The game is afoot!
Into the inscrutable unknown venture we, deep into the wilds of the college football offseason. The next three months will be spent following breadcrumbs left behind by the remnants of spring football and hints from the NFL Draft, as if either actually mean anything when it comes to predicting the future.
This is the most nonsensical and also the best part of the offseason. In a sense, Ohio State football fans are freed from the obligations of direct, observable facts, built up during practice reports and player interviews and so on. Eleven Warriors dot com (among other reputable and semi-reputable news outlets) has published a treasure trove of content related to Ryan Day and company over the past few months, and from August through April anyone stumbling onto our humble site can expect to be reasonably informed about the comings and goings of the Buckeyes.
It is now May. All bets are off.
Not to denigrate all of the other fine writers here and elsewhere, but anyone venturing into the depths of the offseason will find only an empty throne sitting amidst an inky veil of smoke and fog. Sure, there will still be capital-C Content written by actual professionals, but let's be honest: if we want to know the truth, it's up to us to summon our wits and collective anxieties to cobble together a working theory about the 2023 Ohio State Buckeyes football team.
The alternative of "not doing that" being unacceptable, I can say that I've been at this (and by "this" I mean "letting my nerves dictate how I feel about college football before any games are actually played") for a long time now, becoming something of an expert.
And I've discovered that the absolute best thing to do while twiddling my thumbs for several months is to lean waaaaaay the hell into whatever preconceived notions that I might have about the Buckeyes. Every piece of news, every quote, every small whiff of information helps me get closer to the ultimate purpose of the offseason, which is to freak the hell out about stuff that's only tangentially related to the thing I'm worried about.
I'm probably wrong about, oh, everything, but what's a famous detective like myself to do? Not detect?
Take, for instance, the recent story about C.J. Stroud feeling "disrespected" by the addition of Quinn Ewers to the team. The fascinating thing about this story is that there are about fifty different conclusions that a true Offseason Detective could extrapolate from it, depending on their mood and/or what they had for breakfast that morning.
[Said Stroud,] "They brought (Ewers) in like a week into fall camp, which is training camp for us, and I kind of felt disrespected. I didn't like that."
Well clearly Ryan Day doesn't know how to manage a roster filled with 4-and-5-star athletes, the team is doomed to a nine win season and will lose terribly to Michigan.
"Coach Day did a helluva job, man," Stroud said. "His leadership, even though people would talk and talk and do this and do that, he just keeps showing up."
Nevermind, this is the evidence I need to use/ignore to prove/deny the idea of Ohio State making the College Football Playoff yet again.
The great thing about being an Offseason Detective is that you can Agatha Christie literally any story and find the proof you need to close your case. The only limits are your imagination and how unhinged you're willing to be.
Let's say that my working theory of offensive line play at Ohio State is that Justin Frye is a useless parsnip man who will be the ruination of Buckeye football. The obvious recent story to help you corroborate this hypothesis would be offensive lineman Ben Christman transferring to Kentucky; clearly the wheels are falling off, everything is terrible. Book 'em, Danno.
But being a good gumshoe means dissecting the hidden and overlooked. No, not the Buckeyes landing a big time offensive line target in the transfer portal, that's too obvious and goes against my point, so I'll ignore that in favor of, uh... Bronny James committing to USC over Ohio State, which shows that, er, he slighted the Buckeyes because... Frye's former... place, and uh, anyway that ain't legal either.
It's not easy being Football Columbo all the time, but if I'm not here to pull stuff out of my ass all offseason, who will?
Alternatively, I guess I could ease my weary, battered, could've-won-a-freaking-national-championship-if-they-had-just-gotten-one-stupid-stop skeleton into the magnesium sulphated waters of the offseason and rest my bones instead of getting worked up about nothing based on also nothing.
But football never rests, and neither will I. It's going to be a long, hot summer.
