Glenns Are Eye Daughters

I am still trying to master the peculiar lexicon of Ohio State football. Several weeks ago, for example, I was told on good authority that Senator and Mrs. Glenn would be invited to participate in a ceremony previously performed only by such luminaries as Bob Hope, Jack Nicklaus, and Woody Hayes. What I heard was that they would be serving as "eye daughters" at the OSU-Navy game. Thanks to the generosity of Glenn School benefactors, my wife and I were able to attend the game (on the 50 yard line) and take a picture (see above) of the Glenns infiltrating TBDBITL to do their thing. And another of life's little mysteries dissolves.

Ordinarily, the novels of Philip Roth are about as foreign to me as Big Ten football culture. Recently, however, I re-read Goodbye, Columbus, and I was gratified to find that Roth's protagonist, Neil Klugman, was as confused and tantalized by OSU traditions as am I:

For many this will be their last glimpse of the campus, of Columbus, for many many years. Life calls us, and anxiously if not nervously we walk out into the world and away from the pleasures of these ivied walls. But not from its memories. They will be the concomitant, if not the fundament, of our lives. We shall choose husbands and wives, we shall choose jobs and homes, we shall sire children and grandchildren, but we will not forget you, Ohio State. In the years ahead we will carry with us always memories of thee, Ohio State...