The marching band you see in front of you is like a lot of them in Ohio. They play the 1812 Overture. They form tricky patterns. They even dot the "i" in Ohio.

The only difference is, the "i" they form is in Braille, because this marching band is blind.

They're the Ohio State School for the Blind Marching Panthers and -- as far as I can tell -- they're the only blind marching band in the world.

Brian Rowan is one of the bass drummers. He's 12. He has a tumor behind his eyes that has already taken the sight in his right eye and will soon take his left. Doesn't keep him off the field.

"I don't know why you guys cry so much," he told his parents -- Karl and Shelly -- when he was diagnosed. "I'm still going to do all the things I wanted to do. You watch."

They did. Last Saturday. Standing right next to me at a high school football game in Columbus, Ohio. Didn't help. Mom was still crying.

Which is the exact reaction that OSSB's Carol Agler, the woman who thought of this whole idea six years ago, doesn't want.

"We don't want any 'Awwwwww's' when people see us play," she says. "We want 'Ohhhhhh!'s'. We want people to be entertained. What we're trying to do is show the amazing abilities of the disabled."

They were pretty Ohhhhhhh! Saturday, sighted or non-sighted. (Some are visually impaired, not blind.) Twenty-three members strong, they whirled through four songs in nearly perfect pitch (a third of them have it) and nearly perfect order. Nobody tripped. Nobody smashed into anybody else. Nobody wound up in the parking lot.

How do they keep from running straight into the goalposts, you ask?