Time and change.
So, over the course of the last week I sold my house outside the city after a significant time on the market and took my talents (translation: all my sh!t) to the friendly confines of the corner of High and Long in downtown Columbus.
Man it feels good to be back in the city.
I feel sorry for folks that sleep on the moderately big but very chill town that is C-Bus as there is so much to see and do but at the same time I'm thankful too many haven't discovered its greatness, thus ruining its ecosystem with their derpness.
As for my landing back down in the thick of things, the only downfall of taking time out to move was that I was without cable and high speed internet for three panic inducing days. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I now know what it felt like to be a settler.
Now that I'm once again plugged in to the various media mediums that make life worth living, let's see what's happening in your Thursday Skull Session...
WHEELS OF STEEL(E). The man, the myth, the legend, Phil Steele came out with his pre-season All-B1G football squads and I must say I'm scratching my head a little which is very atypical when it comes to Steele's prognostications.
He lists Stoney, Simon and Hankins as 1st teamers which all make sense though Stoney's nod is clearly the result of only what Steele thinks he'll do this fall considering his stats havent' been overly impressive in an oppressive Tress/Bollman offense that refused to feature the TE as a pass catcher.
What I find a bit puzzling is CJ Barnett landing on the 1st team especially ahead of a guy like Kovacs in Ann Arbor. I like it - screw Kovacs - I just don't get it.
Still, the most mind-boggling issue with Steele's entire roster is the relegation of Bradley Roby to 4th team. I refuse to believe there are six corners in the league better than Roby as I look for him to have a huge season as he adapts to the new coverage scheme in which the CB's play off the receivers just a touch in an effort to bait QB's into more interceptions. Beyond his pass defense, the redshirt sophomore also showed a willingness to come up in run support and thoroughly outplayed his more season counterpart, Travis Howard, during the 2011 campaign.
TWO WORDS YOU HATE: PENDING VIOLATIONS. Gene Smith has been rapping with The Lantern a lot lately and yesterday, Smith shared that Ohio State still has 12 NCAA violations pending - this on the heels of the athletic department reporting that a total of 46 secondary violations occurred within 21 varsity sports.
Sure, a school like Ohio State with 36 sports itrying to operate with the confines of an archaic rule book is going to have its share of minor violations but you never want to hear your AD say:
“We’ve got 12 pending. It may turn out to be secondary. It may not.”
With Smith's track record of accurately predicting violations and subsequent penalties I suppose it's hard to get too riled up but with the athletic department already in the doghouse with the NCAA, let's hope these unresolved issues go quietly.
Steele missed the mark in slating Roby for 4th teamPUTTING THE 'STUDENT' BACK IN STUDENT-ATHLETE. The OSU Department of Athletics, in hopes of better positioning student-athletes to be successful in the classroom, has announced they will be providing iPads to each student-athlete over the course of the next two years.
The initial phase will rollout this fall with upwards of 500 iPads distributed to select teams. This progressively intelligent decision, unveiled by Dr. David Graham, Ohio State assistant provost for student-athlete success, lists many significant benefits. One huge benefit, as explained by Dr. Graham includes:
Improved academic productivity during team travel, as students will have easy access to email, Carmen (Ohio State’s online course management system), Ohio State library databases, Pages and Numbers for word processing and spreadsheet creation, FaceTime, Skype and other tools that will enable coursework to be completed on the road.
Pretty impressive move by the athletics department. Tip of the cap. Now, if we could just get the AD to fight for your football team's right to host a playoff game, he might earn back some street cred.
SHOULD YOU FEEL GOOD, GOOD, GOOD ABOUT HOOD? The venerable Bob Baptist noted late Wednesday that former Mississippi State Bulldog Rodney Hood, the 6'8" swingman who started 29 games for MSU as a frosh has narrowed his potential transfer destinations to Ohio State and Duke.
As Baptist notes, Hood and his three years of eligibility following a season on the shelf could choose the Buckeyes so he can play with former teammate LaQuinton Ross and also step into a system that is tailor made for allowing wings to make plays.
The reasons to attend Duke are obvious and Hood has been a Dookie fan his entire life.
After striking out on Tony Parker, landing Hood would be a much needed boost for Thad Matta's 2013-2014 squads and beyond.
JUNK DRAWER. If you click on anything external today, make it the sickest back window thinga-majiggy ever... The Buckeye baseballers took down PSU and now face #1 Purdue tonight at 7pm... Sparty's Mark Hollis is Sports Journal's AD of the Year... Andrea Cambern drops anchor... Despite their oversized brains, Stanford thought it'd be a cool idea to name the Offensive Coordinator position after Andrew Luck... Trey is plugged in... I prefer a brick through the windshield for people like this but still, props for execution.
