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Somewhere in this town, John Cooper is smiling.

The smirk on Coop's face comes from the fact that last week proved something he tried, in vain, to sell Buckeye fans during his tenure: Winning football games is tough...real tough...at times, impossible. Even for the head of the Buckeye Nation.

His successor - quite possibly the most talented individual to ever hold the esteemed position of Head Coach at The Ohio State University (yes, I'm including Woody) - proved that against Illinois.

And while Tressel has managed to win a national title and nearly triple his predecessor's win total versus Michigan, the similarities between the two coaches is going almost unnoticed this year.

I'd wager this is likely because of the fact that Cooper is radically underappreciated for the success he had as the Head Buckeye. Want stats? From 1993 - 1998, he averaged 10 wins a season, won a Rose Bowl and finished No. 2 twice. He even managed to beat the Blue a couple of times.

The lasting knock on Cooper is that he couldn't win the "big one" which alternately means any game against Michigan or any game he lost. I suppose avenging a school's winless record versus Notre Dame (twice) and winning Ohio State's first trip to a "BCS" bowl didn't count as big ones.

Turns out it's pretty tough to win big ones and little ones, especially if you only have one season to do it.

I'm guessing there was no warning that the wheels were going to come off before the Illinois ambush. If there were, I'm sure Tressel and Co. would have done everything possible to prevent the unexpected trip up on the rack to see what all is broken.

Nevertheless, Ron Zook and the Illini managed to best Tressel and the Buckeyes on Saturday.

What's truly remarkable about the loss isn't that it happened: Face it, teams lose all the time. No, the real miracle is that Ohio State - under Tressel and Cooper - has repeatedly found itself the No. 1 team at some point during the season in the past decade.

Zook beat Tressel. Predictable? No. Surprising? Also, no. The last time Ohio State lost its top-ranked status at home was in 1998 when underdog Michigan State "shocked the world" by handing then-coach Nick Saban a real nice resume filler of an upset against Cooper.

In fact, John Cooper started 1998 the exact same way that Jim Tressel started 2007: Getting his tail kicked by a team from Florida.

In Coop's case, it was Bobby Bowden and Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. Then-quarterback Joe Germaine had about as much success against the Seminoles as Troy Smith did against Florida. After one memorable sack, Germaine pushed himself off the turf and, no joke, was looking out the earhole of his helmet.

Need I remind anyone what happened in the desert in January? Let's move on.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Tressel will be able to lift his team off the mat. Cooper did in 1998, as his Buckeyes destroyed Michigan and went on to beat Texas A&M in a repeat trip to New Orleans.

We'll find out whether or not Tressel can keep his mirror image version of Ohio State's 1998 season going this Saturday. And I'm sure Coop wouldn't mind his name being brought up in a positive light the week of The Game.

Again, we'll see you in Ann Arbor.

Tags: jim tressel, john cooper, michigan, ohio state football