Last Saturday's Ohio State spring game was a big, rich slice of Americana - a spectacle that will prove impossible for those who examine the human condition to try and explain. On a perfect April day, close to 100,000 people drove to Ohio Stadium in nonelectric cars, paid five bucks of nonstimulus money, and gleefully sat for three hours in metal stands with a comfort rating that should require directions to the nearest chiropractic clinic stamped on them.

Sociologists, marketing gurus, and even those guys across campus in the English Literature library wearing the tweed sport coats with the leather elbow patches - they will go to their graves trying to figure out this phenomenon. Were there really that many people who didn't have a garden to tend, couldn't get a tee time, or lost their best fishing pole - or is this just the inexplicable allure of Ohio State football.

Oprah wasn't giving away free cars, yet three times the population of the nation of Lichtenstein showed up. Four months before the start of football season, there were more people in the Horseshoe last Saturday to watch the Buckeyes play a meaningless, glorified scrimmage than live in the cities of Fairbanks, Alaska, or Macon, Ga., or Albany, N.Y.

After walking off the field, OSU freshman offensive tackle Jack Mewhort just shook his head in amazement and said that was "The Buckeye Nation." It is a Scarlet & Gray homeland without borders, no standing army - unless you count the defensive line - and no legislative body. But as the spring game cha-ching demonstrated, its economy is likely one of the world's most sound.

The gate from that little public practice session last week was close to half a million dollars, and judging from the lines that snaked 30 and 40 deep at every concession counter inside the stadium - the till had to greet two or three times that amount. The quickest way to make a few million without involving Bernie Madoff or any phrase with the word cartel in it, is to simply assemble the Buckeyes - and the masses will muster. The fiscal clout of this franchise is significant enough to get OSU a seat at the next G7 Economic Summit, and once word of the Buckeyes' considerable spreadsheet spreads, Somali pirates will soon be patrolling the Olentangy, looking to extort a piece of the action.