Tim Etchison

Charlie Becker had just lost to Ohio State. Nine catches, 165 yards, the best game of his season, and it was not enough. So he walked across the field to find their head coach and say sorry for something he did last year. Here is the whole thing. Start with his father. Dave Becker played linebacker at Ohio State. Charlie was born in Cincinnati. The family moved to Nashville when he was in kindergarten, but the house never changed. "We had Ohio State posters up. You name it, we had it." "We were die-hard." He wanted to play there. That was the whole dream. Ohio State never offered him. He was a three star kid at Father Ryan High School in Nashville who also won state titles in the hurdles. Indiana brought him in on a visit, and hours after it ended he told his dad he was done looking. "That's it. I'm done. This is it. This is where I want to play." Now go to last December. Indiana played Ohio State for the Big Ten Championship. Becker led Indiana with six catches for 126 yards. A 33 yard catch of his late in the game kept Ohio State off the field until there were 18 seconds left. Indiana won 13 to 10. First Big Ten title for that school in almost sixty years. Then they went and won the national championship. And on the stage, in the middle of all of it, he took the O-H-I-O chant and changed the last two letters into something vulgar. It went everywhere. Now yesterday. Ohio State came to Bloomington. Becker was the best player on the field. Nine catches, 165 yards. Indiana lost anyway, 19 to 15. And after it, with the season he thought he was going to have cracked open, he went and found Ryan Day. A television camera caught it. "I'm really sorry about that. That's not me. I'm saying I'm sorry to you." Then Day went to his press conference and said this about him. "Charlie Becker just played out of his mind today." Now the honest part. It took him ten months, and the apology came on a day he lost rather than a day he won, and plenty of people will tell you that is the only reason it happened. Maybe. He is the one who has to know. But there is no version of this where it was easy. He could have let it sit. Nobody was asking him for it. He had just lost at home to the one team he grew up wanting to play for, in front of his own crowd, and he walked over there in full view of a camera and put his name on it. Nobody apologizes well in that minute. That is the worst possible minute to do it. He did it then anyway.