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

I really got into it there for a while, but once I hit my surly teens I quit paying attention for the most part. So I sorta missed the Eddie George years. But then when I enrolled at OSU, I was all in. My Freshman year was the 1998 season where they beat everyone except Michigan State. My final year was the 02 National Championship. So it was a great start and finish; book ending the Steve Bellasari nightmare that included a pair of Outback Bowl losses to S Carolina, where my brother was enrolled in the Strom Thurman Law School at the time. So he really enjoyed those two seasons at my expense.

You showed up right when I left.  I was there for the 1993-1997 seasons.  

I remember Ohio State playing in a Rose Bowl when I was young and I can figure out by process of elimination that it had to be the 1985 Rose Bowl (1984 season).  Ohio State Rose Bowls in my lifetime:

• 1/1/76:  Ohio State lost to UCLA, I was 7-1/2 months old.  
• 1/1/80:  Ohio State lost to USC, I was 4-1/2 years old.  
• 1/1/85:  Ohio State lost to USC, I was 9-1/2 years old.  
• 1/1/97:  Ohio State beat ASU, I was 21 years old and I was in the stadium watching the game.
• 1/1/10:  Ohio State beat Oregon, I was 34 years old and I cooked Duck for the meal, watched at my brothers'.  
• 1/1/19:  Ohio State beat Washington, I was 43 years old and watched with my dad.  

So tOSU is 3-3 in RoseBowls in my lifetime but basically 3-0 in my memory because I only vaguely recall the 1985 game and have no recollection whatsoever of the 76 and 80 games.  

I was always an Ohio State fan but it was tough times when I was first paying attention a little bit so I really didn't pay that close of attention.  The Buckeyes were great in the '70's but I don't remember that.  Then came Earle Bruce's seven year streak of three-loss seasons from 1980-1986.  Those were neither great nor terrible so nothing really stands out other than the aforementioned Rose Bowl.  

The transition from Bruce to Cooper was a mess.  Bruce's last year was a pathetic 6-4-1 mess only brightened by beating Michigan.  I do remember that because by then I knew some Michigan fans who trash talked a lot because they were heavy favorites and then Ohio State won.  Unfortunately, that win in 1987 when I was in 7th grade was the last over the Wolverines until I was a sophomore at Ohio State in 1994.  

The other thing to point out here is that the Browns were really good in the mid-1980's so I tended to follow them a little more closely.  I well remember the Browns barely missing the Superbowl in the 1986 season on Denver/Elway's 98 yard drive for a tying TD in the AFC Championship game in Cleveland to send the game to OT where Denver won.  A year later the Browns and Broncos met in the AFC Championship Game again and the Browns drove close to the goal line for what would have been a tying TD with just over a minute to play then fumbled on the goal line with 1:12 left.  

If the Buckeyes had been better or the Browns worse in the mid-1980's I would probably have earlier specific CFB memories.  

One of my earliest football memories  (college) was listening to the Huskers play after the Kennedy assassination.  I was in the third grade and those two memories are linked forever in my mind.  I couldn't tell you for sure who we played or who won, but it sparked some interesting dinner conversations over whether it was appropriate for us to play so soon after Kennedy died.  Even before that, my dad (who had played trombone in the UNL marching band in 49-51) would have my brother (trombone) and I (flute) practice marching to all the Husker pre-game songs every game day.  We got our first TV in 1961, and it was always a treat to get to actually watch the Huskers play on TV.  We usually just listened to the game if we could pick it up on our radio.  We lived in south central South Dakota so it was kind of hit and miss with the radio.  Loved Lyle Bremser (?). 

I miss those days.

You played OU and Nebraska won.
OU head coach Bud Wilkinson was on JFK's President's  Council on Physical Fitness and considered the president a friend.  He thought that the game should be canceled, but Robert Kennedy called him and said that "Jack would have wanted the game played."
The game was at Lincoln and Nebraska won 29-20.

That may have been the first major sporting event played post assassination. 

may have been one of my earliest memories - I would have been a year and a half

I remember my mother sitting on the floor in front of the TV crying

Mom and dad took me to a game when I was about 9 years old. I think I had been to a game before this seated with one or both of them. This time, they had tickets. I got a ticket out front, and sat by myself and about 55,000 others.

I was instructed at age 9 to meet my parents under the water tower after the game. Finding parents after the game even under a water tower amongst 55,000+ people seemed unlikely, but I was all in. I didn't know how I would get home 90-miles away if we missed. I had to find the water tower, and I had to hope like hell they would find me. I was a little kid.

We did this several more times over the years, and it worked. My first Iowa game was circa 1966.

The water tower can be seen in this video I took a few years ago.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4aLASjTlpg

Damn. Really?

that was normal back in the 60's

the good old days

Yeah, I guess. I look at the stuff my mom let me do as a kid that I wouldn’t dream of letting my kids do.  Riding in the back of pickup trucks, riding bikes on dangerous roads with almost no shoulder to get off on if a car came. I don’t think sitting by myself around 55,000 people when I was 9 would have made the cut though.

Growing up in Alabama requires that you be a Bama fan or an aubie. I was a Bama lean in the late 40s with Harry Gilmer at QB. Signed the Bama LOI on 01/01/1953 after watching Bama beat Syracuse 61-6 in the Orange Bowl. This after reading and hearing the entire month of December how the "Beast of the East" was going to trample Bama.

First game, and first date, was 1953 Alabama-Tennessee. Little girl and I rode the trolley from Woodlawn on the Eastern side of Birmingham to Legion Field on the Western side. Nobody scored that day. it was a 0-0 tie!