76-56: Ohio Comes to Cleveland and Takes the Big 12 Ticket
Cleveland State56
Ohio76
- Game
- 2036 Week 12
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Loss
- Record
- 11-1
Ohio 76, Vikings 56. At home.
Seventy-six points, folks. The most anyone’s scored on us in the Dolan era. After a season where our defense gave up nothing to anyone, Ohio came to our house and scored on almost every possession. One hundred thirty-two points between the two teams. Our guys scored fifty-six and lost by twenty.
Tim Slocombe’s team was magnificent. I’ll say that and mean it. They were better, they were faster and they were ready. They go to the Big 12 title game. We wait for the committee.
I sat down for the fourth quarter. Donna held my hand. When it ended, she said, “Michael, are you okay?” I said, “I’m okay.” She said, “Your heart?” I said, “My heart is fine. My pride is in the ICU.”
Rose waved the sad flag. Bridget sent the picture. It was the Vikings flag. She held it up at the end of the game, in the Ohio family section, all by herself, and waved it. Bridget wrote: “she insisted. she said grandpa’s team was sad and it’s not fair to be sad alone.”
Zero pierogi.
A twenty-point home loss to Ohio. Eleven and one. Ohio clinches the Big 12 title game spot. The Vikings will be in the playoff, almost certainly without a bye.
Seventy-six points is the most the Vikings have allowed under Coach Dolan. It came against a defense that had allowed seventy-two points in its previous six games combined, one of them the SMU game it won by eighty-two. Football is the only sport where a team can be the best defense in the country for a month and then give up seventy-six. I don’t have an explanation. I have a box score.
The rivalry stands at eleven wins for the Vikings and nine for Ohio since 2024. Twenty games. Neither family ever gets very far ahead of the other.
A five-year-old in Athens waved a Vikings flag alone in the Ohio section because “it’s not fair to be sad alone.” I’ve covered sports for twenty years. I’ve never read a better sentence about being a fan. I didn’t write it. A kindergartner did, and her mother texted it to her grandfather, who read it to me in a parking lot with the stadium lights going off behind him.
Back and forth
Not fair to be sad alone.
Best sentence of the year. Possibly of the column. She’s five.
Eleven to nine, Kenny.
Two games apart. Never far apart. That’s not a rivalry. That’s two families.
Ohio scores seventy-six in Cleveland and takes the Big 12 ticket, a rivalry that never lets anyone get far ahead, and a kindergartner in the Ohio section waving the Vikings flag so her grandfather’s team wouldn’t be sad alone.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.