In Memoriam: Your 2014 National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes

How many times have you watched the ESPN highlight package of the National Championship Game?  A lot, right?  It has to be a lot.  I think I've watched it about 25 times, no hyperbole.  I love every minute of it, and can even pull quotes from the guys on the broadcast.  Here it is again, in all it's glory.  Go take 11 minutes and watch it again.

Yeah.  That's the good stuff right there.  Every bit of it is great, from watching the missing "O" as the Buckeyes take the field, to hearing ESPN, which had spent the previous two weeks telling us why Oregon was winning that game, genuflect to Urban Meyer and his team of National Champions.  It is glorious; it will always be glorious.

How many times have you watched highlights from the Sugar Bowl win over Alabama?  I like that game more than National Championship, to be honest, because it was a fight from start to finish (and called on television by a better announcer duo, imo).  Because we had to fall in love with Cardale Jones all over again, weeks removed from his thorough demolishing of Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game.  Because I could watch this play over and over and over and over again:

Honestly, my favorite part of that entire clip is seeing Jalin Marshall come up behind the play and outrun most of Alabama's vaunted defense (all of whom were also busy being smoked like brisket by Elliott.  I have also watched this entire game a few times, too.  It is still great; it will always be great.

(Extra reading: I didn't read this article back around the time of the Sugar Bowl, but I wish I had.  AL.com is truly a national treasure, and its contents should be put in the Smithsonian)

Those two games almost completely ruin the fact that the game that got the Buckeyes there, the aforementioned Big Ten Championship #beatemdown win against Wisconsin, almost seems like an also-ran of a game from last year (think: 55-14 win over Illinois but, you know, even better).  Hell, without that game, there's no chance the Buckeyes even make the Sugar Bowl, and without that, there's no chance that they even get the opportunity to raise the first ever College Football Playoff National Championship.

And we can keep going back, too.  Remember the game against Michigan State, where the Buckeyes were road underdogs, and actually ranked six spots below Sparty?  And how Michigan State actually looked really, really, really, really good in that game for the first half?  That is until...

It gives me chills; it will always give me chills.

If you want to have a lot of fun, go back and read your social media posts from September 6th, 2014.  That was not a fun night to be a Buckeye fan, or a Big Ten fan, for that matter.  I can still (sort of) remember sitting on my couch at 2:00am after the Virginia Tech game, pondering my own existence, as well as telling myself that everything was going to be alright, and that next year was the year.  You all did, too.  I know you did.  And I know Clay Travis did:

The Big Ten is officially eliminated from placing a team in the playoff. It is September 6th.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravisBGID) September 7, 2014

Lol.  You do you, Clay.  At least you have a successful career and a hot wife.

You take the good and the bad with 2014, and you remember that it was really mostly good.  The rise of J.T. Barrett into a top national quarterback was fun to watch after how lackluster last year's abysmal Virginia Tech game.  Elliott's case for sitting in New York during awards season kicked off mightily.  Seeing "Next Man Up" personified in so many ways (hi, Cardale Jones) was exactly what you were hoping for when you they told you about how good Urban Meyer was at game-planning and recruiting.

2014 gave us all chills; 2014 will always give us chills.

2014 was remarkable, and worth remembering and we're blessed in this, the year of our social media lords, to have many ways to do so (GIFs, embedded videos, YouTube, Twitter archives, and the like).  And there's nothing wrong with that at all.  The coaches and players (Darron Lee, in particular) are done with 2014 because they have to be.  And we, as fans, want them to be.

For Ohio State, the season doesn't start until Monday night in Blacksburg.  The Buckeyes will be without a few key cogs in their offense and defense, and the battle for starting quarterback will end when one of Barrett or Jones takes the first offensive snap.  Braxton Miller begins the end of his Buckeye career at a new position.  And no matter what happens, the goal will be repeating as champions, as difficult a task that there is in college football.

But until then, remember fondly the 2014 season, because years like that don't come around too often.  2002 was almost 15 years ago.  1969 was before most, if not all, of this site's writers and readers were even born.  Years like 2014 are meant to be cherished forever.

The 2014 season ends on Monday.  It was amazing; it will always be amazing.