Is your favorite part of college football its propensity for providing pretty weird stuff? Then the Ohio State-Illinois rivalry — set to be renewed for the 102nd time Saturday — might be just your thing. The Buckeyes lead the all-time series with the Fighting Illini 67-30-4 (including one win OSU vacated in 2010), and they have won seven in a row. Those numbers don’t come close to telling the whole story, though, and we can begin with the last time Illinois beat the Buckeyes. That was in 2007, when a top-ranked Ohio State squad was upset on 28-21 on Senior Day, ruining a perfect season for a Buckeye squad looking to put the embarrassing ending to their 2006 season (at the hands of Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators) behind it. Quarterback Juice Williams threw four touchdown passes for the unranked Fighting Illini, who intercepted Todd Boeckman three times and dominated the line of scrimmage, running for 260 yards and running out the clock in the end against a defense that included stalwarts such as James Laurinaitis, Malcom Jenkins, Vernon Gholston and Cameron Heyward. Owing to the oddness of the series, that setback did not prevent Ohio State from making the BCS National Championship Game despite losing on the next-to-last weekend of the Buckeyes’ season. Since then, Ohio State has had surprisingly close encounters with the Fighting Illini in 2008, 2010 and 2013 (at least until a couple of late runs by Carlos Hyde), but the OSU-Illinois series has been unique almost from the beginning. It took until their fifth try for the Buckeyes to beat Illinois in 1916, and that 7-6 game itself was a memorable one as All-American halfback Chic Harley scored the Buckeyes’ only touchdown and added the conversion kick that ultimately proved to be the game-winner. That snapped an 11-game unbeaten streak in Big Ten play for Illinois and set the stage for Ohio State’s first Big Ten championship. A year later, Harley and the Buckeyes shut out Illinois 13-0 in the season finale to claim another conference title, but the Illini would have their revenge in 1919 when they traveled to Columbus and used a late drop-kick field goal to pull out a 9-7 win. …
Continue Reading: Ohio State’s games with Illinois have a tendency not to go as planned
