When was the last time the Ohio State Football team had a losing record?

2011 was one of the worst seasons ever for the Ohio State football program. They finished 6-7, which is unheard of from almost any year in Buckeye history. There are some reasons as to why they finished at such a low record.

The first big reason was the fact that in June Two-time BCS bowl MVP Terrelle Pryor left for the NFL, leaving Ohio State to use Joe Bauserman as his replacement. He started with a blowout win against Akron but then came a close call with Toledo. But then that's when everything just fell over, embarrassingly losing to Miami and Nebraska.

Bauserman eventually got benched, and Braxton Miller would start. It did take some time getting used to starting but he grew through his problems throughout the season. And I think a lot can agree it would have gone a lot worse if Bauserman started the rest of the year.

Another reason for such a horrible record was an increase in unnecessary penalties. Jim Tressel always ran a team that was controlled and didn't get too many penalties. Luke Fickell didn't have the same luxury. As the season moved by fans saw a large amount of personal fouls and this was probably due to inexperience.

We also saw a lot of inconsistency on defense. The Buckeyes' defense is always one of the best in the country, but for some reason, they just weren't as good in 2011. On the perimeter, there were tons of mistakes that we just don't see a lot of from this team. In games against Penn State and Purdue, the defense just let fans down.

And the last big reason Ohio State ended up with such a horrible record was because they just couldn't end games. They couldn't close the game against Purdue in overtime, failed to come back when they played Penn State and allowed Michigan to end up beating them. In any close games, they couldn't get in their favor at the end of the game.

Ohio State has a strong history of having a good record close to every year, and their last losing season was 12 years ago. With the way the Buckeyes have been lately, I don't see a losing season anytime soon.