On A Lighter Note, The Ohio State Football Season Starts Saturday

Buckeye football is always a mania here in central Ohio.  The 2016 season opens Saturday against Bowling Green.  We don't have a lot of starters returning, but Urban swears we're gonna be good.  Go Bucks!

Here's a perspective on Buckeye football fever from 46 years ago, excerpted from the book "1968 -- The Year That Saved Ohio State Football" by David Hyde.  Not much has changed.


In 1970, Ohio State student Thomas Harrington was arrested for public obscenity while driving his car, which had a bumper sticker that read:  "Fuck Michigan."

Lawyers went to work.  The prosecution argued that no word was more offensive than this verb, which was slang for sexual intercourse.  But Judge James A Pearson in the Franklin County Municipal Court considered this dictionary definition and reasoned it "absurd" to think the bumper sticker meant "to have sexual intercourse with the state of Michigan."

"Mr. Harrington's bumper sticker accurately expressed the derogatory nature of this mood toward the University of Michigan football team and the state of Michigan as a whole," Judge Pearson wrote in his decision.  He added, "Most of the people of Ohio would say that Mr. Harrington's bumper sticker also had redeeming social value."

Next case.