The Eleven Warriors Web Report comes to you weekly from the Spectrum Sports studios in downtown Columbus, featuring our own Beau Bishop, Dan Hope and former Buckeye wide receiver Evan Spencer.
As Bishop said to open this week's show, "this is one of the most bizarre Eleven Warriors Web Reports that we will ever do."
While the biggest stories of the week were supposed to be Ohio State's sixth straight win over Michigan, the upcoming Big Ten Championship Game against Wisconsin and the Buckeyes' hopes of making the College Football Playoff, all of those stories were trumped by two unexpected storylines: Tennessee backing out of its deal to make Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano its new head coach, and Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett being injured by a cameraman.
Our panel opened the show by talking about the Schiano situation, with Hope outlining how Sunday's events unfolded before Bishop and Spencer weighed in with their own thoughts on the matter.
"It's scary to me because this wasn't about facts, it was about the perception of facts," Bishop said of the outcry from the Tennessee community that led to the university reneging on its offer. "It's scary to me that an angry social media mob can manifest, and an athletic director and an athletic department that doesn't have the backbone to say 'No, you're wrong.'"
Spencer also felt Tennessee should have stuck by its commitment to Schiano.
"If you vetted a guy, Coach Schiano in this case, and you say that he is a good enough coach to help us football games ... If that's how you feel, that's going to be the best person to represent your football team and to win football games, stand behind your guy," Spencer said.
Following the discussion on Schiano, the panel shifted its attention to Ohio State's quarterback situation and discussed how the Buckeyes might handle it, with Barrett recovering from injury and Dwayne Haskins coming off leading the Buckeyes to a comeback victory. While the guys agreed that Barrett will start on Saturday if he is healthy, Spencer – who knows from experience, having been a part of the Cardale Jones-led national championship run in 2014 – said Ohio State will likely prepare two separate offensive game plans to account for the possibility of playing either quarterback.
"You got to have two game plans ready to go, because you don't know what's going to happen," Spencer said.
As for Ohio State's College Football Playoff hopes, there were unexpected and unhelpful news on that front this past weekend too, when Alabama lost to Auburn, opening up the possibility that both a one-loss Alabama and the winner of Saturday's SEC Championship Game between Auburn and Georgia could make the playoff, potentially leaving Ohio State out even if the Buckeyes defeat Wisconsin on Saturday.
That much is out of Ohio State's control, and it remains hard to predict whether the CFP committee would ultimately favor a one-loss non-conference champion Alabama or a two-loss conference champion Ohio State. The panel on our show agreed, though, that the Buckeyes need to win as convincingly as possible against the Badgers – like they did with their 59-0 win over the Badgers to make the 2014 playoff – in order to stake their case.
"You got to take care of business," Hope said. "First things first, you got to beat Wisconsin, and if you have the opportunity to put up points and make it look more impressive, like they did in 2014, you're going to do it. You're not going to worry about hurting Wisconsin's feelings. If that opportunity presents itself, you're going to go for it."
While the panel didn't have much time to recap the win over Michigan or preview the conference championship game on this week's Web Report, you can see their full breakdowns of both games on this week's Eleven Warriors Report on Spectrum Sports Mid-Ohio, which premieres at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
