THE SITUATIONAL: Millennial Tressel

If it was easy or obvious every opponent would try it. It's neither. Advantage: Ohio State.

The smart play is to study precedents, which, there are very few. Buckeye fans have only suffered four bad Saturdays over the past nine regular season schedules. Just an absolute struggle.

• 2012: N/A
• 2013: N/A
• 2014: N/A
• 2015: Michigan State
• 2016: @ Penn State
• 2017: @ Iowa
• 2018: @ Purdue
• 2019: N/A
• 2020: N/A

First, there was Michigan State - which used the same special sauce in 2015 it has used in previous eras to wreck Ohio State's plans. Sure, the Buckeyes helped. But this wasn’t the first time.

Supernatural hexes are hard to replicate. Spartification isn't a useful strategy for non-Spartans.

The other three Ls - all roadies - are more helpful! Penn State generally leaves its Buckeye White Outs feeling sad but used environment and late-game heroics in 2016 to pull a reverse-James Franklin and steal one. And then there are the debacles at Kinnick and Ross-Ade, our foes’ most useful precedents.

Iowa and Purdue both rolled out gimmicky big game uniforms, paired them with emotionally-charged atmospheres and created a vortex that swallowed the Buckeyes whole. Yes, these are all extremely simplified versions of what transpired.

Minnesota only needs to be better than Ohio State on Thursday night. This isn't a seven-game series.

If you're facing Ohio State, hope the Buckeyes implode isn't a winning strategy, however helpful it may be. Going straight-up with your talent against theirs isn't the best idea either, because...they're better than you are almost every time.

To win, just be better than Ohio State once. And if it's your field, you leave nothing undone.

Weaponizing stadium atmosphere is not optional. Tomorrow night Minnesota will do exactly that. It's following the Iowa-and-Purdue model, except it also has the best back in the league and the largest offensive line the Buckeyes will see all year.

The Gophers will pound the ball and play keep-away with the intention of beating Ohio State once. This isn't a seven-game series. Upset alert arrived a little earlier than usual, didn't it.

Welcome to The Best Wednesdays in Football™! Let's get Situational.

OPENING: DANGER ZONE

Ohio State's last visit to Minnesota was The Day of the Dilly Bar.

Treating the B1G's greatest dynasty like the biggest opponent of the century is the smart approach. Every other approach is stupid, stupid, stupid. The pedestal cannot be too high.

John Cooper's shucks golly gosh, it's just another game I hope we can compete psyche-out is not the game to play against a program with four regular season conference losses in nine years.

Minnesota will treat this game as the most important one in program history. If the Buckeyes' next 11 opponents are smart, they'll go all in with the exact same mindset.

This is the most dangerous roadie the Buckeyes have taken since the 2018 disaster in West Lafayette, with apologies to Penn State last season (Ohio State has no trouble being on high alert for the Nittany Lions). But this is a different type of danger for the Buckeyes. It's the kind that bites them, however infrequent it may happen.

MINNESOTA HAS THE FOCUS, THE coaching and the culture to make things incredibly inconvenient for THE BUCKEYES.

It's only Minnesota. Every biblical and mythical giant has been slayed the same way: Find just one vulnerability that can be exploited, and then unleash absolute hell on it. That's what Minnesota will do. They're not going to attempt to match up with the Buckeyes, because that's a recipe for losing.

No one on this schedule is going to try to be Ohio State. They'll try to be their own version of Purdue, and no B1G team has successfully been Purdue since Purdue was Purdue. Minnesota's version of this will be attempting to hold onto the ball for 40 minutes.

And to make matters scarier, Ohio State has the highest possible aspirations every season. It's all about returning to the College Football Playoff, starting in Week Zero. Oh look, Oregon in Week 2. The Gophers have been thinking about their Week One opponent for eight months.

They haven't beaten Ohio State in Minneapolis in 40 years. They've got fancy black kits, bad intentions, nothing shiny or distracting in Week Two, the coaching and the culture to make things incredibly inconvenient for the visitors. It's less of a recruiting stars contest when it's your yard on your terms.

WOW!! What a powerful team meeting last night!! Congrats to @derik_lecaptain on EARNING a scholarship!! #RTB #HYPRR #SkiUMah pic.twitter.com/oIeNDQP4Xy

— P.J. Fleck (@Coach_Fleck) August 18, 2021

Ohio State cannot allow its neophytes to take extended abuse on Thursday night. Coaching needs to adjust and correct for whatever Minnesota exploits before it all snowballs. At the same time, the Gophers don't have nearly enough defenders to cover what the Buckeyes will be running at them.

That's why the game will be decided on 3rd down when the home team has the ball. The winner of this little keep-away battle is going to end the evening 1-0.

Additionally, the visitors cannot get comfortable with a lead or after a couple of big highlight-reel plays. Taking the 2nd half off (FILE --> OPEN --> 2020 INDIANA.mp4) would be a terrible idea.

Do I seem concerned? Well, if the Gophers pull off an upset you can plan on them being 9-0 in the middle of November. And even if they lose their opener, don't be shocked when they start 8-1.

INTERMISSION: THE SOLO

George Harrison was posthumously inducted into the 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. If you've ever watched these ceremonies you know the living inductees generally perform some of their hits following their speeches while the departed get phenomenal A-list cover band representation.

Harrison got Tom Petty (class of '02) Jeff Lynne (class of '17) and fellow '04 inductees Steve Winwood and Prince doing his honors. Their cover of the Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps written by Harrison is best known for a three-minute guitar solo which was so audacious it has its own oral history.

Let's answer our two questions.

Is the soloist in this video actually playing the guitar?

Playing is the most primitive description of what Prince is doing to that guitar. He's stealing the spotlight at a funeral march alongside some of the most accomplished musicians in recording history while making them look like a wedding band. VERDICT: No human should be capable of doing what you're hearing. Inconclusive.

Does this guitar solo slap?

I love Eddie Van Halen. If you play the one-word association game with him you land on guitar without flinching, even though he was also quite good with a piano.

Prince is more complicated. I could go 3,000 words deep on The Artist here but this is only supposed to be palate cleanser between the football, the whiskey section and more football. What he did that night was supernatural. The intention was to memorialize the most underrated Beatle upon induction into the Hall of Fame as a solo artist, and Prince delivered a performance that was almost offensive.

George was my favorite Beatle by a significant margin with John, Stuart Sutcliffe, Ringo and Pete Best rounding out the top five. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a requiem for a band that's about to break up but doesn't know it yet. It's an important marker in the timeline of rock music - and yet, it makes me think of Prince. Only Prince.

That song is his now, and he didn't sing a word of it. Prince made me realize it is possible to play a tribute too well. Like being prettier than the bride at her wedding - just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. And yet I'm not sure anyone could pull this solo off the way he did, even with months of preparation

So what's the one-word association with Prince? He's indescribable. Prince is a symbol. Virtuoso does not do him justice. Let's just go with Minnesota. VERDICT: Slaps.

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.

You probably have a vacation destination, a movie, a food and a book that you adore but also accept are not the best in their respective categories.

11 Wells bourbon: Brave & Bold.

But you don't care; you still love them. How they rank among the rest of us in the world doesn't matter to you.

I'll go first. Ashford Avenue in San Juan, P.C.U., Skyline Chili (four way onions, drowning in hot sauce) and The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. I love them unconditionally. I don't care about their awards or accolades. They're all winners to me.

So naturally this is the setup for an uncelebrated whiskey that I've been fond of for years now. It doesn't make a whole lot of noise at tastings where gold medals are awarded.

I'm referring to the bourbon from 11 Wells in Saint Paul, MN. It's not missing from your liquor store shelf because it's being hoarded. It's probably not available because it doesn't carry a huge share of demand.

11 Wells is just...decent, if you're a bourbon expert or tasting judge? It does not have a bad reputation; it basically has no reputation. I cannot remember how or when I got my first bottle but I've had a couple shipped to me since then because I love it. I think it’s wonderful.

People search far and wide for Pappy Van Winkle (objectively elite, I'm not hating) and yet the most interesting wheated I think I've ever had can be procured from the Twin Cities for well south of $100. Think of it as junior year Dane Sanzenbacher.

CLOSING: MILLENNIAL TRESSEL

PJ Fleck after defeating the Auburn Tigers at Raymond James Stadium in 2020. ©Douglas DeFelice USAT Sports

On Nov 7, 1981 the Golden Gophers came from behind to upset the No.18 Ohio State Buckeyes 35-31 in the second-to-last football game ever played at Memorial Stadium. P.J. Fleck had not yet celebrated his 1st birthday.

Forty years later, it's still Minnesota's most recent home win over Ohio State. The Gophers have come close, but they're 0-13 against the Buckeyes at home going back to when their millennial head coach was in diapers.

Fleck got his first coaching job from Jim Tressel in 2006 and he's fast-tracked his way into the profession using what's basically his rewrite of Tressel's Block O of Life. Instead of the pillars represented by the sides of a letter, Fleck's boat metaphor has traveled with him throughout his career. It's worked.

Fleck has a strategy, a philosophy and a purpose - and he's really good at executing all of it.

You can see that things didn't go as planned for Fleck and the Gophers in 2020, which if you recall was a global theme for 2020. Their experience is what statisticians refer to as an outlier.

Minnesota's ascent to the top of the B1G West was postponed last season and has been rescheduled for 2021, and that's a shame because Wisconsin and Iowa had left the door wide open for them. All of that frustration should manifest on Thursday night, and Fleck will have it productively bottled and appropriately channeled.

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Tresselball frustrated many of us all the way to annual conference titles and total command of rivalry games. Ohio State will be on the opposite side of Tresselball in its opener, with players who have no memory of it and rarely face it. Hopefully the Buckeyes will be more like Florida and less like Miami.

Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Beat Minnesota. Take care of each other.