Happy Tuesday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session. So how does it feel to not be completely neurotic about an impending game for the first time in several months? Good? Maybe wondering a little what you're going to do with yourself this week in the leadup to next weekend (where we shall all make tribute to Loki, the patron god of chaos and mischief)? Well luckily the B-Ball Buckeyes are here to be the soothing cooling action that your sore sports joint needs. Tonight Sully and company will be playing at Florida State in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge in their last game until December 9th. More coverage will follow today on Eleven Warriors, and hopefully the Bucks can help represent for the Big Ten against our costal rivals. I just hate them so much!!
This Week In Schadenfreude Right now probably the worst job to have in Ann Arbor is... I don't know, some kind of sewer maintenance guy. But if you're just talking about jobs where you get paid absurd amounts of money and are able to keep your job after three years of incompetence, then University of Michigan head coach is probably the worst job out of that group. You've got writers comparing his performance to Dantonio's, AD's having to remind people that a coaching evaluation will still not happen until after the bowl game, and even Jim Harbaugh staying away from an alumni function. Lots of stuff to go through here, but I'll summarize:
The Smell Of Coaching Vacancies Is In The Air And as usual, one of the names that is coming up first is that of Luke Fickell, recent recipient of a National Assistant Coach of the Year award. Fickell has been courted by several different schools for coaching positions, but has turned down each one in turn. Past articles about this have seen him emphasize how much he enjoys working with the Ohio State staff and how much raising a family in Columbus means to him. It certainly wouldn't surprise me to see Fickell take a head coaching job somewhere else, but Indiana is an interesting possibility because I think it satisfies his desire to stay close to Ohio, but it's hard for me to envision him coaching against OSU when his job would likely be seen by most as a stepping stone to the OSU head coaching job. Regardless, keep an eye on this one.
But at Least Your Backup QBs Mom Is Hot Some rumblings up in Iowa about how "the coaches may have lost the team." Pretty crazy stuff, when you consider that just a year ago Iowa was thiiiiissss close to being Big Ten Champions. Funny what a loss to a Minnesota team held together with crazy glue and fairy dust can do to the mentality of a team.
Adding to the misery is what some of the Iowa players said afterwards, most notably the “we lost the will to win” quote by senior defensive end Adrian Clayborn and the “something happened on the way up here; we didn’t have our heads in it,” quote by senior tight end Allen Reisner.
Woah. Ferentz is still pretty easily the second best coach in Iowa history, but for seniors to be saying this after a loss is pretty rough and reflects on the coaches. Hopefully the staff can get that team back on track before their bowl game.
Dane Sanzenbacher, Media Darling Sanzo was interviewed before the UM game by The Michigan Daily, the UM student newspaper. He was asked several very boring questions and subsequently gave very boring answers, so instead of making you read that I decided to put framegrabs from his Organ Donor video in the place of his responses. You're welcome.
The Michigan Daily What has it been like to be a part of The Game?
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TMD: Does The Game still carry the same weight even though Michigan hasn’t been on top for the past three seasons?
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TMD: What steps in Terrelle Pryor’s development have you witnessed during his first two years at Ohio State?
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TMD: You have another strong defense coming back on paper, right?
Thanks Dane.
