A State of Panic

Florida quarterback Chris Leak, looking for running room, quieted his detractors at home with his most valuable player performance. (By Stephen Dunn -- Getty Images)

GLENDALE, Ariz.

First, let me say Jim Tressel is a very fine coach, among the best in the game. After icons Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden and USC's carefree wonder boy, Jim Tressel is right there. And Troy Smith deserved the Heisman Trophy this season. No matter where he goes in the NFL draft, Smith was the best player in the land.

Which is why it's almost unfathomable how badly Ohio State's coach and quarterback cracked Monday night, how much they wilted from the pressure of a BCS title game they helped siphon the suspense from by intermission.

Tressel absolutely lost his head by foolishly going for it on fourth down at his 29-yard line. With less than four minutes left in the first half and Ohio State trailing by merely 10 points, Tressel all but sealed Florida's 41-14 national championship game win.

The call itself resulted in just a field goal for the Gators after they stopped the Buckeyes and took over. But it was a clear sign of how much Florida had taken the game by the throat. It illustrated how much Ohio State was beat-down, bewildered and in a state of genuine panic.

Like an impulsive, macho Texas hold 'em player who thinks he's going to bully his way to a nice pot, Tressel's emotion trumped his logic. Mr. Sweater Vest got crazy in a title game, sending the wrong message to his defense and ultimately sending Ohio State home beaten badly.

And Troy Smith just played so miserably. Yes, Heisman winners were 1-4 in BCS title games, but Smith kept reminding everyone all week that it wasn't an issue, that those players weren't him. That the money player on the nation's most dominant team would buck the statistic.

Until Florida made him one.

Run down by a Gators defense that was much quicker up front than Ohio State, forced to throw almost exclusively to blanketed receivers in the second half, Smith was 4 of 14 for 35 yards with an interception. He was thoroughly outplayed by offensive MVP Chris Leak -- the most resilient player on either roster.

Booed in Gainesville in late September, the ultra-maligned Florida senior shut up his own detractors at home as much as he silenced the state of Ohio. He completed his first nine passes and made his best decision of the night to throw away his 10th near the goal line to give the Gators another shot.

At 6 feet nothing and without a cannon, Leak's gifts are precision and accuracy in a drop-back scheme. If he's drafted at all, it won't be until the late rounds. Monday night was the last great night of his career.

He carved up the game plan of a coach whose sole goal was to rattle him. He gunned down Tressel, who had not lost a BCS game, was 3-0 in games pitting Nos. 1 vs. 2 and had more than a month to prepare for Leak's limitations.

Not that Florida and Leak were supposed to be blown out, but the reverse was surreal. Florida Coach Urban Meyer, in his second year after leaving Utah, pulled a Tressel, circa January 2003. Tressel's second season at Ohio State found him in the national title game, opposite a Miami team no one believed was beatable outside of Columbus.

Two years removed from Youngstown State, his Buckeyes pulled off the near impossible that night. In Ohio State's other two BCS appearances under Tressel prior to Monday night, the Buckeyes thumped Notre Dame last season and beat Kansas State in 2004.

If Ohio State finished unbeaten this season, Tressel was headed straight for the pantheon, next to Paterno and Bowden and ahead of Pete Carroll, who between last season's BCS championship loss to Texas and this season's inexplicable loss to UCLA still has some work to do in the legend-building business.

Now it's Tressel who's got some work and explaining to do, especially after that brain-lock, machismo call at the end of the first half.

"We thought we could make it," Tressel said. "It ended up being the wrong call."

With respect to Gator Nation, what a dud to end what most viewers feel was a vintage bowl season. In the past two weeks the Phoenix area alone gave us Texas Tech pulling off the greatest comeback in bowl history and Boise State's overtime beauty over Oklahoma in this very stadium.

Now, on the last night of the college football season, in the middle of the desert, we get the Gators beating up a nonconference opponent as if it were Western Carolina.

Western Carolina was actually Florida's opponent on Nov. 18, the last time Ohio State truly resembled the No. 1 program in the country. Remember? It was 51 days ago. Some of us have begun and ended relationships in that period of time. Meaningful ones.

And the Big Ten? What a sorry finish for that conference. First, Michigan has its clock cleaned by USC in the Rose Bowl. Now Ohio State is taken to the woodshed in less than two quarters by an underdog from the Southeastern Conference. The Wolverines and Buckeyes deserve a rematch, all right -- to see who is No. 4.

On the last night of the season, it comes down to this: The unflappable Jim Tressel was rattled, the steady Troy Smith was shaky, the previously unbeaten Buckeyes and their 19-game winning streak were dismantled, leaving no doubt who the national champion of the 2006 college football season should be:

The team with the current longest winning streak -- undefeated, untied, 13-0 Boise State.

"Let's go play 'em next week," said a facetious Meyer, smiling. "Oh, no, I love Boise State. We're done."