Want to know why repeating as national champion is harder than getting Jim Tressel to wear a maize and blue sweater vest? Let's explain it in a manner that, say, the average Ohio State fan can relate to:

There are no makeup exams in a college football season. You walk into a test on a Saturday afternoon and you're not ready? You don't have the option of walking out. You don't get to come back later to play the second string, or take two minutes to call your plays, or patch into the other team's headsets.

If you're not ready, you lose. And one loss is often lethal. You must perform on the prescribed date, at the prescribed time.

Taking It Back-to-Back

Since the media polls started in 1936, only 10 teams have won back-to-back national titles. A couple of teams needed some help, though. Alabama split the title in 1965 with Michigan State, Texas and Nebraska split the title in 1970, Oklahoma split with USC in 1974 and Alabama split with USC in 1978. 1994-95 -- Nebraska Cornhuskers 1978-79 -- Alabama Crimson Tide 1974-75 -- Oklahoma Sooners 1970-71 -- Nebraksa Cornhuskers 1969-70 -- Texas Longhorns 1964-65 -- Alabama Crimson Tide 1955-56 -- Oklahoma Sooners 1946-47 -- Notre Dame Fighting Irish 1944-45 -- Army Black Knights 1940-41 -- Minnesota Golden Gophers

Here's another reason why repeating as national champion is hard: Everyone out there is gunning for your gold. It's like you're driving this sweet ride, tricked out with television monitors and boomin' stereo system, showing off. Drop your guard for a minute and someone is just waiting to rob you blind.

And when they do, nobody feels sorry for you.

One more reason: You've got to be lucky, and luck tends to have a one-year shelf life. Next season, it's somebody else's turn to get the breaks that seemed to go your way: the dropped pass in the end zone, the big fourth-down conversion, the (cough) game-changing penalty flag thrown half an hour after the play.

Hey, it's tough out there in Repeat Land. Ask Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, Florida State, Oklahoma and Miami, six of the last seven Associated Press poll champions since Nebraska pulled off the last back-to-back in 1994-95. Ask all the teams before that who failed to pull it off. And now you can ask 2002 champ Ohio State about it as well.

The games are still weeks away, and they're already learning how hard it is to wear the crown in Columbus -- and not because of any deficiencies on the depth chart. There aren't many of those -- and if there were, those would be problems super-sharp coach Tressel could wrap his arms around and do something about.

They're finding out how tough it is with each passing development in the Maurice Clarett melodrama.

It would be silly to even suggest that the splendid sophomore running back hasn't been worth the headaches at Ohio State. There is shiny championship hardware on display in C-bus that says as much.

And let's not kid ourselves: Championships are what matters most in College Sports Inc. Not coincidentally, Ohio State happens to have the single largest athletic budget in America, checking in at $58 million in 2001-02.

Ohio State wants to win big, and last year it did -- in large part thanks to Clarett, who as a powerful freshman helped carry the Buckeyes to their first football title since the Woody Hayes/Rex Kern days of 1968. But the price tag on recruiting Clarett, and his contribution to that magic season, keeps getting higher.

First it was relatively small stuff: piping up in ESPN The Magazine last October about maybe going pro before he waited the mandatory three years, and ripping Ohio State for not sending him home from the Fiesta Bowl for a friend's funeral. That was kids' stuff. Free speech. (Football coaches -- Tressel prominently among them -- hate the idea of free speech. But sometimes it must be tolerated if the speaker is a Heisman Trophy candidate.)

"Sometimes you shouldn't think out loud," has been Tressel's recurring advice to Clarett.

	Ohio St. RB Maurice Clarett has not been able to stiffarm past recent controversy.

Then things got stickier this summer. The New York Times ran a story suggesting that Clarett got special help from a professor in his African-American and African Studies class, after walking out of a midterm. Clarett was allowed to retake the exam orally, creating a tempest over whether the star football player -- and perhaps other jocks -- were being carried through higher education.

That one hadn't fully died down when the latest Clarett controversy went public: He's currently being held out of conditioning and any other Ohio State football activities during an NCAA investigation into a rather remarkable theft report Clarett filed with campus police last spring.

In it Clarett claimed all manner of goods were lifted from what is reportedly a 2001 Monte Carlo he was borrowing at the time: two built-in TV monitors, $5,000 worth of stereo equipment, $800 in cash, $300 in clothing and 300 compact discs.

Clarett was said to be test-driving the car. From the police report you'd believe he'd been living in it. And living large.

You don't have to have read all 26,000 pages of the NCAA manual to know that's a potential problem.

A day after that alarm sounded, Clarett has said he exaggerated the worth of the items taken from the car. (Though nobody seems to be saying how much he allegedly exaggerated.) The school put out a release saying Maurice apologizes for any embarrassment the incident has brought to the defending champs. But the issue is far from settled in most minds -- most importantly those at NCAA Enforcement.

These seem to be the facts of modern life in college athletics. First comes the title, then comes the taint.

"We're under such a microscope," Ohio State center Alex Stepanovich told USA Today at the Big Ten Media Days in Chicago last month.

Stepanovich and his Buckeye teammates are learning about life in the Petri Dish. The level of scrutiny (and, in some corners, jealousy) ratchets up significantly after winning a national title.

Few are the champions since 1990 who haven't eventually had to answer hard questions about agents, extra benefits, academic flim-flammery or the like.

Don James was an institution at Washington, but was gone not long after the Huskies won the national title and then were enveloped in scandal. Questions were raised about academic favors for athletes and Tee Martin's car in the aftermath of Tennessee's title. There were problems with cornerbacks and agents at Alabama (Antonio Langham) and Michigan (Charles Woodson). Florida State has had a cornucopia of problems before (Peter Warrick's shopping spree), during (Sebastian Janikowski's curfew) and after (Adrian McPherson's gambling being the latest) its most recent title. Nebraska had to justify the presence of Lawrence Phillips. Colorado had a rash of misbehavior under Promise Keeper Bill McCartney. And the Miami of the Dennis Erickson title days needs no introduction.

There also was the unmistakablel feeling that the Buckeyes were blessed last season. The narrow escapes against the uninspiring likes of Cincinnati and Illinois set the stage for the epic (and controversial) Fiesta Bowl upset of Miami. Does anyone repeat that kind of kismet?

"We have stressed to our team that in some ways we were fortunate to be undefeated last year," Tressel said. "Obviously, we did not just walk through the 14 games we played."

No, there were struggles along the way. But this year the struggles started in July. That won't make defending the national title any easier.

The exams start soon. And there will be no makeups.

Pat Forde covers college football for the Louisville Courier-Journal.