Champagne and a cigar after you win a big game?
Sure, why not? Athletes have been celebrating championships that way for generations.
Except it’s a little different in Ohio State’s case. These are college athletes.
Anthony Gonzalez brought a box of Cuban cigars to the Buckeyes’ stadium in Columbus for their Big Ten Conference showdown with Michigan. The 22-year-old wide receiver, of Cuban descent, cited a cousin as his source for tobacco.
Kirk Barton came into the postgame news conference puffing on one, claiming “the ghost of Red Auerbach” had provided it.
The offensive tackle, who turned 22 two weeks before the game, also bought a bottle of expensive Dom Perignon out of his own pocket for just such an occasion.
“You have to put your money where your mouth is sometimes,” Barton explained.
Jim Tressel was not amused.
By nature a conservative guy, admittedly looser in private than in public, Ohio State’s head coach was not too thrilled with his players’ postgame play.
Nor did he like it when Barton, in a burst of candor, unexpectedly went off on Notre Dame. The 310-pound lineman said of the previous season’s Fiesta Bowl opponents, “I’m not a big fan of them, I’m not a big fan of their coach and I’m not a big fan of their program.”
In the final days before Monday night’s national championship game against Florida, the coach of Ohio State’s undefeated and No. 1-ranked team made it clear he had a word with Barton on this very subject.
Asked to elaborate, Tressel replied: “It wasn’t an encouraging tone, OK? I will leave it at that.”
Well, boys will be boys.
And some of these young men who play for the Buckeyes do have a nickname for themselves: “The Fun Bunch.”
Wide receiver Ted Ginn said he isn’t exactly sure when or how the players came up with this identity. But he and Ohio State’s other very valuable wideout, Gonzalez, do occasionally take a walk on the wild side.
Gonzalez, for example, is a free spirit who frequently sleeps, studies and plays Xbox inside an oxygen tent, a hyperbaric chamber that simulates the fresh air of a higher altitude than Ohio’s. He says he does so to build up his energy.
“I have never been in his tent,” Tressel answered when asked about it. “I don’t need energy. That’s the last thing I need. I need sleep.”
Gonzalez is also a philosophy major. And feel free to ask him for his philosophy on the state of collegiate athletics and the way football players are treated.
“One of the most exploited groups of people in the country are college athletes,” Gonzalez said. “We basically have a job that generates millions and millions of dollars, but at the end of the day, we don’t see any of it.”
Outgoing and outspoken as they are outstanding, meet the Buckeyes.
It makes for a fascinating study in contrast with their head coach, who isn’t exactly a ball of fire as a public personality. Steve Spurrier or Bobby Bowden or Pete Carroll, he is not.
Tressel tries to give a straight answer to a straight question. Generally, he just doesn’t have a lot to say.
For instance, when asked what he perceives his reputation to be around the rest of the country, Tressel said he doesn’t even know what it is in Ohio. And “I can’t worry about that.”
It wasn’t an interrogation, coach, just a question.
When someone wondered if Tressel would have liked to play the nation’s other unbeaten team, Boise State, he wouldn’t bite on that either.
The best the boss Buckeye could do was say that he has seen Boise State on TV for only about 10 minutes but he has seen Florida on film for “hours and hours and hours,” and therefore he would rather face Florida.
Well, they do pay a coach to win games and develop character, not characters.
Ohio State has quite a few of the latter. Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Troy Smith offered proof when he began his first BCS news conference by describing in detail why a West Coast-based drive-through chain called In-N-Out Burger makes the best burger money can buy.
And though they may enjoy fooling around, the Buckeyes do not intend to be easily fooled. That’s just in case Florida’s free-wheeling offense is planning on using any trick plays in this bowl game, the way Boise State’s underdogs did in theirs.
“Our offense gave us the hook-and-ladder a couple of times [in practice], just to make sure we know what we’re doing,” defensive back Brandon Mitchell said.
After all, a lot is at stake in this game.
Ohio State’s guys have two things to figure out. How to win the game and how to celebrate the postgame.
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mikedowney@tribune.com
