed to be getting back from a ski trip in Utah with my girl. Neither happened. (Making it worse was the knowledge that if Florida fans had lost, they still would have had beaches and bikinis to fall back on. In Ohio we have pullover sweatshirts and pale, pasty bodies.)
Three months later my eyes were wide open. Not only about the girl, who was back, maybe, but also about Gator basketball. Everyone knew Florida was the better team and that it would take a Villanova-over-Georgetown-sized miracle for OSU to win.
Watching the game next to me was a girl no longer interested. A realization resulting in the acidic taste of rot found in the core of one’s stomach that rejection injects. Escape was possible only when glassily watching images like that of Al Horford shimmying for the camera, like a fat, beached sea walrus, after a particularly vicious dunk. This was a bad night.
After enduring the carnage, I was resigned to fate. OSU was not winning that game, no matter how many times Greg Oden made Noah and Horford look like WNBA D-League reserves (although picking the national championship to have your worst 3-point shooting night of the season was just a touch unlucky). Florida had too many answers.
There was also no way my relationship was going to work; too many obstacles. When you’re beat, you’re beat.
Recovery from heartbreak, as everyone knows, is a process. One I’ll be sure to facilitate in much the same way I’m writing this article: with sports conversations over alcohol. Seriously. Taking yoga to clear the mind or learning to appreciate the ability Aaron Copeland had to evoke the great American landscape with changing melodies, all in an attempt to “better myself,” just isn’t happening. I’m from Ohio.
When trying to medicate the girl, and the Gators, I’ll be enjoying more than ever the important, hypothetical, Molson-addled questions my buddies and I will ponder in the coming days.
Because with sports, unlike love, there’s always next year: If Beanie Wells doesn’t get his Goose on, then the football team could be Rose Bowl bound. Or if Oden pulls a Duncan, then OSU should be slotted for a two seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. Forget about the Final Four.
The Gators? The girl?
Buy the ticket ...