Ohio State football fans, in all likelihood, will never be able to enjoy a football season as much as they enjoyed the one that just finished five days ago.

The Buckeyes have not tasted victory this sweet in 34 years, and the sour leftovers experienced during the end of the John Cooper’s era, coupled with Jim Tressel’s season of growing pains, make these 14 consecutive victories even sweeter.

Add to that the legions of those “experts” outside the Buckeye state — not to mention all those naysayers inside state boundaries — who doubted the team from day one, and this season appears to be something that will probably never happen again, at least not in our lifetime.

If you go without water for three days, you’re going to want a heck of a lot more water than if you go without water for only an hour or so. I know the Buckeyes returning next year are still thirsty enough and talented enough to dip back in the championship well for another drink, but even if they do, it just won’t be the same feeling.

“It’s the greatest feeling of my life,” OSU tackle Kenny Peterson told reporters after the game. “I’ll never, never feel like this again.”

Peterson is a senior on this year’s team, but underclassmen can echo those same sentiments — they just can’t say them to the media.

The Miami Hurricanes provide a perfect example. They won 34 straight games before facing the Buckeyes. They were tired of winning; they just couldn’t bear losing.

Another championship would have been nice for the Hurricanes and their fans, but it would not have been nearly as exciting to them as the loss was devastating.

This Buckeye team will know what it feels like to win a national championship, and as much as people like to think that will only make them want another one even more, it’s not quite that easy.

It’s a battle of the bully vs. to the kid being bullied. It’s always more fun to win if you’re not expected to.

The Buckeyes, as any fan, player or semi-intelligent sports enthusiast can attest, were not given a chance by very many people this year.

Proving them wrong was the most enjoyable part — both for the team and the fans.

The only way the type of hunger felt by Ohio State this season could be repeated is if the Buckeyes are not given full credit for the win, and OSU players still feel they have something to prove. Judging by some of the post-game comments, there are plenty of people outside the program who are still adding coal to this fire.

“They didn’t beat us,” Miami sophomore tight end Kellen Winslow II said after Friday’s defeat. “We beat ourselves. We’re the best team in the country. They’re not. We just beat ourselves.”

There are coaches who think the game should have definitely ended after a pass to Chris Gamble fell incomplete on fourth down in the first overtime.

“I really thought the game was over. Just like everybody else,” Miami secondary coach Mark Stoops told ESPN the Magazine, referring to the seconds following the play before a flag was thrown for pass interference. “And there’s not another official in the history of the game that would make that call … that was a joke.”

Plenty of fans think the game should have ended right then and there, with Miami taking home the national title for a second straight year. After 181,124 votes had been collected in an ESPN.com poll, 49.2 percent of all those who voted thought Miami got a raw deal.

And on the Fox Sports Network’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” analyst John Kruk said Ohio State was a “nobody team” from the “puny Big Ten” that was “supposed to be terrible.”

All of these tried to show that OSU had no business holding Miami’s collective jock strap. I think they came out a little wrong.

Justin Powell, a senior in journalism, can be reached at [email protected]. He usually doesn’t enjoy pointing out that the glass is half-empty, so in closing he wants to add that in the spirit of Ohio State celebration, we should all enjoy drinking whatever we have in our cup — and then reach for another.