Wednesday Skull Session

Greetings, Earthlings. I have now taken over your radddiooooooooooooo. 

LUKE FICKELL AIN'T SLEEPIN EASY. Two items of concern for Ohio State's football team entering the fall are the lack of depth on the offensive line and the linebacking corps. There are, however, plenty of new faces along the defensive front seven, and while most are bursting at the seams with potential/talent, they still have to go out and perform. This apparently has been a problem for co-defensive coordinator Luke Fickell's sleeping habits... from the Toledo Blade:

What’s kept him up lately is the too-soon-for-comfort impending unveiling of the Buckeyes’ rebuilt defense — a unit breaking in six new starters on the front seven.

Are they ready?

“You’re torn lying in bed,” Fickell said Monday. “Are you really anxious? Or are you really a little bit nervous?”

I would point out to Fickell "anxious" comes from "anxiety" so if the options are he's either "nervous" or "anxious" then perhaps his worries are justified. (This is where Luke Fickell would say "Shut up, word-nerd!" before throwing his fist into my face and shattering my know-it-all smirk.)

To me, I think Fickell's concerns are spurred by Meyer's unrelenting drive for perfection. As the internet blogger guy who doesn't attend practices, I'm more worried about the linebackers not named "Ryan Damn Shanzier" than the defensive line. There are too many Pokémon up front with too much talent/skill for that to be a problem.  

Another nice thing is this ain't your father's Jim Tressel team, and the offense should be more than capable of carrying the team through the season.

BERT VS. ALVAREZ: OH IT'S ON. USA Today's Dan Wolken is touring America's college campuses and assessing their football programs. (He calls this series "Wolken Across America," but he's driving, not walking, so I don't know if it's a pun or whatever.)

Anyway, his latest stop was in Madison, Wisconsin. The piece concentrates on Alvarez's belief there isn't going to be a transition period because Gary Andersen is a hell of a coach (as was proven when his Utah State Aggies almost dumped Wisconsin at Camp Randall), but that doesn't mean their former coach (who apparently had a hard time grasping budgets) is forgiven:

"I've got to tell you," said athletics director and longtime Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez, who groomed Bielema to be his replacement, "and I'm not saying this negatively because Bret did a good job for us, but I haven't had one person say, 'Well, it's too bad Bret left' or 'We were sorry to see Bret leave' or 'Couldn't you have paid the assistants more money to keep him?' Not one."

"I'm not saying this negatively, but [goes onto say something entirely negative about Bert]." I hope this former padawan vs. spurned sensei beef continues until the Sun explodes. 

Speaking of Bert, there's apparently a Wisconsin clothing line who owes Vico some royalties:

WHAT THE HELL PURDUE? Here's a phrase that should have never happened and will probably be the epitaph on America's tombstone: "Purdue Rap." Rap is great for a lot of things. Rap's good for bragging about sexual and criminal acts, but one thing it's not good for is pimping a tiny engineering school infreaking Indiana. It's hard to tell what's worse, the lyrics or the actual video:

Is the object to make sure nobody ever wants to attend Purdue? Because if so, then this group of kids knocked this out of the park and are probably still strutting around the bases. If not, well, I hope Jim Delany already has B1G lawyers drawing up papers to evict them from the conference. 

IOWA FANS GOTTA BE SALTY. If you're like me (and thankfully for you, you're not), you don't really pay attention to Iowa. They're these almost-alien, but still benevolent farmers who funnel 3/4th's of Iowa's GDP into Kirk Ferentz's Swiss bank account. There's also a lot of corn in Iowa. A LOT OF CORN. (And so concludes my textbook on Iowa.)

I had never heard of ex-Iowa basketball star Pierre Pierce, namely because I'd rather watch my beautiful cat get skinned than be subjected to an Iowa basketball game, but he's apparently pretty divisive among Hawkeye fans; from Yahoo!: 

Many wanted Pierce dismissed from school after a female student-athlete accused him of sexual assault in 2002, but coach Steve Alford proclaimed his innocence and allowed him to stay on the team after he reached a plea deal brokered by university officials. That backfired in 2005 when Iowa had no choice but to throw Pierce off the team after another incident involving a woman.

Pierce served 11 months in prison after being found guilty of third degree burglary, false imprisonment, criminal trespassing and assault with intent to commit sexual abuse.

Fast forward to 2013, when Iowa's basketball team is touring England and France playing professional teams in exhibitions. Iowa would lose for the first time in five games in a two-point loss to France's Hyeres-Toulon. Who do you suppose hit the game-winning shot?

For their part, Iowa says they didn't know Pierce was employed by Hyeres-Toulon since the exhibition tour was scheduled by an outside agency that was only tasked with finding competitive games for the Hawkeyes. Still, that's gotta hurt. 

"EMBARRASSED" ROBY WAITING FOR HIS RETURN. Bradley Roby, who NFL scouts are quite high on, will miss the season opener because of an altercation with a bouncer in Indiana. The suspension, however, doesn't mean Roby will go quietly into the night. 

Doug Lesmeries of the Cleveland Plain Dealer talked to the illustrious Kerry Coombs on Roby's preseason: 

Awesome. He's always been awesome from the minute I walked on this campus. He studies the game, he does those kind of things. He screwed up, he's wrong, he knows it. He's paying a tremendous price.

... He works like a professional every day. He works hard at his craft. He takes care of his business. And he wants to be as good as anybody in the country, and he's not yet. And he knows that. We've had that discussion, here's what you have to do to get better. And we talk about it every day. When guys were coming in for extra work last week, he was coming in for extra work, working on specific skill sets he needs to be as good as he can be.

I'm not sure if I would even suspend Roby at this point. Bar bouncers, in my opinion, are some of the most power-drunk people I have ever encountered. They way they overlord over their shitty watering-holes would be humorous if they weren't busy escalating confrontations so they could get physical with dudes half their size. Regardless, it's good to see Roby is handling his business after paying the "tremendous price" of missing 1/14th of his senior season against the mighty Buffalo Bulls.

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