O-H-I-AM-ON-THE-50!

One of the perks of my current employment is the occasional "team building" event. A day where we put the big projects and hot deadlines aside and travel to an undisclosed off-site destination, you know, to help us grow together as a unit.

This past week we had one of our team-building events, and it involved a trip to The Hoss-Shoe. Ohio Stadium. The silver fortress nestled along the banks of the Olentangy River, as Keith Jackson used to say. In all my lifetime, through four decades of season tickets in Ann Arbor, I've yet to have the honor of a facility tour. But here, in my first year in Columbus, I am being guided through every nook and cranny of the old stone edifice. The former home of Hopalong Cassidy and Jesse Owens. The field that Woody wore thin every fall, working out his soldiers to the point of exhaustion, so they'd always be ready to defeat "that school up north".

The meeting rooms and private suites really give one a glimpse into the world of the fortunate few who foot the bill for the football program. We were escorted into a suite that we were told costs its owner $75,000 a season—and this doesn't include actual tickets to the game. That is simply the fee for the right to view the game from that location, once tickets are purchased. Comparatively, Ohio Stadium itself was built in 1922 for $1.3 million, or the cost of 20 of those suites for one season. Without tickets.

We soaked up the view from each layer of the press box before being escorted onto the field. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be sure. But for the enemy, especially an enemy who was tipped off the night before, it proved to be an ideal chance for a long-held goal: a photo on the 50-yard line, standing in the scarlet "O" wearing maize and blue!

I waited till the small crowd we were with trickled away before popping off the neutral hoodie to reveal my true colors. A co-worker (whom I had already asked to snap my image) captured several pictures, but only one of me all alone, dotting the "O" as it were. As you can see it turned out quite well.

We then toured the band room, an expansive area whose far wall bears a large oil painting of John Phillip Souza. Every band member's sheet music was out, as if they had momentarily stepped out of the room. In the long lecture about the history of the Ohio State University band and all of its traditions, not one word about how "Script Ohio" originated from the Michigan Marching Band during the school's visit to Columbus for a football game. The M Band scrawled out the four-letter cursive word as a tribute to their opponents on that day, and as you can see (left), crude is an understatement. The OSU band has tightened it up since then and made it a timeless tradition of football Saturday. But there's no debating where the custom came from, no matter how much they think they can bury the facts.

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