So, some of you may or may not remember that ESPN threw a bit of a hissy fit when Ohio State wouldn’t share confidential emails during Tatgate. They threw this hissy fit all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. In a nutshell, OSU didn’t release these due to FERPA. So, it’s not like they were just not releasing things out of spite or bad feelings towards ESPN, they were citing a Federal privacy law.

ESPN disagreed, which should come as a shock to no one.

Well, The Ohio Supreme Court agreed with Ohio State. Because I am a huge fan of poetic justice, I am going to link ESPN’s article on this where they have to talk about losing.

Ohio State receives more than $919 million, approximately 23 percent of its operating dollars, from federal funding, which the court cited in the ruling.

“Therefore, Ohio State, having agreed to the conditions and accepted the federal funds, was prohibited by FERPA from systematically releasing education records without parental consent,” the court said.

The reasons cited above are why pretty much every expert cited on this case thought ESPN might lose. I’d really tried hard not to buy into the ESPN vs. OSU conspiracies early on, but stuff like this is why I am now all-in on the theory. SI, FoxSports, USA Today, and a host of other media outlets who were likely also denied these records did not take it to court. ESPN, however, felt it necessary to drag this on and on.

Oh, and by the way, it took me forever to find this article on ESPN. Had Ohio State lost the court battle, I imagine it would have been plastered all over the front page, possibly written in Comic Sans and likely worthy of a breaking news blast on Sportscenter. They would have featured their anchors popping champagne and reenacting every P-Diddy video ever made.

This puts one more element of the nightmare behind Buckeye Nation. Perhaps someday ESPN will get over their…well…their whatever. Until then, we’ll always have this win.