'We did it ... we finally did it': Massillon Tigers football beats Hoban for state title
CANTON — In a large stadium, Massillon won its first state playoff championship after a 52-year drought.
They needed a large stadium.
Far from anyone leaving, the Massillon crowd on the south side of the venue strangely seemed larger for the trophy presentation than when its team was beating Akron Hoban 7-2.
There was something about that final score …
Ohio's high school playoff system began in '72.
It was hard to know how to take winning the OHSAA Division II state championship.
Was 7-2 tantamount to blowing out the ghosts that kept piling on from '72 all the way through 2022? Was 7-2 too close for comfort?
Either way, 7-2 becomes part of the lore.
As the OHSAA speeches were drowned out, the people in the front row, stretched from end zone to end zone, led the celebration.
A read of the faces left the clear impression none of them belonged to a person who was born within 10 years of 1972.
The front row was students and younger adults. Some boys were bareback, sporting orange and black body paint, carrying on as if 45 degrees was a heat wave.
As one's eyes raised above the people in the lower rows, tricks of the stadium lights obscured the faces of the thousands. The crowd filling the steep grandstand seemed endless and timeless.
Faces from now. Faces from another dimension.
The aura was neither young nor old nor in between. These people were Massillon history, exhaling on a grand scale.
Hoban head coach Tim Tyrell had a hard time swallowing this one.
He imagined his team, which gave up points only off a turnover, winning 2-0.
He said his defense was the best in Ohio.
He didn't say he thought he had the better team, but he kind of didn't have to.
"I thought it was going to be an ugly win," he said, "but I thought it was going to be a win."
Massillon head coach Nate Moore could not have seemed more pleased had his team won 70-2.
"I'm so happy for Massillon," he said, looking it.
It was better this way. It was a thriller that came down to Hoban threatening to score near the end.
Moore ordered up a fake punt midway through the fourth quarter of this hair-raiser, with his Tigers in their own territory.
Option One was to kick it make Hoban go the long, hard way against a defense even Tyrell admitted (kind of) was as good as his.
Option Two was to process through the deep history/psychology, keeping the ball, running out the game with the ball in hand, faking the ghost of 1972 out of its drawers − finishing the job with a capital BOLD.
Tyrell found the gamble interesting.
"That takes a lot of cahones," he said.
It took a precarious defensive stop after the gamble failed.
The stars aligned for a near-perfect game atmosphere.
A robust crowd of 14,846 filed in early. At a time of year when winter can come early, it was crisp, not freezing.
A touch of Wrigley Field tapped in, with nonticketed people watching from an outside deck at the Hall of Fame Village's new Brew Kettle.
Massillon people nearly filled the multiple tiers on the larger side of Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. Hoban's crowd spread across the single tier of the north grandstand.
Overall, the percentage appeared to be 60-40, Massillon people, if not 70-30.
The rock-'em battle was 50-50 right up to the failed fake punt and beyond.
The prospect of a devastating, last-second loss, given the backdrop of Massillon playoff history, made this a full-fledged Anxiety Bowl.
In the old days of the playoff system that launched in 1972, the Tigers played in the big-school division in the shadows of Cincinnati Moeller and then Cleveland St. Ignatius.
Then the Tigers took a back seat to their arch-rival in a 1990s McKinley surge.
Hoban was the new Knightmare, inflicting a moveable feast of pain.
In Canton in 2018 (state finals), Hoban got the Tigers in an early 27-0 hole.
In Massillon in 2020 (state finals), a 35-6 loss was a bummer deluxe.
In Akron in 2022 (state semifinals), Ohio Mr. Football Lamar Sperling ran for 316 yards.
The Knights rammed the ball down the field off Thursday's opening kickoff.
A fumble stopped the drive and helped Massillon people believe that maybe it was their turn after all these years.
A defensive slugfest ensued. Massillon won a battle of two super teams, on points, if not by knockout.
Moore said watching the final seconds tick off was "surreal."
"I can't imagine what it was like to watch from the stands," he said.
Nine miles away, Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, empty but with lights aglow, awaited the return of the state-champion Tigers.
Brown's last season in an epic run at Massillon was long enough ago (83 years) to make it truly ancient history. But then, Thursday night was largely about history.
Someone asked Moore what he might say to Brown.
"I guess … we did it. We finally did it."
Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
This article originally appeared on The Repository: History made as Massillon beats Hoban in OHSAA state football finals
