DaytonDailyNews.com

COLUMBUS — In 1977, the Ohio State football team arrived in New Orleans two weeks before the Buckeyes were scheduled to play Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. It didn't go well.

"By the time we had to play the game," said Calvin Murray, the former OSU running back, "we were just ready to go home."

The Buckeyes played like it, losing 35-6 to the Crimson Tide. The next season, Ohio State faced Clemson in the Gator Bowl and finished a tumultuous season with a 17-15 loss.

By the time OSU defeated UCLA during the 1979 regular season, the Buckeyes were ready for some better results. They had the pilot fly past the Rose Bowl on the return trip, tilting the plane so both sides could see the stadium.

"That was our goal. That was our focus," Murray said. "Focus changes everything."

Even though the Buckeyes ended up losing that season's Rose Bowl to Southern California 17-16, Murray echoed feelings of many former Ohio State players by arguing that the amount of days OSU has in between games hasn't affected bowl results in the program's history. Effort and focus have.

The issue was punctuated last season when Ohio State lost the BCS championship game to Florida following a 50-day layoff from its final regular-season game. With another 50 days between games this season leading up to the Jan. 7 title game against LSU, Ohio State fans are concerned the Buckeyes will again play flat.

Players said OSU coach Jim Tressel is guarding against that.

"This year in practice we're focusing on conditioning, speed conditioning," said running back Maurice Wells. "We're doing gassers ... then get right back to regular practice mode to work on endurance. I can already tell I'm in better shape now, and we're focused."

Long and short layoffs have produced mixed results for Ohio State and the Big Ten, which has faced criticism for finishing its regular season in mid-November, earlier than the other BCS conferences. Since 1990, the Big Ten has a 48-54-1 bowl record but is the same number of games under .500 with fewer than 40 days (29-32-1) or 40 or more days (19-22) in between the season finale and bowl game.

Ohio State has a similar indecisive trend. At 18-20 overall in postseason games, the Buckeyes have just a slightly worse record with 40 or more days of layoff (7-9) than with fewer than 40 (11-11).

Still, even some former Buckeyes feel the long breaks hurt momentum, especially after such a structured regular season, and applaud the Big Ten's recent vote to extend the regular season to 13 games and finish on the Saturday following Thanksgiving.

"You cannot practice against your own team at game speed because someone will get hurt, and you don't really play against your own like you do against an opponent," Tom Skladany,

the former All-American Ohio State kicker, wrote in an e-mail.

"The coaches try as best they can to keep you in game shape during that layoff period, but there is no way you can keep the same rhythm and consistency if you have to wait that long to play again. It makes no sense, and it has to be changed," he wrote.

That won't affect the current Buckeyes, who are playing in their second straight national

title game and third in six season (in 2002, OSU had 40 days off before topping the Miami Hurricanes for the national championship).

"I went to see the guys practicing this year, and you can see they're motivated," Murray said. "I think this last time, they had so many awards, so many things good for them, they got caught up in the press clippings and things people saying. This year, I think this team is saying, 'We're embarrassed about that.' They need to remove that scar, and the only way is to beat LSU real bad, not matter how many days they have to wait."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7389 or knagel@DaytonDailyNews.com.