‘Tis Far Better to Bolt Before Getting Bolted

John Cooper is the football coach at Ohio State. Same as anybody else, Coach Cooper likes to win. There is almost nothing Coach Cooper hates to do more than he hates to lose.

But, as a rule, Coach Cooper prefers losing over having his players get struck by lightning. It’s just this little quirk he has.

Statistical studies over the years have determined that football players who get hit by lightning tend to drool and quiver and babble. Permanent brain damage could result, forcing them to give up playing football permanently and to consider careers as professional sportswriters.

When thunder rolled and lightning crackled during Ohio State’s home game against USC Sept. 29, the first thing Coach Cooper did was gaze up at the sky. It looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie.

The next thing Coach Cooper did was gaze up at the scoreboard. It showed the visiting Trojans leading the Buckeyes by nine points, with not quite three minutes to be played.

Coach Cooper consulted Coach Larry Smith of USC and the officials, and cut them a deal.

“We’ll try an onside kick,” Coach Cooper said. “If we get the ball, we’ll keep playing. If you get the ball, we’ll stop playing. You win.”

The officials said this sounded like a sensible idea.

The rules say football is supposed to be played for a specified number of minutes, no matter what the weather. This is not baseball. Football players pride themselves on ignoring the snow, the rain, the muck and the mire. They share this credo with Cliff Claven and everybody else down at the post office.

But this was more than just rain. This was lightning. And let me tell you something--lightning hurts.

Personally, I have been hit by lightning only once, and it was not a good experience, although my girlfriend of the moment paid me compliments later that evening that I have never heard before or since.

Anyhow, Ohio State attempted the onside kick, USC recovered the football and the officials immediately called off the game, declaring USC the winner.

Coach Cooper shrugged and gave thanks that at least nobody got zapped.

What he hardly anticipated was that the sky would begin to fall on him. For the next few days in Columbus, a growing number of people took to criticizing Coach Cooper’s cowardice under fire. They even began calling him names behind his back, like “Rainman.”

You would think that people would have more respect for the forces of the weather in a city named after a sailor.

But no, evidently some of the Buckeye boosters believed that to quit playing football just because of a little electrical storm was like, oh, admitting to the entire United States of America that everybody who ever attended the Ohio State University is a wimp.

I guess they figure that if Woody Hayes was still coaching football there, he would have punched the first yellow-belly in the grandstand who had the gall to open an umbrella.

To me, Coach Cooper had the good sense to come in from the rain. Had anybody, player or spectator, been whapped by a thunderbolt, you can bet Ohio State would have been taken to the cleaners in some courtroom for not putting the public’s safety ahead of some dumb football game.

I thought by now that more people would have come to Coach Cooper’s defense, praising him for being a human being first and a football coach second.

Silly me. The game should have gone on, I guess, until the quarterback dropped back to pass and suddenly there was a flash of light and the only thing that remained of the quarterback was a pair of shoes and a pile of ash.

Even Coach Smith of the winning team called the officials “wimpy” in the way they went about suspending the game, although it is possible Smith was misquoted or was actually referring to the guy who eats hamburgers in the Popeye cartoons.

I suppose that Fay Vincent should have gone ahead and played Game 3 of the World Series after that earthquake, seeing as how the chances of two earthquakes in one night were pretty darned slim.

That’s the trouble with that Fay guy. Too wimpy.

I don’t expect Ohio State to interrupt a football game every time there’s a drizzle. I do expect Ohio State and every other university to take certain precautions whenever thunderbolts threaten to turn 100,000 people into guacamole.

After all, the last thing we need is for some announcer to say: “He’s at the 25! . . . the 20! . . . the 15! . . . he’s at the 10! . . . he’s . . . ZZZZZZZZ!. . . . uh, he’s toast.”