Ohio State's longest offseason ever will finally end after 301 days. This will be the most-prepared team in program history.
That's 301 days for Jonathon Cooper (above) to return after playing right up to the brink of burning a redshirt in 2019. He had to choose between Michigan, the B1G title game or whatever came afterwards before sitting out to preserve this season. He chose to play in Ann Arbor.
It's 301 days for Master Teague III, whose achilles injury six months ago put this season in doubt and created urgency to reel in Trey Sermon, for whom it's personally been 349 days. His season and career as a Sooner ended with an injury against Iowa State in 2019. He's well-rested too.
Oklahoma could have used him last weekend. Back in 2017 the Buckeyes recruited both him and JK Dobbins, and however incongruous Sermon's path to Columbus was - Ohio State ended up with both. He fell in love with the culture Teague was already enamored with, and now both Buckeyes have benefited from the accidental benefit of the pandemic: extended healing time.
The Buckeyes were going to be talented and experienced. Now they're also so damn ready.
OPENING: PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Food, drinks, a great cause - and the Buckeyes beat the living hell out of the Badgers | Dubgate IX
As we inch toward that opening date with Nebraska, let's take a moment to recognize what this weekend was intended to be prior to the novel coronavirus making its unwelcome entrance into our daily lives.
The Eleven Dubgate X was scheduled for Iowa's visit this Saturday, during which we would gotten to face our 55-24 demons from 2017 all over again. Last year was the first time the weather decided not to cooperate with our annual banger, and yet the Dubgate still ran up the score on Wisconsin while you all raised a bunch of money for charity. It was moist and good.
Currently, we're exploring if we can safely hold a Dubgate X with The Official Sports Bar of Eleven Warriors™ and if we can, we will. If we can't, we'll wait until we can. We're about spreading joy and charity, not contagion. Either way, we miss you.
And we're missing that Iowa game, too - it was not salvaged with the abbreviated schedules. Saturday was supposed to be recourse for one of the lowest points of an unbelievably rewarding decade. Instead, it's just another pandemic weekend. Mask up, wash hands and you can help accelerate this unfortunate era's admission into the permanent past tense.
INTERMISSION: THE SOLO
Longtime friends of The Situational, the sax is back. This week, anyway.
Billy Hixx and the New Breed were a Georgetown staple back in the mid-1980s. Their saxophone player, Hoya alumnus Billy Hicks was a big crowd pleaser, juxtaposing thirsty barroom womanizing antics with exactly one rousing sax solo. That's all that's known of the band.
Which, of course, was fiction - Hicks was Rob Lowe's character in St. Elmo's Fire. The New Breed was actually The Patrick Winningham Band, fronted by Mare Winningham's brother. Mare played Wendy Beamish, Hick's ridiculously-cast love interest in the movie; perhaps this was done to secure her brother's fake band for the Halloween bar scene. The New Breed only had one song, which gets played at St. Elmo's, their only known gig.
Dan Vickrey (guitar) and Charlie Gillingham (keyboards - yes, a guy named Gillingham was in a band named Winningham) eventually became Counting Crows. While it's not 100% a real band in the movie, it did contain real musicians - but they didn't play at real Georgetown's campus because filming was prohibited there. So they shot everything at Maryland.
TL;DR St. Elmo's Fire is a neoclassic B1G cultural staple. Let's answer our two questions.
Is the soloist in this video actually playing the sax?
Lowe rekindled his famous One Love sax solo back in 2014 at a Hollywood fundraiser, delighting every everyone in attendance. Noted Arsenio Hall Show saxophone player Bill Clinton happened to be in attendance, marveled at the performance - and here's how this story ends. Take it away, Rob Lowe:
“Two weeks later, I get a letter from President Clinton saying, ‘I had no idea you were such an amazing saxophone player, I would love to do a duet with you.’ Now I’m in a shame spiral and I’m like, ‘I have to tell him.’ So I call up the bandleader and he says, ‘Oh no, he knows it’s fake, he found out yesterday… Barbra Streisand told him’.”
VERDICT: Hicks is not actually playing the saxophone. He's not actually Hixx either. Damn it.
Does this sax solo slap?
St. Elmo's Fire is a phenomenally stupid movie made for impressionable 12-year olds about the shittiest possible 24-year olds. Due to my target-demographic age at the time of its release I should recuse myself from passing judgement, but I will not. VERDICT: It slaps, the whole movie slaps and The New Breed slapped too hard to be real.
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.
Sonoma County: It's West of Kentucky
Last summer I got to try the Sonoma County's West of Kentucky Bourbon No.1, whose signature move is the inclusion of cherrywood-smoked barley. It was young and memorable with a strong finish, kind of like the 2014 Buckeyes. I haven't seen it in the wild since, but the distillery made an impression.
Recently I got my hands on the No.2, pictured here being sampled by yours truly in what was The Summer of Socially-Distanced Backyard Bonfires and Bourbon Tastings. As you can see from the label, it's a wheated spirit and quite a departure from the No.1.
Wheateds we've discussed here include Middle West, Old Fitzgerald, the Pappys, Larceny and Makers Mark, the last of which gives me splitting headaches so I avoid it. Makers is a 90 proofer while No.2 is just north of 100, so it bites a bit harder than the best-selling wheated if you're looking for a reference point.
Sonoma County types generally tend to know how to put juice in barrels, whether it's grapes or a mash like this one. No.2 is smells like honey-drizzled croissants up front and has an oaky, sweet finish with some bitter industrial weirdness I enjoyed. Maybe it was my palate; maybe it was excessive smoke inhalation.
I'm not sure if it's an appropriate Netflix-binging bourbon but No.2 is an elite bonfire bourbon, superior to Campfire - which is normally worthy but something bad definitely happened with the 2020 edition and High West needs to figure it out and fix it (something bad happening in 2020, yes I know I was shocked too).
CLOSING: VENGEANCE
OSU WR Chris Olave, who will wear No.2 for the 2020 season, exits the home team tunnel at Ohio Stadium in 2019.
The Ohio State football program has three outstanding warrants to execute. The oldest belongs to Clemson, which has delivered every possible type of beating to the Buckeyes:
- Goading legendary coach into firing himself in meaningless bowl game
- Permanently wrecking a generational athlete's throwing arm in a shootout the Buckeyes should have won comfortably if its defensive stars had played or if Corey Brown could just fair catch a goddamn punt
- A good old fashioned ass-kicking resulting in two offensive coaches being fired on the PHX tarmac
- Winning only on account of getting every possible break on the field and in the officiating booth
The Tigers have hit for the cycle in owning the Buckeyes, and it would require chance for them to ever meet again. The other two warrants are closer to home but inexplicably just as dodgy.
Ohio State has played Iowa as often as it has faced Clemson this decade. That turpentine taste from most recent meeting was scheduled to be remedied on Saturday, but due to COVID it would require both teams to meet in Indy, unscathed by disease for the [Musberger voice] Hawkeyes and Buckeyes to play this year.
The other villain is Purdue, winners of three of the last six meetings with Ohio State. The Boilermakers have beaten the Buckeyes more than any other conference opponent in the current millennium. Purdue has fewer bowl wins since 2000 than it has Ohio State wins.
And while that doesn't really linger with most of the current roster, the program has to own it, and that brings us to our fascinating vengeance dynamic: A single win over Clemson would right a lot of wrongs, but Iowa and Purdue are that taste that won't go away with even two thorough brushings.
It took numerous Illini beatdowns to almost vanquish what happened in 2007, and Juice Williams is still the stuff of nightmares. Conference upsets have a devious way of lingering too long, while foreign heavyweights only remember what happened most recently. Unfortunately, none of these villains are on the schedule. They have to be hunted down and hold up their end in the process.
So here's to Iowa or Purdue securing the B1G West invitation to play in Indianapolis. And here's to Ohio State ordering up the usual and meeting them there.
Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Take care of each other.
