First Posted: 1/15/2015
I predict that Ohio State’s national championship will have long-lasting effects on society. Here’s my news report from the future:
Ohio State’s triumph in the first College Football Playoff title game profoundly influenced fashion, politics, retailing, military tactics and the workplace in the ensuing years.
No one was surprised that the team riveted the sports world with its unlikely run to the championship in January 2015.
Yet the subsequent effects on other aspects of American life couldn’t have been foreseen.
“We began to suspect that the team’s influence might transcend sports when Pope Francis greeted an international crowd in St. Peter’s Square with ‘O-H,’??” said OSU sociology professor Sum Long Tenure.
Other examples of the team’s influence on culture were equally startling.
• Fashion: Inspired by running back Ezekiel Elliott’s bare midriff, Gov. John Kasich delivered the 2015 State of the State speech in a dress shirt cut off just below his sternum.
The move was credited with unifying the divided state legislature, as Republicans and Democrats joined to pass a law forbidding Kasich from ever doing such a thing again.
• Politics: The U.S. Constitution was amended to say that, if the president and vice president are unable to fulfill their duties, the next in line for the White House is Cardale Jones.
• Work habits: Urban Meyer’s commitment to work-life balance moved people of all ages to follow his example.
Even second-graders signed pink contracts pledging to spend no more than nine hours a day at the office, silence their cellphones at bedtime and go on at least one vacation a year with Meyer daughter Nicki.
• Consumer goods: Chanel unveiled “Smell of Victory,” a perfume with notes of beer, dumpster fire and tear gas.
Apple began selling the iDotter, an unusually large, curving white smartphone that the user carries on his neck and shoulders, like a certain brass musical instrument.
Victoria’s Secret introduced a bra that mimics the look of the fruit of the buckeye tree. It sold in huge volume and gave new meaning to the term chestnut.
• Military tactics: Impressed by the precision of OSU marching-band routines, the Army experimented with troop formations that mimic the movements of Michael Jackson, Pac-Man and a T. rex.
The formations mesmerized enemy soldiers, who promptly dropped their weapons so they could upload videos to YouTube.
