This Skull Session is brought to you by the letter 'S'.
I beseech you, survey this splendid Skull Session! See Shazier's stunning Combine statistics as a certain someone seeks secondary spotlight. Signify Thad Matta's stirring speech on senior savvy and swoon over Aaron Craft's spectacular speed. Sigh at a TCU signal caller's snide statements. Saddened, sir? Snark at Rutgers' sports senselessness and smile at Iowa's social media suppression.
Sally forth!
COMBINE EXPECTATIONS. After Carlos Hyde disappointed at this year's NFL Combine, Ryan Shazier had the best combine performance of any Buckeye yet.
Shazier displayed a 42" vertical, an impressive height with a tweaked hamstring. For comparison, Calvin Johnson jumped 42.5" in 2007. Shazier added a 10'10" broad jump, and best of all he got to blow off the useless 40 yard dash because of the injury. Now he can woo scouts by dashing at Ohio State's pro day, which has a track reputed to shave tenths of a second off one's time. He also bench pressed 225 pounds 25 times.
Perhaps most important was the measurable that had nothing to do with athleticism. Scouts had fears about his size, which Shazier assuaged by weighing in at 237 pounds. Between his freshman year and the Combine he put on twenty pounds, showing that he's put in the requisite strength and conditioning work.
The Combine ends today with Bradley Roby and the other defensive backs. Roby will try to earn $100K by posting the Combine's fastest 40 time. He'll have to beat Kent State's Dri Archer, who didn't need to run a 4.26 time to show that he has blazing speed.
WEEKLY BIG TEN ROUNDTABLE. Ohio State is 22nd and 20th the AP and Coaches Polls after its comeback win against Minnesota. Thad Matta talked about the win and his seniors on the weekly Big Ten roundtable.
When asked what changed against Minnesota in the second half, Matta stuck to accurate coachspeak. Matta said the team played sounder defense, which opened up fast break opportunities. Keeping Minnesota from getting comfortable gave the team the confidence to hit and keep making shots.
A question about Aaron Craft's value to the program – spoiler alert, he's valuable – led to a question about the value of his four-year seniors. For this, Thad Matta contrasted seniors with his one-and-done players:
"There's good and bad to both. The number one thing I enjoy about the four year is that each year that goes by you develop such a strong relationship with that kid because you go through so many ups and downs. You really see his character grow in terms of who he is as a person and as a player.
"When opportunity arises to have the ability to get a guy that is potentially a one-and-done player you definitely take a look at that. We've had five I think in the last few years and it's just one of those deals where it kinda it is what it is. For those guys you're just excited too because they come to Ohio State with a dream, with a goal, and to see them achieve that is very gratifying as well."
Nothing too juicy there, but contented dullness beats the hell out of interesting discontent.
TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL. Texas Christian football has slumped in its first two years as a Big 12 member, going 7-6 and 4-8 in 2012 and 2013. Casey Pachall, TCU's starting quarterback for the last three seasons, believes there is deeper dysfunction in the program.
In an interview with Mac Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Pachall painted a picture of a TCU program that had "zero leadership":
The last question I asked him was, "What do you make of the current state of the TCU football program?"
He said: "It's rough right now. There is zero leadership. Nobody wants to step up and take charge of anything. It's rough. That is why they have the stuff they did. I still love those guys. Maybe they made mistakes, everybody does. I'm not putting those people down at all. They are still my good friends. Things are going to happen and as a team they need somebody to step up."
I followed with, "How does the team get that?"
"It's one of those things where every now and then you may say something to a teammate, and it may make them mad, but when they sit down and think about it they know it was sincere and it wasn't getting on your ass," Pachall said. "A lot of these guys don't want to speak up, they just want to blend in with the crowd. They want to be cool with their teammates, instead of getting on them and getting something going."
That's not what you want to hear from your graduated quarterback. TCU is on the radar for some kind of program implosion, which could correspond with other problems in the athletic department.
SPENDING LIKE A DRUNKEN SAILOR. Rutgers is well-known for its large subsidies of the athletic department. Somehow the subsidy situation has gotten worse; the school now covers two-thirds of the program's costs.
The $47 million Rutgers spent in 2012-2013 represents the largest recorded subsidy in NCAA history. That's no problem, argues Rutgers President Robert Barchi:
Following on recent promises that the athletic department would be self-sufficient in six years, University President Robert Barchi and other school officials today called the expenditures a one-time spike that would not upset the timetable for solvency.
The losses, he said, would have "no impact whatsoever" on goals he set as early as the fall of 2012, when the move from the Big East was first announced.
Barchi points to one-time costs such as payments to the AAC, buyouts for the football and basketball coaches and changing marketing contracts. He says that Rutgers has only a slight yearly increase in subsidy excluding the payments. That's hardly a convincing argument.
Rutgers believes it will make an extra $200 million over the next twelve years in the Big Ten, but the Big Ten's lucrative payouts wouldn't even cover the subsidy. Spending won't increase as Rutgers enters the country's richest conference. Like Rutgers' chief financial officer says, they have a revenue problem.
Maryland and Rutgers have given the Big Ten so many headaches since the conference invited them 16 months ago. The university presidents should have seen this coming; they didn't. I hope Maryland and Rutgers perform like Missouri and Texas A&M and shut me up but they probably won't.
IOWA NOT-SO-NICE. There is a perpetual war over social media in college athletics. The latest case of this is Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery banning his players from using Twitter for the rest of the season.
The decision happened after Iowa lost to Wisconsin on Saturday. Awful people sent hateful messages to forward Zach McCabe, who tweeted "suck a fat one all of you" as a frustrated message to them. That was the breaking point for McCaffery, who sees it social media an enormous distraction.
“My overall impressions of social media are negative, for the very reason of what we just experienced,” McCaffery told reporters during the Monday Big 10 teleconference. “It’s not something we can dwell on. I think what we have to do, and what I’ve done, is to tell all of our players to shut down their Twitter accounts until the season is over.”
It's wise for McCaffery to wait until an incident like this to ban a form of social media. Twitter usually has positive interactions but the Hawkeyes' interactions had gotten much more negative. Constant insults can mess with one's psyche.
Not that any of you needs a reminder, but please spread the word to not be jerks to Ohio State's athletes.
SPEED RUNNER. Yesterday was Aaron Craft's twenty-third birthday. He celebrated the way everyone wishes they could: solving a Rubik's Cube on camera.
Craft, whose cube-solving skill is known across the land, visited the Campus Insiders Seth Davis Show to try beating a personal record of 55 seconds. After some light banter about how he picked it the hobby (from an older teammate in high school) and how he got good at it (repetition), he gave it a go:
Credit and/or curse assistant athletic director of communications Dan Wallenberg for thwarting Craft. Not that 1:04 is bad; why, you could make twenty driving layups or thirty steals in that time!
LINKS AHOY. WCW star Bill Goldberg in hairier times... TBDBITL director Jon Waters helps to redeem a Texas high school band ... UFC is the same thing as a pro wrestling promotion... No, Jason Collins has a ten *day* contract... When Louis Nix falls, tectonic plates rumble... In memory of Harold Ramis' passing, here's a New Yorker article on his career... PETA asks Kennesaw State to stop using a live owl mascot... The Big Ten Basketball Tournament is already sold out... 2014 FIFA World Cup schedule announced... ESPN's ACC blogger can't recognize fake Nike designs when she sees them... Why wasn't Tom Izzo called for a technical on this?... Doug McDermott's bobblehead's tale of the tape... The Breakfast Waffle Taco is why everyone hates America... The middle-aged couple that scammed their way into the Olympics... Seth Rogan is writing a movie about the 90's Sega/Nintendo war... Get your act together, Cincinnati... Jimmy Fallon had a good opening week... Jeopardy! for the haters (just ask Jane Austen).
