Confident that there will be no repeat of last year's title-game nightmare, tackles Kirk Barton and Alex Boone power Ohio State's championship drive against LSU

Boeckman has been efficient under center, but the Buckeyes will count on the running of Wells (28) between the tackles. John Biever/SI

By Austin Murphy

One is a scholar and a smart-ass, as outspoken as his coach is bland. The other is a wild man with a big grin whose mother says of him, "That boy could have fun at a funeral -- and he has." They are Ohio State senior tri-captain Kirk Barton and junior Alex Boone, respectively, and they are the finest pair of tackles in the nation, as valuable as they are voluble. While less technically polished than his counterpart on the right side, "I think I'm a lot dirtier," says Boone, making it clear that in his mind that's a good thing.

The Buckeyes are in the BCS title game -- a Jan. 7 meeting with LSU at the Superdome in New Orleans -- for the second straight year not just because a bunch of teams ranked above them played like the New York Mets down the stretch. There is junior quarterback Todd Boeckman, who until his final two games of the regular season (a loss to Illinois and a win over Michigan) played lights out for a first-year starter. And there is sophomore Chris (Beanie) Wells, who emerged as one of the nation's elite power backs. But neither of those players excels without the contributions of Barton and Boone, future pros whose clock-punching ethos pervades Ohio State's balanced, blue-collar offense.

Both linemen are history majors. ("You know Vlad Tepes was Vlad the Impaler," Barton offered during a car ride with a reporter. "Now that guy was a nut. He makes the Saw movies look soft.") Both realize that if they play as poorly against an LSU front anchored by consensus All-America defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey as they played against Florida last Jan. 8, history will repeat itself.

Barton and Boone weren't the only goats in that 41-14 blowout loss to the Gators -- not by a long shot. They're just the ones everyone remembers. They made Florida defensive ends Jarvis Moss (two sacks) and Derrick Harvey (three sacks, a forced fumble) look like Reggie White and Deacon Jones in their primes. True, the tackles weren't responsible for all of quarterback Troy Smith's lumps. Tight ends and backs whiffed on blocks as well, and center Doug Datish made a few strange line calls. For nearly a year the Buckeyes have lived with their embarrassment from that long night in the Arizona desert. Says Barton, "I'll do whatever it takes to get away from that feeling."

Blessed with great wheels for his size, the 6' 5" 312-pounder has yet to outrun the grief that descended on him in the summer of 1998. Twelve years ago Barton's father, Kirk Sr., ran a thriving landscaping business, and the family lived in a spacious house on a 10-acre spread in Naples, Fla. "We had the nicest house on the block, a pool in the backyard," Barton recalls. "Life was good." That changed on Valentine's Day 1996, when Kirk Sr. was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare throat cancer.

He would live another 2 1/2 years and endure more than 20 operations, including one to have a large tube inserted into his throat to keep open his damaged trachea. To speak, "he had to put his finger on it," says Barton. "He was the greatest guy in the world, but when you have something like that, everybody looks. Everybody stares. It got to him." From the pain in his voice, it's clear that it got to Kirk as well.

Three months after losing her husband, Brigette Barton moved Kirk and his younger sister, Kasey, to Massillon, Ohio, to be closer to her family. She bought a house down the street from Calvary Cemetery, where Kirk Sr., an Ohio native, is buried. "He was so upset about his dad," remembers Brigette of the son she still calls, in unguarded moments, Kirkie. "He wanted to destroy our home movies."

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