Folks, for the record, (and since we've been talking #grammar lately): I have no problem with mistakes in my copy (or anything else) being corrected.
I'm an uneducated buffoon who always proofreads (longer than I'd like to admit), but things happen. Typos, much like me, are bad. But if we work together, we will be able to eliminate them. (Currently waiting for one of my kidneys to sell on the black market, so I can hire a personal copy editor. The haterz will truly be seasick then.)
UNTIL THEN, THIS RICKETY, TYPO-RIDDLED TRAIN TRUNDLES ONWARD.
This week's NSFW ANTI-WORK #BANGERS:
- Stringer Bell wants Sim Charles to hit somebody.
- Stringer Bell on 40 degree days.
- Stringer Bell's execution at the hands of Omar Little and Brother Mouzone.
R.I.P. Stringer Bell. Marlo Stanfield got what you always wanted... but he didn't want it, smdh.
URBAN MEYER: UNKNOWN BEARCAT WALKON. You're probably going to hear a lot about this Saturday night, but Urban Meyer used to play for the Cincinnati Bearcats... the team he will be facing on Saturday night.
As Kyle Rowland would say: "That's amazing."
From Bill Landis of cleveland.com:
You'd have to dig through a box in the athletic communications office to find the only mention of him. The 1985 Cincinnati football media guide sums up his career in 35 words:
"Made the team as a walk-on in 1984 spring drills ... saw action as a reserve at safety and was the holder for PAT and FG attempts last season ... good all-around athlete ... 1 letter."
That's 34 more words needed to describe my one-year footballing career. (Bad.)
"He's a much better coach than he was a player," David Currey, who coached the Bearcats from 1984-1988 and is now the athletic director at Chapman University, told cleveland.com in a phone interview from his office in California.
"He wasn't a great player, he wasn't going to play for a living, but you could sure tell he was going to coach for a living if that's what he wanted to do."
I suppose it all worked out for Urban; he carved out a nice career in football, made millions of dollars, won championships, and won't end up wallowing away in some decrepit hospital ward because his brain turned to tapioca.
A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE. I remember the Ohio State-Cincinnati 2002 game being close, but I do not remember Cincinnati holding multiple leads.
Ohio State football historian, Jack Park, however, remembers everything:
The best-remembered game in the series was the Buckeyes’ 23-19 nail-biter in Paul Brown Stadium in during the 2002 national-championship season. The crowd of 66,319 was the largest ever to attend a sporting event in the city of Cincinnati. The game was Ohio State's first scheduled road trip within Ohio since coach Francis Schmidt’s team defeated Western Reserve 76-0 at old League Park in Cleveland on Nov.3, 1934 (Northwestern moved its 1991 home game against OSU to Cleveland, where the Buckeyes won 34-3).
After the lead changed hands four times against the Bearcats, the Buckeyes led 23-19 with 3:44 remaining. Cincinnati drove to the OSU 15-yard line with 1:01 to play, and quarterback Gino Guidugli took aim at the end zone four times. His first and third passes were dropped, preventing what otherwise would have been a possible winning touchdown. Guidugli’s last toss was tipped by linebacker Matt Wilhelm and intercepted by Will Allen with 26 seconds on the clock.
Punter Andy Groom was a big factor in the win, averaging 48.8 yards on five punts.
If there was ever a Jim Tressel-coached sentence, it's "Punter Andy Groom was a big factor in the win." (I remember being devastated when Andy Groom left because I thought he was irreplaceable. That was the power of Jim Tressel, the Man with the Iron Testicles.)
It's also pretty crazy the game against Cincinnati was, like, the fourth(~) biggest nail-biter that championship team played.
LET'S TALK TICKETS. Ohio State doesn't have a ticket problem (for now), but some other programs (Georgia, Florida, Michigan) have seen a steep decline. College football historian John U. Bacon seems to know the score, however.
From my old comrade-in-arms, Kyle Rowland, of ElevenWarriors dot com The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:
“Great stadiums like the Horseshoe or the Big House are urban national parks,” New York Times best-selling author and noted college football historian John U. Bacon said. “For once, you aren't marketed too incessantly. The experience is authentic, it's organic and it goes back a century.”
This graph should be tattooed on every athletic director in the country. Sadly, there are already too many people making too much money off college football (except the players, of course).
At Purdue, where student ticket prices have remained steady for seven years, fees were waived for the opener against Western Michigan, and the response was positive. Nearly 8,000 filled four sections of Ross-Ade Stadium. One week later, the university announced a reduction in student prices.
Nonconference tickets were cut in half, from $20 to $10, while conference games were slashed from $25 to $20.
“Quite frankly, we got some repeat customers,” [Purdue athletic director Morgan] Burke said.
IMAGINE THAT. You didn't gouge ($25 for any game featuring Purdue is gouging) the students you're already gouging on tuition... and they showed up in droves.
High definition TVs have been around for nearly a decade, and some of these ADs are just realizing they're in competition with them? Probably a bad sign these people are the powerbrokers of the sport.
BERT GOT THE RAZORBACKS RIGHT? It's been a quick minute since we've checked-in on former friend of the program, Bert Bielema.
Arkansas is 3-1, and although they're still searching for Bert's first SEC win (Auburn beat 'em week one), they did get a somewhat of an impressive W at Texas Tech two weeks ago. Is this the year of the Hog?
From Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! (emphasis mine):
If Bret and his brother Bart managed to get everything done, and done right – especially their school work – Arnie would treat them to something on the weekend, maybe golf, maybe a trip to a local swimming pool. If they didn't, he didn't, and they dealt with the repercussions.
Hooooly shit. Bert has a brother named BART? His dad's name is ARNIE? This makes the Bielemas the equivalent of the O'Doyle family.
What does Bart Bielema do? I need to know more about Bart Bielema, because I picture him as a guy who chain-smokes Camel 99s and runs an unlicensed mechanic's shop out of his garage that accepts Bud Ice as currency.
I stopped reading after this graph. I MUST KNOW MORE ABOUT BART BIELEMA.
I WANT LEVONTA TAYLOR. When was the last time Ohio State had a bonecrusher in the secondary? Donte Whitner? Levonta Taylor is 2016's No. 1 cornerback, and I want him to become a Buckeye.
My oath is the same: If I ever win the Mega Millions (the gods are not that stupid, I'm starting to fear), I will be the greatest bagman this sport has ever seen.
THOSE WMDs. The Franklin Ship Myth, verified... An archaeologist found the location of a 200-year-old gatehouse in Central Park... Gotta hear both sides... Talk about luck... Chinese restaurant owner admits serving opium-laced noodles to hook customers... John Oliver clowned Miss America... Give this man the Nobel Peace Prize, please.
