Civil War in the Heart of It All

"Put that thing back where it came from or so help me -- so HELP me...." Mike Wazowski a.k.a. Billy Crystal -- Monsters, Inc.

Question: Just being in Ohio you gotta watch what you say with the old Ohio State-USC battle coming up, or do you just not give a (darn) and you're going to say what you feel like saying?

Palmer: I don’t watch what I say. I cannot stand the Buckeyes and having to live in Ohio and hear those people talk about their team, it drives me absolutely nuts. We got Keith Rivers out there and we got Frostee Rucker, we finally got a couple other ‘SC guys. It’s amazing to hear what those guys think about that university and what they think about that football program and Tressel and all the crap I got to put up with being back there. I just can’t wait for two years from now when ‘SC comes to the ‘Shoe and I get to, hopefully have a home game that weekend and I can go out there and watch us pound on them on their own turf and kind of put all the talk to rest, because I’m really getting sick of it. I just can’t wait for this game to get here so they can come to the Coliseum and experience L.A. and get an old fashioned, Pac 10 butt-whooping and go back to the Big Ten.

Question: So you’re a little excited about it?

Palmer: I can’t wait.

So much to say about The Buckeye State. "Birthplace of Aviation." Thank you, Wright Brothers. The unofficial Flying Pig Capital of the World. A state with many slogans, including "The Heart of It All." Hard-working Americans and Captains of Industry. Birthplace of consumer packaged goods marketing, the root of my career. Birthplace of me, the root of.....well, just roots. Home to many championship sports programs....

Sometimes, roots go down only so far. I was plucked out of Ohio at age two and transported to central Florida for the beginning of a coast-to-coast childhood experience that left me without a regional accent. Poor thing. I landed (alit?) on the left edge of America, on that sliver of crust watched intently by the rest of the nation with fervent hope for signs of slippage toward the Pacific Ocean. That would be, of course, "The City of Angels." "Los Angeles." Most of the Spanish I know.

As a product of University Park and a Trojan for life, I cringe in the corner when one of my brethern steps into the instantaneous 21st-century media/internet transport pod and tells me how they really feel. I'm not saying I disagree with anything that Carson Palmer said this week. But, no good end can come to it. I guess it was bound to burst out some time. After a while, you just can't contain yourself if you're living in enemy territory.

I don't hang on rival college football forums, where an abundance of overweight, beer-guzzling bandwagoners butcher the English language and incite the alums to riot. Where they claim their team is nothing short of a weapon of mass destruction. Maybe someone in Columbus sent Carson a link to "Buckeye Planet" or Buckeyegrove.com last week, and he was mad as you-know-what and couldn't take it anymore. Maybe someone called him a lily-livered liberal; and, being a good Republican from Orange County, he decided to cut loose.

Or, maybe, he was just being interviewed on a Los Angeles sports radio program and wanted to be sure that the Faithful knew where he stood. Sometimes, roots run deep.

Making his millions in the Buckeye State hasn't exactly been a fate worse than death. That the Bengels management hasn't been able to keep about a third of the team out of jail while he's been trying to win something there has nothing to do with the good people of Ohio. It has nothing to do with tOSU, coaches in frowns and Sweater Vests, Kirk Herbstreit picking tOSU every Saturday on College Gameday to beat Youngstown State (or whichever Youngstown State facsimile is on the tOSU schedule that day), or anything related to Shoes, Horseshoes, the House Harley built, or any other Harley for that matter.

But, I'm interested to learn that the half of the state that supports the Bengels doesn't seem to like tOSU and vice versa. Nothing new for him -- Carson has defenders and detractors right inside Buckeye State lines. It's a small land mass with a lot of people that generally, ultimately, decides Presidential elections. I thought that they would probably agree about the UberWorldness of tOSU this year. Apparently, they will only agree When Pigs Fly.