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The bye week was fun and all, but it's time for Ohio State to return to action as a 17 point favorite against Iowa. Now is the time to enjoy a presumable romp through the rest of regular season. It's not worth worrying about making the BCS National Championship. In fact, it's not worth even caring about anymore.
Ohio State and Louisville fans are in the same boat; the narrative that the schedule is too weak for the Buckeyes or Cardinals to be worthy is lazy and unavoidable. No matter what, Ohio State is going to lose ground to the winner of the Clemson/Florida State game, and certain one-loss SEC teams will start popping up ahead of OSU in polls. This is okay; the important thing is to savor each game for itself and not a means to an end. If worst comes to worst and OSU is shut out, Ohio State has a 25 game winning streak heading into the Rose Bowl. There are worse fates than that.
MONDAY PRESSERS. Coming off of a bye, yesterday marked the first press conferences of the week. Some information covered in the coach and player conferences:
- Carlos Hyde was the player of the week. Marcus Hall, Andrew Norwell, Jeff Heuerman, Devin Smith, Philly Brown, and Evan Spencer stood out on offense, Bradley Roby on special teams, and only Joey Bosa and Michael Bennett on defense.
- Urban Meyer is really tired of hearing about not having thousand yard rushers. When informed that Hyde is on pace for a thousand yards and asked if his philosophy towards the running game has changed, Meyer laughed it off:
No. I've always you can tell, we had I think one 970 and then one 890 and then we had one 970 and Jeff Demps was going to be that guy down there and he gets hurt and it's nuts.
If someone wants to question whether we run the ball effectively, I think we fairly, over, what was it, 12 years, you know, we run the ball really well. Just in recruiting and all that other nonsense, we can't anticipate guys missing games for whatever reason. Average per carry, would I like to think we are always in the top, certainly in the conference on average per carry. So thanks for bringing that up today.
- Braxton Miller took as many QB reps as usual and he is “100 percent ready to go.”
- Tommy Schutt is practicing again following his injury.
- Meyer’s primary concern with the pass defense is underneath coverage.
- In the spring and summer Meyer was concerned with the team’s senior leadership; the team has good chemistry, alignment and leadership now.
- Meyer attributes his 21-2 record after bye weeks to having good assistant coaches and a flexible schedule.
- Meyer watched the Penn State/Michigan game on an iPad at his daughter’s volleyball game. No word on whether he looked like this watching the game.
- Players enjoyed the time off as well, none more than Ryan Shazier: Joel Hale's mother fed him fried chicken and steak to help him regain weight.
- For his own part, Philly Brown enjoyed some homemade cheesesteaks.
- In regards to the soft secondary coverage against Northwestern, Everett Withers would like to play press coverage all game long but realizes it’s not feasible.
- Withers said Iowa runs inside and outside zone with Mark Weisman, who is durable and has good cutback instincts.
- Stan Drayton said Jordan Hall feels more comfortable with his knee and will practice this week.
Finally, Meyer mentioned that Curtis Grant’s father passed away during the bye week. The funeral was held on Monday morning. This slipped past the Buckeye media for a few days; my condolences to the Grant family.
PRE-PRESEASON BASKETBALL RANKINGS. The AP rankings (read: the rankings that actually matter) won't come out for a few more weeks in men's basketball, but that won't stop people from releasing too-early predictions. CBS Sports has come out with its own preseason rankings, and Ohio State is the consensus no. 8.
The experts, who peg the Buckeyes from 7th-14th, hold to conventional wisdom: Ohio State will miss Deshaun Thomas, but LaQuinton Ross could fill Thomas's scoring and leadership roles if he pans out. Kudos to Matt Norlander for being an Aaron Craft guy and not understanding other fans' hatred of him, but that's a role Craft has long since accepted.
Kentucky is the consensus no. 1 and everyone expects Michigan State to be the class of the Big Ten. What interests me is that 5 of the 6 experts has Michigan one spot behind Ohio State; they must expect neck-and-neck play. Wisconsin is the only other ranked Big Ten team and Indiana is borderline, so the Big Ten won't be insanely deep like last year.
Nick Saban's smile really is a frown turned upside-down. VT/TENNESSEE BURNING RUBBER AT BRISTOL. A few weeks of speculation led to a big announcement yesterday: on Sept. 10, 2016, Virginia Tech and Tennessee will play a football game at the Bristol Motor Speedway. The hook for the game: being the largest college football game ever.
Bristol can seat 150,000 people, and if the game were to sell out it would blow away current attendance record of 115,109 from the Michigan-Notre Dame game this September. Virginia Tech and Tennessee are recruiting on the premise of spectacle, and simulated images of the game are enthusing.
That said, will the game sell out? Neyland Stadium hasn't always sold out, no college football game has ever been held at a racetrack before, and the highest nosebleed seats in a stadium are closer than Bristol's seats. If Tennessee isn't a top 25 team and ticket prices are in the hundreds of dollars as Cowboys Stadium games have been, forget it. A casual prediction: 120,000 fans will attend, and no more.
SCHEDULING FOR THE 22ND CENTURY. Nebraska also announced a series with Oregon in 2016-2017, pushing a previously scheduled series with Tennessee all the way to 2026-2027, the furthest scheduled game in all of college football by several years. And you thought OSU-Texas in 2022-23 was distant!
Here is a partial list of trivia about the 2026-27 series:
- Babies born in 2013 will be teenagers when the series starts.
- Sealab 2021 will have been been in existence for six years.
- Byron Mullens' Hall of Fame career will be winding down after four MVPs, five scoring titles and two Finals MVPs.
- Greg Oden will actually be 40 – well, almost – instead of merely looking 40.
- After fifteen straight victories, Ohio State will take the series lead against Michigan, 59-58-6.
- Nebraska and Tennessee will announce two more games for 2073-74. Nebraska will be coached by college football's first android, RoBo Pelini.
TENNESSEE BAND FIGHT. Tennessee sure is popular today. Tennessee's band director is on paid leave and essentially fired ($) after criticizing the athletic department, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel, and each side is bitter.
The circumstances of Gary Sousa's de facto firing are unclear. The school put out an acerbic press release, suggesting a reason for the anger:
“Sousa encouraged students and alumni to speak out against the Athletics Department over reduced playing time and reductions in travel and budget. This followed the UT vs. Georgia game in which the band played significantly more than in this year’s previous home games.”
While a personal letter from Chancellor Jimmy Cheek to Sousa was downright acidic:
“...your media statements demanding my involvement, implying that my failure to do so would suggest I am not an advocate of the band, or an effective leader more generally are counterproductive,” the letter states.
“You will not earn my support through threats, petulance, public disruption, or whining. You are a professional band director and a tenured faculty member; please act like it.
Why a chancellor would fly off the handle like this is puzzling. Sousa is a tenured employee who has been at Tennessee since 1997; firing the entrenched, popular band director would be normally be unpopular and extremely difficult. Perhaps there is significant internal pressure from athletics or external pressure from boosters, or maybe Cheek really is this erratic and Tennessee's leadership is kookoo.
Thank goodness TBDBITL, the OSU athletic department, and OSU's president all love each other. And though Jonathan Waters is fantastic and should stay at OSU for decades, how could a man named Sousa become a band director at any school besides Ohio State?
SPLASH. After losing to Ohio State and Wisconsin, Northwestern players needed a psychological adjustment. Coach Pat Fitzgerald was happy to comply.
It's all fun and games now, but if Northwestern slips against Minnesota the water cannons are next.
LINKS AHOY. Troy Smith throws his first CFL touchdown for the Montreal Alouettes. Très bien!... The full college football playoff selection committee is revealed... The unclear origins of Roll Tide… The worst possible article about Adrian Peterson’s son... Bob Bradley and Egypt strive for the World Cup today… This Michigan dad's reaction to getting tickets to The Game is priceless... A USA/Canada women’s hockey game ends with the teams duking it out… Eastbound & Down’s sports panel show parody is dead on... For wrestling fans, I can’t recommend “The Squared Circle” enough… Eminem’s “Rap God” is a great track… Set aside an hour for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”... Azerbaijan releases election results before voting begins, is totally democratic… Meanwhile, votes in Afghanistan sell for $5... William Howard Taft's modern diet... Man goes nuts after being asked to pay for extra ranch dressing… Ohio Man ought to be Florida Man’s sidekick… And watch out runners, the NSA may be able to track burner phones.
