WEDNESDAY SFW ANTI-WORK #BANGER: This hour-long recap of "The Chase." (It's worth the hour. Just trust me on this one, friend.)
TROY SMITH RETURNS TO THE SHOE. They're spicing up halftime of this Saturday's spring game:
ANSWER: Can @OSU_troysmith continue his precise passing attack against two rising stars... #GoBucks @OhioStAthletics pic.twitter.com/BZGnXvtNYD
— Ohio State Buckeyes (@OhioStAthletics) April 14, 2015
Unless it's a competition to blow up the moon with a single throw... give me J.T. Barrett. The Texan Touchdown Distributor may be unable to scramble, but he has the best accuracy. (Please don't arrest me for treason, King Dolodale.)
Google says it will be 72 with scattered showers on Saturday. I think it will take more than scattered showers to affect turnout.
MICHAEL BENNETT ON HIS OWN GRIND. One of the biggest voids on the 2015 roster is the absence of Michael Bennett. So, it's no surprise to see the former defensive brick is — with an assist from his parents, of course — keeping his ax to the grindstone in pursuit of his dream.
From Andy Staples of MMQB.SI.com:
Less than 48 hours [after winning the championship] Bennett was back in Columbus, signing the paperwork that would mark the start of his quest for employment. He was about to begin one of America’s most unique job hunts. “It’s nothing like anything else you’re going to see in your life,” Bennett would say later. “You’re not going to have to go through a three-month interview for any other job, as far as I know.”
The forms Bennett signed on Jan. 14 came from Five Star Athlete Management. His decision to hire the firm headed by agent Todd France had come a week earlier, though Bennett began getting calls from agents last summer. Because he didn’t want his agent decision to be a distraction during his senior season, he outsourced the weeding-out process to two of the most thorough, skeptical people he knew: Connie and Mike Bennett, two engineers who met as students at West Point and raised their three children in the Dayton suburb of Centerville, Ohio.
[...]
The Bennetts sought advice from the families of their son’s former teammates who are currently in the NFL. They quizzed the parents of Packers center Corey Linsley, Broncos cornerback Bradley Roby, Texans linebacker John Simon and others to discern what makes an effective representative. Over a few months they built a list of criteria to add to their No. 1 requirement: “Somebody who wasn’t on the front page of anything for anything bad,” Connie says. The Bennetts combined their knowledge of their son’s personality with research and information gleaned from interviews. How much contact did the agents maintain with their clients? What differentiated them? Since the son of two West Point–educated engineers naturally leans toward the analytical, the elder Bennetts favored agents who rely more on hard data than schmoozing to help them negotiate bigger contracts. That was bad news for the candidate who said he was a “big brother” to his clients. “Dude,” Connie remembers thinking, “you’re older than me.”
The only thing worse than undergoing the NFL Draft process would be running for president.
It's no surprise so many athletes go broke when you realize how uncommon parents like the Bennetts are. Could you imagine being your dipshit 22-year-old self (there I go projecting again) and trying to hire an agent? Knowing me, I'd have linked up with a con artist operating out of a Winnebago, and he would've embezzled my money to finance his Fiji surfing hobby.
URBAN'S GOT A BIG OL' BUYOUT. If anybody wants to poach Urban Meyer from Ohio State, they're going to need a fleet of Brinks trucks.
Via Samer Kalaf of Deadspin.com:
| DATE OF NOTICE OF TERMINATION | BUY-OUT AMOUNT |
|---|---|
| BEFORE 2/1/2016 | $34,080,525 |
| BETWEEN 2/1/2016-1/31/2017 | $27,434,457 |
| BETWEEN 2/1/2017-1/31/2018 | $21,345,100 |
| BETWEEN 2/1/2018-1/31/2019 | $15,523,591 |
| BETWEEN 2/1/2019-1/31/2020 | $10,038,327 |
| BETWEEN 2/1/2020-1/31/2021 | $4,869,894 |
Could I see Urban Meyer winning three more titles in the next five years and absconding to the NFL? For sure. (His son will be done with high school by then. If there'd ever be a time to go...)
Do I think it will happen? Probably not.
Via BCSN.com:
“We sat down in his office in January, and he shared his intent is to be here for a long period of time,” Smith said. “I've always had a commitment to make sure he was one of the highest-compensated coaches in the country, and I felt like it was important for him to be number one in the league.”
Just wait until next winter when Purdue swoops Pete Carroll from Seattle. The arms race will really heat up then.
ABUSEMENT PARK BACK OPEN. Remember old friend of the program, Mike "The Abusement Park" Mitchell? (Not to be confused with 2015 Basketbuck commit, Mickey Mitchell, Mike's younger brother.)
Mike transferred to Texas Tech to be closer to his ailing father. After sitting out last year, he's on the comeback trail.
From Max Olson of ESPN.com:
He could have made a much shorter drive to Arlington to see his former teammates win it all at AT&T Stadium that Monday night. He had spent a year facing off against Cardale Jones on the practice squad, a year building toward this grand moment. But Mitchell had better plans. He spent the day with family in Plano.
[Mitchell's family is] why he left the eventual national champs to start over at Texas Tech. The sophomore linebacker came home to be closer to his father, former NFL linebacker Ken Mitchell, during his continued bout with a debilitating neurological disorder.
"We tried to talk him into staying at Ohio State," Ken said, "because he’d have a starting role. I said, 'Mike, c'mon, we can get through this.' But he said this was something he had to do. He said, 'This is more important to me.'"
The thought of suffering from cluster headaches almost gives me a cluster headache. Hopefully Mike gets back on the horse this year. (I'm still a little shocked Mickey ended up at Ohio State.)
THE PLAYOFFS WERE SUPPOSED TO KILL THE BOWL SYSTEM! Do you know how much $505.9 million is? A lot. It's a lot of money.
From Ralph Russo of AP.org:
Thanks to the College Football Playoff, bowl games paid more than a half billion dollars to conferences and schools last season, the largest payout ever and an increase of almost $200 million from the final season of the Bowl Championship Series.
According to an NCAA report released Tuesday, the 39 postseason FBS games distributed $505.9 million to the participating conferences and schools. The schools spent $100.2 million to take part in bowl games.
Makes you think, for sure.
THOSE WMDs. We Need To Stop Teaching Our Kids That It’s Okay To Think Chris Webber Was A Complete Basketball Player... Q&A with Justified producer Graham Yost... I wanna party with this platypus... Stephen Curry hit 77 3-pointers in a row in practice... To my son, I leave this wool cat head... Why did Howard Cosell become so disillusioned with sports?
