Happy Tuesday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session. Personally, I didn't think it would be this easy for me to adapt to the idea that Jim Tressel is no longer the dude shouting generic hustle slogans at 20 year olds in early August. I thought for sure that Luke Fickell and company would be the Sammy Hagar to Tressel's David Lee Roth, except instead of replacing cocaine and single entendres about relations with women with whatever the hell this is, Fickell would be replacing sweatervests and warm milk with Tap Out t-shirts and Rockstar energy drink laced with battery fluid.
But I was wrong. OSU football, for now at least, is still OSU football. If the first day is any indication, practices aren't going to be radically different than they've been for the past decade; same drills, same overall philosophy, same word salad responses to every question that cause you to wonder if someone really just did spend 300 words responding to "nice weather" or if you just had a stroke.
And honestly, that's kind of comforting. Football, man. This NCAA crap isn't over yet, and won't be for some time, but OSU football is back. Like some kind of reverse groundhogs, as a fanbase we can now collectively peek out of our dens and cautiously step out into the real world; bleary eyed and hungry for stadium hot dogs, we are a scant few weeks away from having what in Ohio amounts to a legitimate excuse for criminal disorderly conduct. Enjoy it, folks. It only gets better from here.
Finding Fickell He's the man now dog, and Luke Fickell is trying to make as much of an impression on the team as possible as Fall practice officially begins, and screw you if you can't handle the heat that the L-Train bring to the table. CHOO CHOO, CHUMP. HERE COMES THE PAIN, NEXT STOP YOUR FAC-
“But I was definitely busy. I hope I didn’t step on too many toes. But again, just trying to show that the actions are the biggest things we’re trying to get through.”
No! No no no! Step on toes! Punt kidneys! Slide tackle duodenums! Come on man! Just one leg drop or People's Elbow. That's all I want from Fickell. Just for one WR to blow an assignment and then for Fick to get incredibly furious and unleash a textbook Stone Cold Stunner on live national television. Okay sure, there have also been reports that practice was faster paced and more intense than in years past, but until Tyler Moeller shows up with a luchador mask and refuses to answer to anything but "El Diablo" I will remain unconvinced.
It's Like Inception, Except There's No Incepting. And Nobody Dies. Maybe we're just parts of Urban Meyer's subconscious, planted here to encourage him to become the next head coach of Ohio State through a series of media profiles that keep him in the public eye for no real reason. Here in his mind, this process will take months, maybe even years, while in the real world only hours will have passed. Step one is this series of videos from SI, where Urban talks about his life, leaving Florida, and also his daughter does a lot of crying.
That would be understandable, since she would have thought her dad was in some serious health related trouble, but as I've already established, she's simply a part of the dream. In a few hours, Urban Meyer will wake up, knowing his new path in life, and Gordon Gee will finally wire the rest of the 700k he owes me. OR WILL HE??
"Cactus Clothesline. Watch yourself. It's coming."
Speaking Of Mr. Gee ESPN did a profile on the guy, which is less interesting for the actual content of the piece (of which there really isn't a lot of new stuff that's revealed), and more for the fact that Gee would even deign to talk to those guys. The crux of the article is that though Gee has become something of a figurehead given the recent scandal, his ability and overall willingness to confront something untoward going on in the Athletic Department is pretty low.
What is somewhat interesting is Gee's own interpretation of the events that led to Tressel being fired, and he mostly sticks to the party line, although he also slips in that he wanted to fire Tressel earlier but some of the trustees wouldn't have gone along with it. One crucial thing that the article neglects, however, is that the Athletic Department, while huge, is generally financially independent of OSU. The OSU "brand" and the protection of it is a big part of this story, but without that context it's easy to distort what might've happened.
Stating The Obvious Sanzo Watch '11 rolls on, and this time it seems like Dave Biddle is hopping on the train. I don't know if I'm quite as enthusiastic as Biddle is about the possibility of Sanzenbacher making the Bears' roster based upon the reports that I've read, but maybe he's got some inside information that I don't. As far as I know, the Bears generally leave 5 roster spots open for WRs (leaving very little wiggle room), but if Dane keeps chopsticking every fly thrown at him, they might just have to take 6 this year.
Fickell Comes Alive! Whose wine? What wine? Where the hell did I dine?
