John Cooper, Ohio State head coach was presented with an opportunity on Saturday. It wasn’t even the opportunity to do something particularly valiant or noble. It was the opportunity to do something decent, something fair, something so obvious that it was a foregone conclusion.
Penn State freshman defensive back Adam Taliaferro was seriously injured with 1:29 to go in the fourth quarter.
The Buckeyes led the Lions 38-6, and were driving for a totally meaningless score when Taliaferro slammed his head into the lower torso of OSU tailback Jerry Westbrooks.
His head seemed to snap backwards as he made contact with Westbrooks, and he immediately fell to the ground.
He lay with his legs completely motionless, but with his arms flailing like some sort of grotesque marionette.
Taliaferro suffered “a cervical spine injury with some neurological involvement (and) incomplete paralysis,” according to a release from the Ohio State University Medical Center.
In a moment, the imminent Buckeye win became almost meaningless.
Cooper watched as medics and trainers carefully loaded Taliaferro onto a gurney and wheeled it off to a waiting ambulance.
The ambulance took him to University Hospital, where his injury could be more completely diagnosed and treated.
Cooper saw all of this. He saw Penn State’s players kneeling, praying for their fallen teammate. He saw the obvious look of concern on their faces. He certainly knew the score; Ohio Stadium’s glorious new scoreboard had “Ohio State 38, Penn State 6” lit up for all to see.
Cooper knew that less than a minute and a half remained in the game, which had for all intents, been over for some time.
One could certainly expect a man who has spent every fall since 1962 standing on the sidelines of a college football field to be able to figure out what he needed to do.
The answer was so simple, so obvious, that one couldn’t imagine Cooper doing anything other than simply having Scott McMullen take a knee and letting the Penn State players get on with something far more important than some football game.
There was no other answer, no other choice.
On fourth-and-six, with the decent thing to do staring him in the face, Cooper allowed McMullen to throw a pass to Tim Cheatwood. The Buckeyes picked up an incredibly unimportant first down.
With 53 seconds left, the Buckeyes had the ball on the seven. Cooper was once again presented with an opportunity. Let McMullen take a knee and simply watch the clock wind down.
No, the 32-point lead was not good enough for Cooper. He needed another feather in his cap, another jewel in his crown.
Taliaferro was probably at the hospital by then.
The Buckeyes handed the ball to freshman tailback Sam Maldonado. Maldonado ran over left tackle and scored a touchdown, the first of his career. The scoreboard read 44-6.
The gurney was probably being unloaded from the ambulance.
As Taliaferro lay on his back, staring up at the fluorescent lighting of the hospital, do you think he heard the crowd roar when Maldonado crossed the goal line?
What was going through Taliaferro’s mind when Dan Stultz lined up for the extra point that would seal the game as Joe Paterno’s worst loss ever? Was he thinking about the defensive packages Penn State had used that afternoon, or was he wondering if he would ever walk again?
Stultz’s kick sailed through the uprights and the dwindling crowd cheered again. Of course Cooper didn’t go for two. Kicking the point was the right thing to do.
Cooper is not the man who calls the plays for Ohio State, but he is the head coach. The Bucks’ buck stops with him. If he wants to take a knee, then the Buckeyes take a knee. He is the one man responsible for leading 85 young men, helping to mold them into decent, fair human beings.
The decent thing to do was take a knee. The fair thing to do was to let Penn State’s players worry about their fallen teammate, whose life might be very, very different now.
Cooper has visited Taliaferro’s room at least twice since the injury, so he clearly cares about the kid. It’s just a shame he didn’t act like it during the game.
