Breaking the Trojans: Matchups, Challenges and Keys To a Buckeye Victory

On September 12th, the Ohio State Buckeyes will take the field representing not only their university but an entire conference that has fallen from grace. Not long ago the Big 10 was considered one of the premier football conferences in the 1990s, but through its own failures it has fallen to become a punch line nationally. First among failures has been my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes, who have turned in several excellent regular seasons but have failed to beat a top 10 ranked team since 2006 in their victories over the then No.2 Texas Longhorns and Michigan Wolverines. Since then the Buckeyes have been living a football program's worst nightmare, national embarrassment against top teams on a consistent basis. But the nature of college football is cycles and turnover and a new generation of Buckeyes is taking the field, a generation that came very close to ending the Top 10 blues with a narrow 21-24 defeat against a Texas Longhorns team that many argued should have played...