Top 10 Reasons I'm Proud To Be A Buckeye Sports Fan

OK...it's summertime. The basketballs have all been put away. Baseball is in full-swing, and football is right around the corner. It's these summer months that kind of lull you to sleep. Not a whole lot of coverage for NCAA athletics once the College World Series is over, except for your everyday recruiting scandals & whatnot. These are the months that try Buckeye fans souls...no one to cheer for, nothing to criticize, nobody is talking about us. But we know what's coming. "Aww, Ohio State ain't all that. They think they're so much better than they really are. They choke. They can beat the Big 10 but not the SEC. They're a bunch of whiners. Blah, blah, blahhhhhhhhhhh." Yeah, I'm starting to get a little pissed too. That's why I'm writing this piece, so you, my fellow Buckeye nut, can build up the rage that feeds us at a slow, steady rate until September 5th when all hell breaks loose upon the bows of the U.S. Naval Academy...leading up to the complete annihilation that will be so justly handed out to the smarmiest program in college football, USC. However, we're not all about just football at Ohio State. There's plenty more to be proud of...

Start Your Engines

Ok, ok, before you start in with the redneck jokes - I've got a case to plead here. No this isn't going to be a debate on stock car racing's status of being a true sport (frankly I'd rather debate cheerleading as a sport), but it is an attempt at enlightening the rest of you who still hear NASCAR and think toothless hillbilly carrying a styrofoam cooler filled with PBR. And since I'm hooked up with a couple 'o pit passes for Saturday's Nationwide Meijer 300 at Kentucky Speedway, what better time to convince you that stock car racing means put the pedal to the metal!

Let's take a closer look at the positives and negatives of NASCAR, shall we?

If Boomer and Carson believe it, damn it, so do I. WHO-DEY!

Hello everybody. My name is Dave and I’m a Bengals fan. I’ve been a Bengals fan since 1968. Many times over the years I’ve tried to quit, and every single time I’ve fallen off the wagon. Every time I swore I’d never let loose with another “Who-Dey!” again, every time I slammed my TV remote down in disgust at a fair catch inside the 10-yard line, every time I sat in the stands at Paul Brown Stadium listening to fans call the plays before they were ran, every time I drove home from The Natti cussing out Mike Brown and promising I was through, after every arrest, every embarrassment, after every frustrating, mind-blowing season I came back. Every single time. You know why? Because every year I knew, just knew, that the next year was going to be different.

Oh, I know, we’ve had our moments. They’ve been few and far between for sure, but we’ve had our moments. Unfortunately, since 1990 the Akili Smiths, Kajana Carters, and David Klinglers have far outnumbered the Carson Palmers. Even before that, for every Anthony Munoz we had 10 John Stofa’s. Yeah, I remember John Stofa. Do you? We’ve had so many unexplainable things happen in Bengal Land that they’re impossible to cover here. I mean, how can Dick LeBeau be a genius in Pittsburgh and a complete bum in Cincy? It defies logic.

But let’s go back . . .

Are you ready?

Did y'all know that it’s football season? It either never ended or it has already started depending on your point of view.

I know that I’m not going to make any friends here by pointing out that in about seven months your football teams are going to get thumped by my football teams. Sorry. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there has been a trend developing and you need to know why. While y’all are all wrapped up in the NBA playoffs, distracted by baseball, and still decompressing from NCAA basketball, want to know what we’re doing down south? Football.

We know that our neighbors to the north feel that football in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and the rest of Big 10 country is really important and of a high quality. In the south, we think you guys are cute with all the fuss you make. Year after year, you post bowl records like 1-6 and serve up cannon fodder for the BCS title game without knowing why. As soon as the bowl season is over, you retreat to your gyms and start dreaming about the day pitchers and catcher report without doing any analysis about what happened. You need to know why in the most important sport, the south rules.