Eleven Warriors' full recap of the first installment of Big Ten Media Days is over here.
DAY 2, LET'S GO. The Big Ten's season-opening festivities continue in Chicago today, though podium addresses will begin much earlier in the day.
Here is BTN's schedule:
Press conference coverage resumes at 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday, July 26, when Lovie Smith (Illinois), Kevin Wilson (Indiana), Mark Dantonio (Michigan State), Paul Chryst (Wisconsin), DJ Durkin (Maryland), Kirk Ferentz (Iowa) and Urban Meyer (Ohio State) address the media. Delany follows the coaches, speaking at 11:20 a.m. ET.
BTN Live will return for a second-consecutive day, once again providing live coverage of the coaches and their students visiting the set from 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. ET.
That's some disrespekt to the jugular of Spartans head coach Mike D'Antoni, who is sandwiched between Kevin Wilson and Paul Chryst and before Urban Meyer, whom the reigning Big Ten champion beat last year in Columbus with a backup quarterback.
The 2016 conference title runs through East Lansing. It's all but confirmed by this scheduling snafu.
SPEAKING OF B1G CHAMPIONSHIPS. Though the Spartans won the 2015 Big Ten championship, Alabama dumped them like a busboy disposing of a stranger's leftovers at an area Waffle House.
So there's no guarantee the Big Ten champion will make the playoffs, especially since the conference is more fierce than years past.
From cleveland.com:
A year ago we told you a Big Ten on the upswing might not be the best thing for Ohio State. After years of pointing out how the lack of depth in the league was hurting the Buckeyes, this may have seemed hypocritical. But it was real.
[...]
A two-loss team didn't make the playoff in its first two years of existence.
In 2016, it's not hard to envision the Big Ten champ having two losses.
Ohio State will lose four games in 2016. But I'll play Devil's advocate because a guy like the Devil always needs advocates, right?
If Ohio State wins the conference with two losses, those losses will have happened earlier in the season and thus not be weighted the same as late-season losses. Plus, there's no way the committee and ESPN turn down a certified golden goose for a team like TCU.
Some fans might not like their team getting a playoff bid due to #branding. Not me, I pine for the glory days of watching Ohio State play games of consequence—by any means necessary.
HELLUVA JOURNEY, MATE. Eric Wallace last appeared in a Buckeye basketball uniform during the 2007-08 season, in which the freshman forward averaged 1.8 points and 1.3 rebounds in 15 appearances. Ohio State released Wallace from his scholarship that summer, and he finished his career at DePaul.
And after trying his hand in Aussie rules football, Wallace is trying to catch on with the Carolina Panthers, a team with no problem signing Buckeyes.
From landgrantholyland.com:
Former Ohio State basketball player Eric Wallace just made the jump to American football player after signing a deal with the Carolina Panthers to play tight end in the NFL. Wallace played basketball for Ohio State for one year, before finishing out his collegiate basketball playing career at DePaul. The Buckeye is headed back to his home state after signing a three-year deal as an undrafted rookie.
Following college ball, Wallace was considering over his options to play pro-basketball overseas, when he was introduced to Australian Rules Football. He went on to play three seasons in Australia, and only decided to try his hands in the NFL upon his return to the states in Nov. 2015.
[...]
His tenacity earned him a workout -- that he did the next day — where the 6’6, 260-pound basketball player ran a 4.6 second 40-yard dash. A few weeks later, the team brought Wallace back to work out for the other coaches and hours later signed the Buckeye to a deal just before the start of training camp. The team seems invested too, having cut receiver Kobi Hamilton to make room for Wallace on the 90-man roster.
Speaks to the athleticism involved in the NFL when an Aussie rules footballer and former D-1 college basketballer with a 4.6-second 40-yard dash is fighting for a roster spot. I would last maybe three snaps in that league, but only if those first two snaps resulted in false start penalties.
HELP A GOOD CAUSE. The unofficial 11W golf outing got canceled this year, but thanks to the efforts of our Matt Gutridge (or as we know him, Remy) you can still help support Down Syndrome Achieves by purchasing Ohio State swagger.
The full listing can be found over here as the deadline to purchase items has been extended to 11:45 p.m. ET Wednesday night.
RIP, WICHITA FOOTBALL. Wichita State recently studied its ability to resurrect its dormant football program. As it turns out, college football is an expensive endeavor. To confound the problem, throwing money at a program isn't enough to propel it to the upper echelons of the sport, which means it may be too late for any non-existent program to muscle its way to the big boy's table.
From footballscoop.com:
“If you have had a team for 100 years, and you have invested in it before the sport was this expensive, it often makes sense to keep it,” South Carolina sports management professor Mark Nagel said. “But starting one from nothing and hoping to get to the echelon of college football now, it’s probably too late.”
Added Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist: “There’s this idea, primarily coming from alumni and boosters, that you can put enough money into a team and turn it into a powerhouse success story. But that becomes more and more unrealistic with each passing year. It’s a fool’s errand, but people are crazy about football, so they keep trying.”
But in building the case against adding high-level football, Inside Higher Education argues its own test case. “The ancillary benefits of having a big fall sport on a college campus are very large,” Wichita State AD Darron Boatright said. Football gives an entire community a reason to come on campus, to see your logo, to pay attention to your school in September, October and November. It’s an opportunity for the alumni association, the president’s office and the chemistry department to woo donors and make friends, benefitting the university in ways that will never, ever show up on the actual football program’s balance sheet.
Even if the Shockers football program remains dead, at least their fans got to gaze upon these silky concept helmets:
THOSE WMDs. Daenerys Targaryen: Pizza Queen... When I became the story... The Turkey coup plotters' group text... Dad does kindly thing for son... Ken Griffey Jr. scouting report.
