Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session. As you read this, several dozen collegiate football players will be making their way to the Ohio State campus for the start of camp, in what is probably going to be the most unpredictable and exciting season in a while.
I'm not quite as high on this team as a lot of other people are, but I'm excited as anybody to see how things play out. Position battles, who step up as leaders, the development of Braxton, how the incoming freshmen play, Urban Meyer's system and how he adjusts it to OSU personnel; there are a billion factors at play right now, and it all starts today.
Thank God we have a beat writer! Keep your internet radios dialed to 11W all day today, because we're running Kyle ragged getting info about the super cool football goings on, and he'll have more than enough content to wet your whistle on this, the first day of the rest of your life.
IIPPON, YUKO, IT'S ALL IN THE MIND Stay with me on this one; it's related, I promise. Middletown, Ohio native Kayla Harrison is a judoka who just took home America's first-ever gold medal in the sport of judo, and this excites me because a) I'm also from Middletown and the transitive property of being from a place that someone else is from means I can flip you on your back, b) having lived in Japan for a year I gained a healthy appreciation of the sport, and c) jokes aside, she's got one hell of a story to tell.
As Kayla Harrison, who won America’s first-ever gold medal in judo on Thursday afternoon, watched the Jerry Sandusky case unfold back in early November, she’d get in arguments with her friends. Some were saying that Joe Paterno got a raw deal. "It was personal," Harrison, 22, told TIME during a New York City breakfast discussion in early July before heading to London. "I was very disappointed with my peers. I was like, 'really? You really think that? Knowing what I’ve been through?'"
Harrison was a victim of child abuse herself; her judo coach took advantage of her for years before it was discovered (and reported immediately to her mother and then to the police, huh imagine that!) and he admitted to his guilt. Now, on the world stage, she's telling her story in the hopes that it will give other victims of abuse the courage to step forward.
Anyway, my point is this: it's infuriating that people, even friends of those who were victims of abuse, can be that ignorant and still claim that Joe Paterno got a bum rap. And it stresses even more the importance of looking for signs of abuse and reporting them, as well as making sure that victims feel that they can come forward in a safe and non-judgmental environment. What Kayla Harrison is doing is brave, and sadly still very much needed.
BACK TO FOOTBALL Matt Hinton muses on who the Percy Harvin figure in Urban Meyer's offense is going to be, and though the obvious conclusion is/was Jordan Hall, he also strikes on something that is fairly important for the new-look OSU offense as a whole, and that's the concept of players making the system versus the system making the players.
What I mean by that is the old Tressel adage of tailoring the offense to suit the personnel. Not that a Jim Tressel offense had a lot to tailor, but when given a quarterback like Troy Smith and receivers like Ted Ginn and Santonio Holmes, he threw about 10% more often then he might otherwise. Not a huge difference, but an important one. Hinton seems to suggest that Meyer is going to look for that guy to fill in the Percy Harvin role in his offense, but my counter is that would be a huge mistake. As Hinton points out, there are very few players in college football anywhere who can fit that mold, and one of the most interesting storylines for this year is seeing how Meyer adapts his system to the players that he has available.
Numero uno for nowPRESEASON POLLIN I absolutely hate preseason polls. I don't think they tell you anything useful, other than that people are sipping the Florida State Kool-Aid again, and that there will be a bunch of SEC teams in there as filler because no one knows who else to put. So hmm, let's at least see where the coaches put OSU in their poll ahaha just kidding, we're on probation so coaches can't vote for the Buckeyes.
Sucks, right? On the bright side, OSU has the chance to be maybe the best unranked 10-win team of all time, which in my opinion makes up for the whole postseason ban thing. You're forgiven, Gene Smith.
GUIDED BY THE LIGHT The effervescent Lori Schmidt put together a collection of the Big Ten media guides, and well, I'll let you take a look at 'em but here are a few of my thoughts:
- The cover for Michigan's media guide just screams MALAISE at you. It's like your mom telling you that you're going to spend all day at her aunt's 95th birthday party.
- MICHIGAN STATE GOT TROPHIES Y'ALL
- Northwestern's media guide proclaims them as "Chicago's Big Ten team" which, uh, yeah. I guess that's true. Really makes you think.
- I'm curious as to how many of the players on the PSU media guide will actually still be on the team once the season starts.
- The Ohio State coaching staff can assemble into a big gross Voltron thing that shoots offensive schemes out of its eyes. Weird.
O-LINK-MPICS OKAY MAYBE THAT DOESN'T WORK SO WELL The NYTimes is doing a cool day by day Olympics photo stream... Time lapse of building the Olympic venues... If you didn't watch this game you're dumb... I'M WIGGINS OUT HERE... D'awwwww... Where would they play beach volleyball in London, you ask. Hmm, yes, where indeed?... That is a talented dog
