That [BCS championship] game, of course -- along with the championship loss to LSU a year later and the 35-3 humiliation at USC in early 2008 -- has loomed over the program like a plague, and will continue to some extent until the Buckeyes finally take out a truly elite non-conference power (sorry, Oregon) in a BCS game. Nebraska faced the same bogus hurdle in the eighties and nineties -- Midwesterners "can't compete with Southern speed" -- until the 'Huskers dominated Miami, Florida and Tennessee to cap three undefeated, national championship seasons in a four-year span from 1994-97. Mack Brown was a "couldn't win the big one" figure at Texas, dogged by a lopsided losing streak against Oklahoma, until he added a difference-making athlete, Vince Young, and turned him loose to devastating effect in 2005.
