Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session.
June is basically the loneliest month of college football fans. For us, there's usually not a lot of anything positive to read about our favorite teams, so when news does show up, it's usually something that's racked up some points in the Fulmer Cup and/or will eventually have some kind of condemnation from the Pope.
But, as Urban Meyer knows (because he's a good coach, you see), you can win games in June. Usually they're games that'll take place several years in the future, but Urban likes playing the long con because he knows the dividends that it'll pay in the future.
Case in point: in yesterday's Skull Session, Chris talked about Urban's appearance at a football camp in Michigan. This is obviously a big deal because you've got Ohio State's coach being a major presence in territory that's supposedly locked down by Michigan, but another aspect of it is visibility. The simple fact that Urban went to a camp in Michigan is newsworthy, and SI ends up running articles on it, it gets picked up by more local news sources, and as a result more and more potential recruits get the impression that the Ohio State train is rolling into their town (even if it isn't).
Same deal with Meyer and his son throwing out the first pitch in Cincinnati, hours after being at the camp. Even if he can't literally be everywhere at once, the more it seems like he is, the easier it will be to snag recruits in the deep dark areas of the wilds. So, uh, Michigan and Cincinnati.
CORN FED FARM BOYS PIG HOLLER PEW PEW PEW AMERICA The evolution of Nebraska into a relative football powerhouse has always been an intriguing one to me, because Nebraska itself isn't exactly what anyone would consider a major state for high school football. They might occasionally have a decent bumper crop (ahaha oh Johnny) of recruits to pick from, but generally they aren't looking at dozens of four and five star level high school seniors knocking down their door. Which is why 213 and 24 become important numbers.
213 being the number of recruits that Nebraska has offered so far; a pretty huge number to most of us but actually probably pretty reasonable as far as Nebraska goes. And 24 being the number of those recruits who live within a 500 mile radius of Lincoln; a pretty small number considering the fact that 500 785,000 square miles is a butt ton of miles. This is the central problem for the Bo Pelini crew. They've got a program with a tradition of success that they need to maintain, but said program is literally 500 miles away from anything. Chicago is just barely within that radius, and Denver is the next largest city. Neither being huge football recruiting grounds. How Pelini solves this spatial problem of finding recruits and convincing them to come to Lincoln is something that I'm sure he's hitting up Osborne for notes to help him figure it out.
SANDUSKY UPDATE Lots of horrible stuff that I'm not going to get into here, but this more or less sums up everything you need to know about this case and the general reluctance of everyone in Happy Valley to do anything about it for far, far too long. As per usual, Mo C hits it on the nose.
The ultimate manAPR: ALWAYS PROGRESSING... UH... RATE Hey! Something fun to talk about!
Ohio State's and Northwestern's football teams were among the 954 Division I squads honored Thursday with public recognition awards because of their most recent multiyear Academic Progress Rate scores. These awards are given to teams with multiyear APR scores in the top 10 percent nationally of a given sport.
Not a huge shock, overall team GPA was made a priority under Tressel and has been continued under Meyer, and the team has generally seemed to buy into it. OSU football's APR score has steadily increased over the years, and to have it on par with Northwestern football's APR score is nothing to sneeze at, since they are a bunch of nerds who never get dates because they are nerds.
Oh also, that's the Rittenberg post about it, the official ESPN article frames the story through the lens of the Tressel scandal and firing. Surprise!
CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND MEMORIAL STADIUM Indiana isn't really a school that recruits are flocking towards, and in one notable case, they're actually flocking away from Memorial Stadium. That's why the school has decided to invest roughly 50 million American dollars in construction projects in their athletic programs (previously all work had to be contracted through the Russian mafia and everyone was paid in rubles. Haha just kidding, the Russian mafia takes dollars as payment).
50 million is a lot of dollars, but it actually pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions that other Big Ten schools have been shelling out for academic improvements. Brian Bennett at ESPN is curious as to where everyone's getting all this money in the middle of a recession, and the answer is pretty obvious:
"The Big Ten Network is the best thing since canned soup," [Indiana AD Fred] Glass said. "That's how Rip Van Winkle is waking up here in Indiana. We're investing a lot of that money in not only football facilities, but also track and field, swimming and diving, softball and field hockey. It's not hyperbole to say that every one of our 24 sports have benefited from facility improvements which were driven by Big Ten Network revenues."
Which is nuts. I am more skeptical of Delany than most, but the BTN will likely be that dude's legacy for a long, long time. Also interesting in the article is a list of the kind of money other schools are spending on projects. It's a lot of money, to say the least.
LINKMFAO How to play poker (hint: it involves cards)... Our gym can beat up your gym... Things change, and that's okay, because nothing ever really changes... Sully update, yaaaaayyy... Chris Spielman and friend... Banana dog... To all you Cleveland Indian fans: see you next week
