EAST LANSING –Michigan State football likes to play the “chip on the shoulder” card as much as any program, but it is certainly not unique to the Spartans. Ohio State team captain and offensive tackle Taylor Decker remembers the cold, harsh reality of his first spring as a Buckeye. It was March of 2012, three months removed from Ohio State’s nightmarish 6-7 season. “People were saying it would take years to rebuild this program,” said Decker, one of 18 seniors the defending national champion Buckeyes (10-0, 6-0 Big Ten) will be honoring at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday when the No. 9-ranked Spartans (9-1, 5-1) come to Columbus for a showdown of top 10 teams. Ohio State (10-0. 6-0 Big Ten) has the longest active win streak in college football at 23 games, and the No. 3-ranked Buckeyes’ 30-straight regular-season league wins is an NCAA record. Decker said the adversity the program faced in 2011, before Urban Meyer took over as head coach, has been the key to Ohio State not settling into any sort of complacency. “I really think the thing we have here, we still have guys that remember what it was like before we went on these streaks and set these records,” Decker told MLive.com. “We haven’t forgotten what it took to get where we’re at, and we’ve established that within our team culture.” The Buckeyes had a couple of close calls this season, but their leadership pulled them through in 7-point wins over Northern Illinois (20-13) and Indiana (34-27) when the team played at less than its best…
Continue Reading: Ohio State OT Taylor Decker says Buckeyes ‘still have a chip on our shoulder’
