Let’s take a college-football detour here for a second. While my Buckeyes roll along towards the inevitable clash with M ….. innesota (The Way Of The Sweater Vest: One Game At A Time), I happened to check on the doings in Athens, home of my alma mater. I found that the Ohio University Bobcats are 5-3 and 3-1 in conference, good enough for second place in the MAC’s eastern division.

That includes a win over a Big Ten school, on the road, even (granted, it’s Illinois, but still…), and last Saturday’s pounding of Buffalo, 42-7, in Athens. It also means that Saturday’s game against Kent’s Golden Flashers, 4-0 in conference and leading the MAC east, is a kind of mildly huge game.

I have some misgivings about football at OU, starting with the drunken rampage by head coach Frank Solich after completion of the 2005 season. Frank’s a former head coach at Nebraska, and came into Athens touting discipline, hard work, etc., etc. Shortly after the 2005 season, he then went on a bender at the Casa Cantina, drove away after refusing offers of several rides and passed out in his car on Union Street a few minutes later.

He was contrite at the time, entering a nolo contendre plea to the DUI charge, but he’s since tried, through his lawyer, to get that changed, claiming he was drugged. Now, I speak with some authority when I say there are drugs to be had in Athens, but claiming that GHB — and not tequila — was behind the incident?

Uh, not good, Frank.

This season, a bunch of players — somewhere north of a dozen — have been arrested since Jan. 1 on charges ranging from open container violations to assaults. In nearly all the cases, the players essentially got detention as punishment.

Uh, also not good, Frank.

It’s impossible to hold a head coach accountable for the transgressions of every single one of his players, especially at a D-1 program that has dozens of athletes on scholarship. But it helps if the coach is perceived to be doing things the right way, and telling a football player charged with assault that his only football-related punishment is a few extra hours of study table in the coaching office probably isn’t the right way of doing things.

OU’s board of trustees has since directed the president to ensure that the school’s athletics director hands out punishment for any athletes who get into trouble. And three football players have since been suspended indefinitely. That’s a better way, and hopefully, that will stick with the program, even as things improve on the field.

I’m not an especially good fan of OU football. The Wife and I have been to three games since we finished school in the mid-1990s, although one was in Columbus, wearing green and white, and watching the Bobcats actually give Ohio State a rough time for nearly the entire first half. We may even go to another game this season, when OU plays at Akron on Nov. 16, two days before another, uh, rather important game we’ll be attending in Columbus.

But the big showdown against the Flashers on Saturday? At 2 p.m., when that game begins, we’ll be in the Ohio State College of Pharmacy parking lot, getting ready for the Golden Gophers. I’ll still have my Bobcats on my mind, though; maybe I’ll wear some green socks on Saturday.