By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The buckeye, with its shiny brown surface and its distinctive tan patch, is a tough nut to crack.

So, too, is understanding the love affair that millions of Ohioans have with the Ohio State Buckeye football team - from big cities to towns so tiny that three cars at a red light is a traffic jam.

It is a love that has not burned so brightly for 35 years, the last time the Ohio State Buckeyes won a national football championship, led by the legendary Woody Hayes. He's still revered by millions of Ohioans - including the 18,826 Ohio State grads in the Tristate - nearly 15 years after his death.

And tonight, it is a love that reaches its flash point as the Buckeyes take the field at the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., facing the Miami Hurricanes for a shot at the national title.

"Being a Buckeye fan makes you do funny things," said Karl Williams of Colerain Township, a 35-year-old logistics and finance coordinator for Procter & Gamble.

Mr. Williams studied on the Ohio State University campus in the late 1980s and spent Saturday afternoons in the giant bowl on the banks of the Olentangy River. On Thursday, he jumped on a plane to Las Vegas with three college buddies. They rented a car this morning for the four-hour drive through the desert to Tempe.

Not one of them has a ticket for the game.

"I couldn't not be there when the Bucks are going for the big one," Mr. Williams said. "Scarlet and gray forever."

It is the kind of passion that made Rita and Richard Rings of Fairfield take a life-size plastic Santa Claus, dress him in scarlet-and-gray regalia, stick a Buckeye pennant in his hand and plop him down in the family room so they can say that Santa kicked back on his post-Christmas vacation and watched the Fiesta Bowl at their house.

Buckeye fever made Chris English of Mason - OSU class of '87 - issue a general invitation to Buckeye dads and sons to come to his house last Saturday night for a "pre-Fiesta Bowl" party, where he could show off a basement where every wall is covered with 30 years worth of Buckeye collectibles.

"We didn't have a big crowd," Mr. English said after the party. "But we had the enthusiasm."

Today, he and his wife are headed for Tempe; they are among the lucky few who got tickets.

Some Ohioans went to great lengths to be in the stands in Tempe tonight instead of in easy chairs watching it on TV.

Brian Brinkmoeller of Alexandria had a Christmas Eve most Buckeye fans can only dream of - a friend who has a cousin who works for a beverage company in Phoenix called to say he had two tickets. All he wanted in return for them was a cooler full of Finke's Goetta.

Mr. Brinkmoeller made the deal.

That kind of Buckeye devotion is not a phenomenon that travels well across bodies of water - such as the Ohio River. In Kentucky, people have their own passion, and it is blue, not scarlet. There, University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball rules.

At T.J.'s Sport Bar in Florence, manager Jabe Stewart says he would be shocked if a customer came in tonight wanting to see the Fiesta Bowl on the big-screen TV.

"Here, the only thing that gets people's attention is Kentucky basketball," Mr. Stewart said. "Other than that, people just come here to shoot pool and drink beer. Ohio State football isn't a factor."

But, on the north bank, the river of affection runs deep.

Love for the Buckeyes can even reach the heart of a man like Jim Carr of Newcomerstown, Ohio, raised in the Buckeyes' hated state of Michigan and brought up to love the maize and blue of the Michigan Wolverines.

He is a convert to Buckeye fever. It took hold after he moved to the Tuscarawas County village in eastern Ohio about 10 years ago to set up a barber shop on River Street.

"The Barber from Ann Arbor," is what the locals called him.

But what makes him unique among Buckeye fans is that for the past three years he has been mayor of Newcomerstown, the hometown of Coach Hayes.

Like the good people of Newcomerstown, and true Buckeye fans everywhere, Coach Hayes hated the whole state of Michigan with a scarlet-and-gray passion. One time, legend has it, Coach Hayes was being driven through Michigan on a recruiting trip and refused to allow his assistant to stop for gas. He would push the car to the Ohio border, the coach said, before he would spend a dime of his money in Michigan.

"People tell me all the time that Woody is spinning in his grave that a guy from Michigan is mayor of his hometown," said the 42-year-old Mr. Carr. "But I want Woody to know that I've seen the light."

Even though he was raised in Ypsilanti, attended the University of Michigan and cut hair in Ann Arbor for about 20 years, it wasn't long after he came to the Ohio town where his wife's family lived that he started to come around.

"There's not much else you can do around here but root for the Bucks," the mayor said. "It's an irresistible force."

People are particularly passionate about the Buckeyes in Ohio's hundreds of small villages and cities like Newcomerstown; there, there is a proprietary feeling about the team in places where there are no professional sports or big-college teams to compete for people's affections.

But nowhere is Buckeye Fever more intense than in Columbus, the home of Ohio State University.

On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, at the Buckeye Hall of Fame CafÈ on Olentangy River Road, about a mile south of the campus, people were finishing up their lunches and taking time to walk around the halls of the huge restaurant and banquet hall. They stared in awe at glass cases full of Ohio State Buckeye memorabilia dating back nearly a century.

The most prominent piece, set up in the restaurant's foyer, was a glass case containing the 1975 Heisman trophy won by former Buckeye Archie Griffin, one of the back-to-back Heismans the legendary running back was awarded. Mr. Griffin, a friend of the restaurant's owner, donated it for the Hall of Fame display.

"Archie's Heisman; that's just awesome," said Jason Ebin, an OSU grad who now lives in Swedesboro, N.J.

Mr. Ebin, his wife and his two daughters were in Columbus for the holidays, visiting his mother, Marie Ebin, a 1973 grad and a former OSU gymnast.

His daughters, 3-year-old Heidi and 18-month-old Savannah, lined up in front of a life-size cutout of Brutus, the Buckeyes' nut-headed mascot, while their grandmother took a picture.

"We start 'em out young around here," Mrs. Ebin said.

Paul Buchanan, the general manager of the Buckeye Hall of Fame CafÈ, said he expects about 2,500 customers to cram into the restaurant and bar tonight to watch the Fiesta Bowl on a multitude of big-screen TVs.

"There is nothing like Ohio State football," said Mr. Buchanan, standing on front of three private dining rooms named for Ohio State legends - golfer Jack Nicklaus, basketball coach Fred Taylor and, of course, Coach Hayes.

"People live and die by it," he said, as some guests behind him peered in the windows of the Woody Hayes room.

"It's a real simple equation: Bucks win; life is good."

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com