Ohio State Football: Fair-Weather Fans for the Buckeyes These Days?

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer)

There was no rain on the Ohio State spring game, but there was a lot of gloom. Though there were over 44,000 tickets sold for the game, by all estimates only about 20,000 showed up for the event.

This from a fan base who laid down the gantlet after Alabama had to turn people away from one spring game and declared that no one would put more fans in the seats for spring games than the Buckeyes.

They gave it a fair shot one time, but now with Tressel's problems and the impending further sanctions coming from the NCAA, it appeared that cloudy weather was not the only dark cloud over the program.

Is it safe now to call the Buckeyes fair-weather fans?

For the rest of the team that did nothing wrong and will have to carry to hopes of the fans through at least the first five games without their coach and those five players, they need the full support of the fanbase behind them.

After all, the great majority of the players of the players at Ohio State have done nothing wrong and are simply caught up in act of a few selfish players and a lying coach.

Programs like Ohio State are great not because of a handful of great players and they are bigger than any one coach, they are one of the great institutions in college football along with Michigan, Notre Dame, Alabama, Oklahoma and USC.

Each of those programs have been been through downturns, but because of who they are, they all bounced back. They did so because the fanbase never turned their backs on the team.

Should the attendance numbers for the Buckeyes be the usual sell outs for the first five games, then you'll know that the Buckeyes will endure "Tattoogate" and "Tresselgate" just fine no matter the outcome.

The Buckeyes are bigger than Jim Tressel and they deserve better.

Now the question will be, will the fans fill the "Shoe" for the first five games without their head coach and starting quarterback, as well as four other players absent from the game?

The second is when will the other shoe drop from the NCAA and how hard will the verdict be