Big Ten media days are here, which means FOOTBALL IS LURKING, friends. (Jason will be through soon with a real b1g primer.
A PROFILE OF YOUNG BRAXTON. It's a big year for Braxton Miller. Thrust into the starting role before he was ready, Miller will likely leave Ohio State with numerous quarterbacking records.
This year, however, will determine if Braxton leaves Ohio State as a very good quarterback, or if he will enter Ohio State lore next to Troy Smith.
Judging from this profile by Bill Rabinowitz in Sunday's Columbus Dispatch edition, Braxton understands the stakes:
"None of it is talk about the Heisman Trophy or a third straight Silver Football,” Herman said. “It’s all about, ‘We haven’t won when it mattered.’ We’ve won a lot of games here and beaten the team up north twice, but there is certainly some unfinished business on the team level.”
Braxton won't just have the eyes of #BuckeyeNation on him, there will also be plenty of NFL scouts watching. He's an NFL-caliber athlete, but this season could make-or-break his dreams to play quarterback in the NFL.
“I don’t want to run like I did last year, at all. I’d rather throw it to our guys and let them make the plays for me.”
Braxton seems high on the offensive weapons surrounding him, but Tom Herman says at the end of the day, there will be games to win:
“As much as I care about him and his future and the NFL — and I want him to have a great career and a long career — we need to win games,” Herman said. “So whatever we need to do to win football games, we’re going to do. But there’s a conscious movement away from the reliance on some of the designed quarterback runs.”
I've typed it before, but we're finally going to see a fully-weaponized version of Braxton this fall. (Yes, I'm feeling better and better about my prophesy of Mike Thomas' coming out party.)
Braxton also confirmed something we long figured: He played 98% of the Orange Bowl dinged up:
“I came off to the sideline and felt a little weird,” he said. “(I thought), ‘What’s going on with my shoulder?’ I warmed up again, and throughout the whole game it was bothering me. It was real tight, and I had sharp pain constantly. I thought I bruised it or something.
Braxton is a cool cat who doesn't like being the center of attention, so looks like this don't come around often. I recommend the profile in full.
TED GINN AND DONTE WHITNER CRASH A GLENVILLE PRACTICE. Seeing this reminded me of a glorious thing: Donte Whitner is a member of the Cleveland Browns. Whitner wanted the Browns to sign Ginn, but the former Ohio State burner signed with Arizona instead.
SB Nation and Nike, however, arranged another sort of Whitner-and-Ginn homecoming. They sent the two Ohio State standouts to their high school alma mater, Cleveland Glenville.
I've never stepped foot on Cleveland Glenville's campus or attended a game, but I still love that program (and Ted Ginn's father) with every fiber of my body. Outside of the Marion Harding Presidents (the sickest nickname in sports), they're my high school squad.
SMITH IS BULLISH ON RUTGERS FOR REASON$. Outside of the handling of Tatgate, I'm a Gene Smith-defender.
This quote from Gene to NJ.com's Dan Duggan, however, left me shaking my head:
"I think Rutgers will bring a lot to the table."
To be fair, Rutgers was recently ranked as the 33rd best university in the world, according to something called the Center for University World Rankings. So there's that.
While Gene Smith pumped up Rutgers to the New Jersey press, he provided better clarity on his thinking to the Columbus Dispatch's Todd Jones:
“From a business point of view, it makes huge sense,” Smith said. “This is a business deal. This is about money. Everybody wants to dodge that; I don’t. It’s about the stability of our conference for the long term.”
[...]
“I know that change is hard,” Smith said. “The reality is that the Big Ten needed to change in order to position ourselves for the 21st-century model of intercollegiate athletic competition.”
Well, I'm glad Gene Smith kept it 100.
I understand why the Big Ten "poached" Maryland and Rutgers. The reason there is blowback, however, is because college football fans don't care about "media footprints" and won't benefit from the cash windfall. The only "business point of view" they see is rising ticket prices and cost of attending games.
At least Gene Smith admitted it, though, and at least there's no longer any reason to pretend elite college football is anything but another billion dollar business in America. (I guess this isn't news to anybody who has been paying attention.)
If that's cognitive dissonance too severe to parse... well, there's always pee wee leagues.
KYLE TROUT WILL LIKELY REDSHIRT. Ohio State's offensive line is a bit of a question mark entering the season (thank you Based God for Ed Warinner), but don't expect Lancaster product Kyle Trout to be an immediate contributor on game days.
From Blake Williams of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette:
“Coach has told me that I am probably going to redshirt,” Trout said.
“That definitely took a lot of people telling me to not be angry and to accept it a little bit more. I didn’t want to redshirt, I wanted to play (but) the positives definitely outweigh those negatives.”
What's Trout's biggest hurdle to playing time? Technique.
“[High school competition was] smaller than me, I was just able to push them around. Now, I’m with guys that are as big as or bigger than me,” he said. “Perfect technique is key.”
Ain't no shame in a redshirt; put the axe to the grindstone and come back stronger.
YESSIR EL GUAPO. Here's El Guapo rolling around in a new car (with some fresh trinkets around his neck):
Lookin' good, El Guap!
A NEW GURU FAD. Here's an interesting article from Dan Wolken of USA Today:
Thanks in large part to the celebrity of people such as George Whitfield, who worked with Johnny Manziel before his Heisman Trophy season and landed a regular spot on ESPN, quarterback gurus have seemingly popped up everywhere and secured dozens of clients from the college ranks.
[...]
"It gives them time when coaches can't touch them (per NCAA rules) to really hone in on stuff," [former Maryland quarterback and current QB guru Ken] Mastrole said. "I don't even look at the ball going to the receiver; I look at the mechanics, isolating technique at a high speed and developing that into being able to incorporate it into the game."
Some coaches aren't a fan of the new fad:
"We've got good quarterback coaches," Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said. "My guys aren't going out there. I'll coach them. When they go to pro ball, they can do whatever they want. We'll coach our guys. I don't think it benefits you. We know what we're doing, too."
I guess it depends on how much micro-managing a coach wants to do.
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