Winnepeg Willow, a self-styled weather-predicting groundhog, died on Monday. Not soon enough, I say.
Hopefully Pennsylvania authorities find Punxsutawney Phil tits up too. Both blasphemers deserve an imposter's death.
There is only one groundhog weatherman, folks. His name is Buckeye Chuck; he resides in the City of Kings, and he sees his shadow every day thanks to his swollen testicles.
Consider this your eviction notice, Old Man Winter!
ICYMI:
- As foretold by the Lord of Whispers, four-star New Jersey DB Jordan Fuller committed to Ohio State on Monday night. (Here's what the Buckeyes are getting in him.)
- The women's team dropped Illinois in Champaigne, 80-70.
- Ohio State students ushered Afroduck into the eons with a Mirror Lake candlelight vigil.
GINN LOYALTY. Nobody here will be surprised if Ted Ginn Jr. runs off with the Super Bowl 50 MVP award after another jack-of-all-trades performance like he laid down against the Arizona Cardinals.
For Ohio State fans, it's easy to remember the good times with Ginn. Why wouldn't we? That's all he provided.
Yet he struggled during large swaths of his NFL career, and those struggles were compounded by his father's cancer diagnosis in 2012.
From si.com:
CHARLOTTE — The father and his namesake hit bottom together all at once. In the fall of 2012, the legendary Cleveland-area high school football coach Ted Ginn Sr. was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 57. The one-year survival rate? Twenty percent. He spent 65 days in the hospital, underwent six surgeries, suffered myriad infections and lost his spleen and half his pancreas.
[...]
Sundays were the worst. Ginn lay in the hospital bed and tried to follow the NFL career of his namesake, Ted Ginn Jr. Only there wasn’t much to follow. Not that season. Junior was in his sixth NFL campaign, his third with San Francisco, and it wasn’t working out. He played in 13 games that year, starting none, and caught only 32 passes. He scored no touchdowns for the first time in his career. Senior wasn’t only his dad. Senior was his coach. Senior was everybody’s coach.
Junior called every Sunday after his games ended. On some days, Senior was too weak to even speak. He’d have someone hold the phone to his ear, and he would listen to Junior vent. It nearly broke him. “All those days in the hospital, all I could think about was my kids, my players—and my son, and how I wanted him to be successful,” Senior told SI.com in a phone interview last week. “I could hear the hurt in his voice, and it hurt me. He went through that, and he didn’t have me to support him. That was the lowest point in his life and the lowest point in my life as well.”
Handing Jim Harbaugh a player like Ted Ginn is akin to handing a caveman a chemistry test, so it's no surprise Ginn suffered his worse professional year in the Bay.
It is, however, good to see the Ginns getting a chance to capstone their surreal comeback in the place where everything seemed to go wrong.
SMALLER BEAR ON THE RECOVERY TRAIL. Nick Bosa suffered an ACL injury in November. On Sunday, an ACC coach identified the five-star 2016 DE as a recruit who could, like his brother, make an impact as a freshman.
Will he be ready for camp? It will be "close," according to Nick's father, John.
From cleveland.com:
"The best part of the bad situation was, he tore his ACL and no other damage," John Bosa said. "No soft tissue damage. ACL these days, he'll be stronger than God made him. The things that hurt guys is the soft tissue, the meniscus, different things inside the knee that tend to get get damaged. The great thing about his injury, if you can say it that way, was that there was no other damage."
[...]
"He hasn't missed a day a day with the physical therapist three times a week, and he works the upper body three times a week. So he's doing great."
Between the Bosa DNA and Dr. James Andrews, I'm feeling confident about Ohio State's chances. Hopefully Lil Bosa and Jonathon Cooper become everything we thought Joey Bosa and Noah Spence would be.
A TIP OF THE CAP TO BIG BILL. Here's something about a Buckeye I did not know:
From osu.edu:
William “Big Bill” Bell was a standout tackle for the OSU football team, but his academic career off the field far outshone his performance on it.
Bell played for the Buckeyes from 1929 through 1931, and earned All Big Ten and Honorable Mention All-American honors his final season. But football wasn’t his only activity: He was a member, and Sergeant of Arms, for the African-American social fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, and he was a member of Varsity “O,” the Collegiate Council, and the Interracial Council.
[...]
After graduating in June 1932, Bell began a long career coaching football at historically African-American colleges, including Claflin College in South Carolina, Florida A&M University, Howard University and finally North Carolina A&T State University. Bell worked more than 20 years at North Carolina A&T in a number of capacities, including athletic director and professor of physical education. (Along the way, Bell received his master’s degree in physical education and his PhD in physical education from Ohio State, in 1937 and 1960, respectively.)
It turns out Bell was a part of an Ohio State team that wore winged helmets even before Michigan. He also looks like a guy who could contribute to the 2016 team after a winter under Mickey Marotti:
Cool photo, via OSU's IG, of William Bell c. 1931. Buckeyes had winged helmets four years before Michigan. pic.twitter.com/yAgUKtDmBq
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) February 1, 2016
ODEN WAIVED. Another chapter in Greg Oden's professional basketball odyssey is at an end. The Jiangsu Dragons cut him on Monday.
From blazersedge.com:
Greg Oden was cut today by the Jiangsu Dragons, his Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) team. Oden appeared in 25 games and averaged 13.6 points, 12.6 rebounds, and 2.0 blocks. The Dragons have two regular season games remaining but have been eliminated from playoff contention.
Oden got ~$1,000,000 to appear in 25 games, which ain't bad business for a guy mercilessly derided as a bust.
MAKES U THINK. Let's end today with a juxtaposition. Today's subject is recruiting tactics.
From espn.com:
“[Urban Meyer] is meticulous,” said Chuck Kyle, the coach at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland. “He’ll give you details about the young man’s game and where he needs to improve. That’s useful information for us.”
High praise from a pillar of Ohio high school football. Let's compare it to his rival up north:
“[Jim Harbaugh] is an extremely weird guy,” said four-star tackle Liam Eichenberg, who was pursued by all three of the Big Ten powers before choosing Notre Dame. “He couldn’t really hold a conversation. He just kept on talking about, ‘You’re so lucky to have this opportunity.’ I kind of felt like he was just talking to himself.”
Not much to do now but sit back and watch Harbaugh's weirdness corrode his reign. The Ann Arbor fallout will make Chernobyl look like a clean-up in Aisle 6.
THOSE WMDs. Larry Bird beans Bill Laimbeer with a basketball... Scott Glenn is a 75-year-old bad-ass... The history of Columbus' most famed lost restaurant—The Kahiki... Photos: Original Wendy's on East Broad... Bank tellers, with access to accounts, pose security risks.
