The Situational: One Hot Minute

Thanks in large part to Dave Brandon's gauche arrogance, last year was scheduled to be the first time in a full century where the Irish wouldn't spend a single Saturday in the conference footprint it just can't seem to join or quit.

But then the Ohio State-Notre Dame Fiesta Bowl happened, and what was originally scheduled to be unscheduled abruptly got rescheduled. The Irish get Sparty the next two Septembers and then Northwestern in 2018. Purdue shows up two seasons after that prior to ND kicking off another home-and-home with the Buckeyes in 2022, which means unless some AD speed dating or another serendipitous bowl pairing goes down 2019 will become what 2015 was supposed to be: Notre Dame's historic break from Big Ten competition.

That means 2015 had more than just one foregone conclusion that didn't materialize. It was your favorite team's rescheduled postseason plans that produced a Big Ten opponent for the Irish and made this all possible. Ugh, that again.

ZONE SIX's Shhhhhhhh turned out to be more prescient than nuanced.

It turned out the Buckeyes weren't going to waltz back into the college football playoff the way nearly everyone, present company included, believed they would. They didn't spend the first 10 games of their season engaging in what would have been the second-greatest collegiate rope-a-dope of all time. This would have ranked behind only Cardale Jones ripping the shrinkwrap off his college career and destroying everything in his path for three games when he was previously only known for one bad tweet.

It turned out Ohio State needed to lose - as it did to Virginia Tech in 2014 - to release the genie from its bottle. But even with it freed the Buckeyes were still largely one-dimensional, passing for only 324 yards combined in blowouts over Michigan and the Irish. Shhhhhhhh was the battle cry for Zone 6, but in 13 games there wasn't a single contest where an Ohio State wide receiver took over or became a difference maker the way Devin Smith or team MVP Evan Spencer previously had. And this was with QBgeddon at its disposal.

Shhhhhhhh turned out to be prescient instead of nuanced. And Notre Dame turned out to be the Big Ten's most prized postseason scalp of 2015, arriving in a bowl that will only be played once to no one's dismay. College football's greatness has deep roots in its unpredictability. On one end you have the Buckeyes' improbable run to the 2014 title. On the other you have them failing to even make the 2015 playoff.

We're in this for the surprises. Sometimes they're bad. Only 178 days until Bowling Green descends upon the Horseshoe! Let's get Situational.

The TAKES

The year was 1998: I lived in Chicago, drank Johnny Walker Black (youth is wasted on the young - George Bernard Shaw) and had a newspaper subscription to the Chicago Tribune. Johnny Black and the Trib: My salad days.

That same year I debuted as a Buckeye blogger (though that term didn't really exist yet) and my writing style for the fledgling genre was heavily influenced by the three main scribes who graced the Trib's sports page. The first was Steve Rosenbloom, a classic straight-shooter. Steve had just enough edge to still be allowed inside a rigid, self-important newspaper.

The 3-point basket was made for mediocre dribblers like Steph Curry.

The second was Skip Bayless, whose talented younger brother was/still is far more famous around Chicago. Skip - at least in 1998 - was a thoughtful Vanderbilt grad who hadn't yet fully embarked on his hard-charging race to the bottom of sportstakesville. He used his outsider and national credentials to compose lukewarm paragraphs longer than one sentence that challenged the classic Chicago sportsthink.

Over the past weekend the third guy's latest flaming paper bag of dogshit - Routine of 3-pointer dulls the senses, and makes basketball duller - went viral. Because it was that bad:

Let's start with the truth. The 3-point shot was created for people who couldn't play basketball. It was made for people who couldn't grow tall enough, dribble well enough, drive hard enough or move fast enough.

That's the diarrhea that reliably flows from the crusty pen of Bernie Lincicome. He's arguing the 3-point line - which the NBA has had since 1979 - is an equalizer for short, lousy basketball players. In lieu of wasting too much time breaking down how stupid that or his entire article is, just two points:

1. The most prolific 3-point shooters in NBA history are Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Jason Terry, Paul Pierce, Jason Kidd and Vince Carter in that order. Yes, a bunch of notoriously short/slow guys who cannot dribble.
2. Anyone who prefaces an opinion by classifying it as truth is - objectively - an asshole.

My formal training was in composition and classic literature. Blogging, still unnamed, was informal and figuring out its own rules as it began to flourish. To find my own voice in sportswriting as a young Johnny Black drinker with a freshly-printed Big Ten liberal arts degree I decided that Bernie's antithesis was the voice I enjoyed projecting most.

That meant loving sports instead of resenting them; looking for ways to improve and praise them, celebrating them and if I absolutely had to whine about something - using humor far more often than venom.

And most importantly, I made it my purpose to not to be wrong while kicking and screaming all of damn the time. As bad as Bernie's viral 3-point take last weekend was, he's made being wrong while bitter into an art form. Some choice cuts: 

Only 3 Cups? Gotta hear both sides.

Hockey

The question of whether the Blackhawks are a dynasty will be answered when the question no longer needs to be asked.

He wrote that about the local hockey team last summer as it raised the city's third Stanley Cup in six years. The Hawks have also made the Western Conference Finals five of the past seven seasons. Literally no one is wondering if Chicago is a dynasty, except one guy.

Basketball

But only the most exceptional coach can win with the very bottom of his roster, and only the most arrogant would try. The coach of Indiana tried. He played six freshmen against Illinois, the point being not their ability, of which there was precious little, but their age.

He was apparently teaching his regular players a lesson in humility, or defense. .

That's Bernie criticizing Bob Knight for giving the youth of his roster playing time. Those players went on to win the national championship.

Baseball

So what to make of all this? All this agonizing over getting the chance to play one more game, just in case. 

The Cubs are having a resurgence, so say the growing numbers trying to figure out just what's what at Clark and Addison. The problem with a resurgence is there would have had to have been a surgence, and that isn't even a thing. 

He was frustrated the Cubs received so much attention in attempting to reach a lousy one-game wildcard playoff. Aside from his words being gibberish, the Cubs made it to the NLCS. They played nine more games. Weird things happen when good teams try to win.

College Football

The swell of support for Michigan’s Charles Woodson for the Heisman Trophy is astonishing.

Not since Steve McNair has there been anything like it.

From his column titled Woodson a Gimmick Candidate, in which Bernie makes the case that an eventual college football and first ballot NFL Hall of Famer is only hype - by comparing him to an eventual NFL MVP and three-time All Pro. 

"Manning will not get to leave as did John Elway...with the Lombardi Trophy in one hand."

And finally: [fireworks emoji]

Pro Football

If Manning ever plays again, this will be true: His playing gives the other team a better chance of winning. Manning's teams always won because of Manning. It was his signature.

It may be over. It should be over. It should have been over last season when Manning so obviously declined at the end, an indignity familiar to all the greats, the Tiger Woods effect, so to speak. [...]

Manning will not get to leave as did John Elway, the man who gave him his last gig, on his teammates' shoulders with the Lombardi Trophy in one hand.

That's Bernie shoveling dirt on Peyton Manning in November, 2015. Woof.

I probably haven't had Johnny Black even once this century. I can't remember the last time I read the Trib sports page, in print or online. But Bernie is still the most influential scribe for my writing here. His lessons are as consistent as they are timeless.

There has been no greater anti-muse for my content. Thank you, Bernie. Thank you for hating sports so much.

The Niche

Randy Moss played in the NFL for 13 seasons. Donnie Nickey played for...eight?! [Michael Pimentel/Icon Sportswire]

Ohio State is about to infuse the NFL with a whole bunch of rookie contracts, and while it's exciting to see so many players from the Buckeyes' recent run give us an excuse to tune in on Sundays it's increasingly difficult to predict how long they'll stay there.

The average NFL career is now down to 2.66 years, which for those of you at home who still cannot believe it is about 1/3 of Donnie Nickey's professional career. You might ask yourself how a legendary pile-jumper who was routinely lost in coverage in college could last that long, and the answer is two-fold: 1) Don't get hurt. 2) Find your role and do it better than anyone else.

Nickey didn't jump piles or get lost in coverage for the Tennessee Titans. Instead, he made his entire vocation, passion and purpose to be the best special teams player possible - which ended up making him a captain in the NFL for several years. 

DONNIE NICKEY WAS AN OHIO STATE CAPTAIN FOR ONE SEASON. HE WAS AN NFL CAPTAIN FOR SEVERAL YEARS.

It's a lesson for the NFL and for any other for-profit results-oriented business. By the time he retired Nickey had cashed in six (!) contracts with Tennessee, none of which was for longer than two years, because he made special teams more important to him than to anyone else. They even put him in charge of it. He started over 150 games.

You know who else is thriving in the NFL? Nate Ebner, who racked up 30 career tackles at Ohio State. To put that in perspective, that's one more tackle than Chris Spielman had just against Michigan in 1986.

Ebner is the best special teams player on arguably the NFL's best franchise. Meanwhile, his former teammate and multiple BCS bowls-MVP Terrelle Pryor is clinging to his eighth chance at an NFL career with America's worst sports franchise. Just as everyone predicted back in 2010.

It's about work ethic, determination, all of the superlatives you can think of and luck - but it's specialization that is often overlooked. The nine Buckeyes who will definitely be drafted this year (eh, good luck Jalin) are all enormously talented. That's ultimately going to be what gets their names called.

But if they're going to stay in the league longer than 2.66 seasons, they'll need more than just talent and health. Do something important - conspicuously - and better than anyone else. That's something you can use in your cubicle jungle as well. It may get you an office with a door.

The Bourbon

There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.

Or in the case of Ohio State's outside linebackers, three worthy choices.

@11W @ramzy @ericseger33 I wonder if Fickell has a good palate? #Baker #Booker #NewWorley pic.twitter.com/o3XVpoVwXC

— Liudacris (@liudacris2) February 16, 2016

There was a stretch in the 1990s when the Buckeyes signed players named Percy King, Heath Queen and Bryce Bishop. They were unable to sign a Knight or a Rook in that span (pawns are more likely to engage in MACtion) but the chess board was strong with Ohio State's resurgence under John Cooper.

Now what we have here with Jerome Baker, Dante Booker and Chris (New) Worl(d)ey is next level brown liquor stuff, and infinite high fives to Liudacris for pointing it out: The Buckeyes' outside linebacker derby is also a shadow competition between three whiskeys.

Let's compare the scouting reports and tasting notes:

For the sake of disclosure and truthfulness in reporting, I've only had PX Cask edition of Starward's whisky (they don't use the e down there) which isn't pictured in the tweet above. Australian whisky is even harder to come by than a reliable Australian punter. You don't find it; it finds you.

If you go according to how the drinks are ranked, look for Booker's to edge out Baker's for more field time. That said, you can rely on whiskey for many things - but solving depth chart quandaries isn't one of them. If that was the case, Ohio State would have signed this guy last month and he would already be team captain.

The Playoff

[don't press play on that video if you're angered by spoilers from a 10-year old movie]

If you're a current Ohio State student enrolled in the Fisher College of Business and would be interested in a summer internship with Eleven Warriors, please click here to learn more.

We reached Peak Blogger in 2009 when the number of paid bloggers and paid lawyers intersected with each other. Granted, the Venn Diagram of bloggers and lawyers is very close to just being one circle, but the point is the writing of this genre has flourished in part because its engine is more well-rounded and trained in other specialties. I'm always reminded of the career journalist who asked Mickey Mantle's surgeon at a press conference if he could interview the organ donor who provided Mick's new liver, as well as lungs, eyes and kidneys for other patients. It's good to have more than just one pitch in life.

The 11W summer internship is business-oriented with an entrepreneurial blogger flair (this may be expanded in the future to include other university concentrations and majors). The only coffee involved in this internship is the stuff you pour yourself. Otherwise, plan to be immersed in Voice of Customer, Organizational Culture, Business Development, Community Outreach and a whole number of other components that are valued behind the scenes here at 11W.

This is a dated photo. 11W now employs >150,000 people worldwide

The well-rounded and trained-in-other-specialties engine here includes actual college professors at major research institutions, enterprise IT professionals, seasoned sales managers, domestic and international classroom teachers and Fortune 50 business executives - in addition to our trained and degreed journalists, photographers and artists. There's a lot you can learn at 11W; almost as much as we can learn from you.

Perks include working with subject matter you enjoy, learning finance and macroeconomics from DJ's cats and gaining insights into a business that started from a single html page 10 years ago. This site did over 10MM views last month alone, despite February being only 29 days long, containing zero Ohio State football games and having way too many Ohio State basketball games. So this a growth business. Come grow with us.

Hope to hear from you soon, OSU's best and brightest. Go Bucks.