A number of pundits have written that Toughness will be the key to the Buckeyes beating Texas this year in Glendale. If true, I know where they can get some and it would be from one of my storytellers.

We have a close family friend in town, an amazing lady who will turn 94 on March 11th. Two years ago, she gave me a story of her thrill attending commencement in Ohio Stadium at the young age of 92. This person still lives alone in her home. A little over two weeks ago, on one of those freezing drizzle days when the temperature hovered just above the icing mark, she went outside, without a coat, to fill her squirrel feeder, and fell and broke her knee and leg. She lay there for two and a half hours before the neighbors heard her cry for help. When they found her, her hair was frozen solid and her body temperature was down to 88 degrees.

She was rushed to the hospital, and it took something like 5 hours to raise her temperature 4 degrees. Miracles do happen though. She pulled through and two days later they operated and put a new knee in.

A week later, she was back here rehabbing in our nursing home. I visited her there yesterday and found her sitting up in a chair...as sharp, witty and full of life as ever. Except for the new knee, she looks none the worse for wear, and is already standing with assistance and marching with both feet. Would that you and I could go through that and look so good!

That, my friends, is toughness. If Tress could come up and bottle that up for Jan 5th, I know we would blow the Longhorns right out of Sun Devil Stadium.