The scene from Penn State-Ohio State: Nothing quite like a big game in Columbus

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the morning, it snowed, and not in some meek October fashion, but with big, pretty flakes. It called to mind Penn State’s entry into the Big Ten in 1993, when it snowed in October, the Nittany Lions came to town and the Buckeyes dealt them a 24-6 welcome. Asked that day what it might take to beat Ohio State, Penn State Coach Joe Paterno said he clearly did not know.

By Saturday, the matchup reached its 33rd and largest game, No. 2 Penn State at No. 6 Ohio State, and the feeling in the pregame reiterated Columbus’s distinction among most college football towns: its general hugeness.

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Huge were the droves in scarlet crossing the Olentangy River on foot bridges, the tailgate areas, the car queue out on nearby streets and, of course, the feeling in the air near a campus of 66,000 in a metropolitan area of 2 million.

“I think, because you are a major campus near the capital city of the state of Ohio, it gets that feel,” said Jim Lachey, the Ohio State radio analyst who played tackle for the Buckeyes from 1981 to ’85 and for the Washington Redskins from 1988 to ’95. “Cincinnati has their pro teams, and their field, Cleveland has theirs. In Columbus, it’s Ohio State. It always is. It always will be. We have other professional teams like the Blue Jackets and the Columbus Crew, but you know, it’s Saturdays in the fall, it’s everything. If they’re smart they accommodate those type of things, because that’s what happens in the state of Ohio. And not just in Franklin County but in all 88 counties in the state, there’s Buckeyes fans everywhere.”

Lachey said that just Friday morning, he talked to some guys up in the Archibold in northwest Ohio, and they were all pumped up already at 7:30. He said it goes the same near the Indiana border where he grew up, and all the way across the state to Steubenville. In some way, it all seems to converge on Columbus, as if to pile the large upon the gigantic.

“Columbus usually gets up for these games, and it’s always looking forward to them,” Lachey said. “They’re pretty astute football fans, they like to follow college football, so when they see a good team coming in here, there’s respect, because they know they’ve had a good run, but yet they’re excited to get after them a little bit . . . There’s just something about, the city of Columbus, when you get the game days here at Ohio State. Usually, the guys on the field, how they play dictates the way we feel.”

Before a game with implications gushing out of it — the Big Ten East Division, the Big Ten itself, the College Football Playoff — the snow stopped but the sky kept brooding at 42 degrees. Lachey called it “lineman weather” and said, “For linemen, this is the type of weather, going back to when I played, certainly when I played with the Washington Redskins . . . And you get in November, you know that the running game was a little bit more important. There’s not one offensive lineman out there in the country that didn’t want to run the ball, versus pass the ball.” He said, “These are the conditions you would like to get an Alabama or Clemson to come up north to play us.”

For Saturday, Penn State would do just fine, and hugely so.