Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

being a doormat for the helmets

And I've said this before, but I could give two shits about "impacting the NC race". The value of beating OSU in 2018 was getting a highly improbable, really fun win. I didn't worry at the time what it meant to the NC race, nor did I care or gloat at CFP selection time that we "ruined" your NC chances. College football as a Purdue fan isn't, and never really was, about winning the NC.

But wasn't part of what made it a highly improbable and really fun the fact that it REALLY mattered to Ohio State and nationally?

I guess I look at it this way:
Let's say you and I lived in the same town and we were friends from HS or working together or whatever. Since we are buddies and alums of OSU and Purdue we decide to go to the Purdue/tOSU game each year.

In 2018 (and every year until 2023) the game would have been hugely important to me because my team had something on the line. I'd get to enjoy wins more often. Even cherry-picking and starting with the 2009 upset, Ohio State leads 5-3 with an average score of almost 40 to just over 20. But here is the thing, you'd enjoy your three wins a lot more than I'd enjoy my five. For you the losses would have been expected and no big deal while the wins would have been, as you put it, improbable really fun wins. For me the wins would have been expected and no big deal while the losses would have been dream-crushing, heartbreaking devastations.

After my team's losses in 2009 and 2018 I'd have been looking at rankings trying to conjure up scenarios that would get the Buckeyes back into the race. On the ride home you'd have heard something like:
"If Bama loses to Samford and Texas loses to North Texas and USC losses to Hawaii and . . ."

If we went to the 2024 game together and my team lost, on the way home you'd hear "Well if we beat Michigan and win the B1GCG we'll still get a bye".

No. It was highly improbable and really fun because it was a REALLY good team and we walked away from it with a W. A game where literally nobody expected that we'd have a chance, and it turned into a 29-point rout. It was fun watching Rondale Moore make a mockery of the entire OSU defense. It was fun because it was the plucky underdog shoving a sharp stick into the eye of a helmet team. It was fun for one glorious night not to be a speedbump; rather to be a spike strip and shred your tires.

I literally did not care what it did to your NC chances. I was happy to watch Purdue win, not to watch OSU lose.

Per your point, admittedly there are other teams and fan bases who had teams in the CFP hunt and they were all excited to watch OSU lose, and didn't care if it was Purdue or Northwestern or Minnesota lined up across the LOS.

But for Purdue fans, it was celebrating about a Purdue win, not what it did to your NC hopes.

I think helmet team fans don't get that. We're not like you. The NC is something that happens at the end of the year to other teams. We're not in the discussion. It's irrelevant to how we view our team each year. To us, it just doesn't really matter much at all.

I do realize that I'm spoiled and I appreciate getting alternative viewpoints here.  One reason I've always been hesitant to agree with your theory that Purdue could NEVER win an NC is that part of the "lore" of Ohio State's 1968 National Championship is that they beat #1 Purdue.  I've always kinda thought that if you could get to #1 then you could probably end up there but they didn't so maybe not.  

Anyway, on the subject of being spoiled:
There are a few schools that have won more National Championships in my lifetime than the Buckeyes (two, 2002 and 2014) but when we do comparisons Ohio State's great strength is their consistency.  As an Ohio State fan, I've probably spent more time following a team that was at least plausibly in the hunt than a fan of any other team.  Alabama has a lot more NC wins since I've been following CFB but they also have a lot more bad seasons where they were out of the running fairly early.  

I don't really know when I started following CFB but I was born in the mid-70's.  I vaguely remember watching Ohio State in a Rose Bowl as a young kid.  They lost to USC in the Rose Bowl after the 1979 season but I was only four at the time so it probably isn't that one because I don't remember much of anything from when I was that young.  They beat ASU in the Rose Bowl after the 1996 season but my vague memory of watching as a kid can't be that one for two reasons:

• By then I wasn't a kid, I was a 21 year old student at tOSU, and
• I didn't watch that one on TV, I drove to California and watched that one in person.  

The only Rose Bowl that Ohio State went to in between the 1979 and 1996 seasons was after the 1984 season so that must be it.  I was nine then so it makes sense that I would remember it but not remember much specifically.  

Thus, I'm guessing that I started following CFB sometime in the early/mid 1980's.  So, Ohio State:
From 1980 through 1987 the Buckeyes were ranked each year and they were preseason top-14 in each of those eight years.  Then there was a bit of a falloff.  Earle Bruce was fired in 1987 (so you know that season didn't go well) and John Cooper's first few years were rough but by 1995 they were back to preseason #12 and then preseason top-10 four years in a row.  Then Cooper's last year was a little rough then we had Tressel.  All-in-all, I've been following this sport for around 35 years and Ohio State has been in the NC hunt in all but a handful.  That does skew my perspective.  

probably listened to the BobFather

Oklahoma City has a TON of new money.  I could see them trying this.  Hell, they are already proposing the nation's tallest skyscraper

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/01/27/oklahoma-city-skyscraper/72371121007/

So perhaps OKC interests are pushing this?  I cant imagine that having your sports arena 20 miles off campus in a nearby but different town would be good for student attendance.

Pitt plays in the same city, but WELL off campus, and students simply don't go.  Particularly after the Steelers put heavy restrictions on tailgating in the surrounding lots.

And that's football.  6-7 Saturday afternoons, where you make a day out of it, is a whole lot more palatable than 20 times per year, half of them being cold weather Tuesdays