Jim Tressel has coached 282 college football games, none in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Hasn't even visited, he said yesterday.

Seventy of his Ohio State players are from Ohio itself. All but one of the coaches went to an Ohio college, including Tressel and his brother Dick (Baldwin-Wallace, where their dad Lee coached).

Although the Buckeyes recruit nationally, they run one of the most self-sufficient programs in college football. USC tried to nudge Ted Ginn Jr. out of Cleveland, but Tressel signed him.

"Chris Wells visited here," Pete Carroll said, "and then signed with them the day he got back."

That is why the past two BCS national championship losses have been so damaging. The Buckeyes looked as uncomfortable as Ralph and Alice Kramden vacationing in the Philippines.

Florida crushed them, 41-14. LSU flicked them aside, 38-24. A 23-1 record in those regular seasons drifted into vapor.

Ohio State was universally labeled too slow, too landlocked, as if Tressel were Woody Hayes.

So here comes Saturday, the Buckeyes back in a foreign land. And perhaps this is the overlooked vibe, underneath a week of torrential analysis.

USC needs to win this game because (A), well, it's scheduled and (B) it might lead to a national title.

Ohio State needs to win this game to reclaim its own soul.

"It's a perfect storm," Kirk Herbstreit said.

He is the former Buckeye quarterback and current ESPN analyst, and he was unmercifully realistic yesterday.

"I can never remember the Big Ten being regarded the way it is now," he said. "In 2006 you had people arguing about whether Florida or Michigan belonged in the championship game, and Ohio State didn't take Florida seriously, and you saw what happened. Last year you had Michigan being embarrassed by Appalachian State, and Oregon running around like Michigan was wearing ankle bracelets. Then LSU beat Ohio State and the Big Ten had a tough bowl season.

"I was in Florida last week and you can imagine what I heard from their fans about the Big 10 when Ohio State was playing (a 26-14, throat-gripper against Ohio)," Herbstreit added. "They were saying, don't worry, you guys will be playing easy games soon enough. So this is very big for Ohio State."

Herbstreit always has been smooth, fair, prepared. If he were as outspoken on the air as he was

Yesterday, he'd be one of the top sports opinionators on TV, regardless of sport.

He called the celebration penalty on Washington's Jake Locker "horrific," and he said Cal was a Pac-10 threat because it had lost some "egomaniacs." He also dismissed the notion that Ohio State conquers the heartland with a brigade of covered wagons and plowhorses.

"If you saw the NFL combine in Indianapolis and saw all the Ohio State athletes, you'd say, 'wow,"' Herbstreit said, knowing that eight Buckeyes have been first-round picks in the past three drafts.

"The Florida game, you noticed the difference in speed. The LSU game was decided in the trenches by a defensive line that was from another world. But it's not that Ohio State didn't have great talent on the field. What they need to do, in games like this one, is just go ahead and turn it loose."

They have plenty saved up after Saturday, when they trailed Ohio and its backup quarterback for three quarters. Neither Tressel nor the players sugarcoated that effort.

This team has 34 fourth- or fifth-year players and 18 returning starters, including a few, like linebacker James Laurinaitis and cornerback Malcolm Jenkins, who could have turned pro.

This game probably matches the two best coaches in America. Before Tressel, Ohio State was 6-6 and 8-4 and had lost five of six Michigan games. Tressel, the winner of four Division I-AA titles at Youngstown State and the BCS title for OSU in '01, has taken the Buckeyes to Carroll's heights. At this point, a Rose Bowl game would be a faint disappointment.

"Accountability, discipline, great recruiting," Herbstreit said. "Tressel made these guys play like a team again. A lot of people thought he'd be Woody Hayes, but he's absolutely on the other end of the spectrum, the way he motivates. He has a very cerebral approach."

Carroll has the glint of a coach who knows that it's Marquee Week, but then he's usually that way.

"We think every game is the biggest game we've ever going to play," he said.

But Carroll isn't deaf to the sizzle. He was an assistant for Earle Bruce at Ohio State in 1979, chased the retired Hayes down the street one day to talk football, and was at the Rose Bowl when Charles White implanted the Buckeyes on USC's winning drive.

The Trojans should be comfortable Saturday, at home against the Big Ten, with 91,000 fevered friends.

The Buckeyes will be strangers, squinting into the sun, unloved and wounded and more than a little desperate. Upsets have sprung from less.