Ohio State released its 2016 fall camp schedule yesterday — full details here — and I can confirm the rumors are true: Buckeye football is almost upon us. The vigil for enemies of the state is scheduled for Friday night outside the Shoe. I won't be in attendance because I don't give a damn about Ohio State's enemies, long may they rot.
URBAN KEEPS IT 100. Urban Meyer is a man almost without professional peer. Despite his legendary dominance, he is still a fallible man.
But while everyone makes mistakes, not everyone admits to them. Meyer wouldn't be as successful a leader if he shirked errant judgments.
From cleveland.com:
Everyone knew it didn't work because Meyer finally changed it after the Michigan State loss, and the Buckeyes averaged 43 points and 489 yards in season-ending wins over Michigan and Notre Dame, two top 10 teams.
Now Meyer has admitted he got it wrong.
He had Warinner on the sidelines calling plays for 10 games, with Beck up in the coaches box as a co-coordinator. Beck assumed greater play calling duties at one point. But the move to put the full-time play caller upstairs, as Tom Herman had been for three years, is what finally fixed things.
"That was one of the mistakes I probably made a year ago," Meyer said at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago last week.
Fans want heads to roll in press conferences after games like Michigan State. We will never get that from Meyer because that only happens to coaches pushed past their breaking point.
Meyer gets more candid the further he gets from a season, and I like that. For example, he admitted he knew Ohio State would lose to Michigan State in the 2013 Big Ten championship because the Buckeyes weren't nine units strong entering that game.
Meyer wouldn't have gotten this far in the coaching game if he weren't adept at adapting to your mistakes. So it's relieving to know if Ohio State's offense implodes again, it will be due to a different root cause.
HELLRAISER. Ohio State lost Joey Bosa, one of the most talented defensive ends in school history, and 76% of polled 11W readers are more concerned about replacing Ezekiel Elliott.
Sam Hubbard is one reason Ohio State fans are confident Bosa's production can be matched. The former lacrosse player has fans outside Buckeye Kingdom, too.
From 247sports.com:
After we released our preseason College Top247 on Monday, I got a text from a contact within an NFL personnel department. One of his observations:
"Sam Hubbard is gonna be a problem in the Big Ten."
That's the edited version. There was an expletive thrown in there for emphasis.
If you're looking for a breakout star for the Buckeyes, you've got a lot of options. Hubbard is as good of a candidate as anyone, though. A 6-foot-5 safety in high school, there's a lot of athleticism stuffed into what is now a 265-pound frame lining up at defensive end.
While Michigan fans are talking themselves into the recruiting impact of a basketball player's logo on a football jersey, consider this: Sam Hubbard has yet to play beyond backup minutes for Ohio State, and he's already on the radar of an NFL personnel department.
That's remarkable, and it speaks for everybody from Meyer to Hubbard and every recruiting staffer and assistant coach in between.
ONE WAY TO GET A MAN TO BRAZIL. Judging by my Twitter timeline, the 2016 Summer Olympics should be canceled. Australia got robbed during a fire evacuation, #teen gangs are mugging tourists, an expert told athletes not to put their heads under water, reporters are hungry and cranky, and the Olympic Village is falling apart so bad United States Basketball charted a yacht to house its athletes.
So why might a guy like Ohio State heavyweight wrestler Kyle Snyder even risk it? Well, it turns out Olympic glory comes with a nice check.
From usatoday.com:
In addition to $50,000 for winning a world championship in September, USA Wrestling has been giving Snyder $1,000 a month to cover training expenses — both without running afoul of NCAA rules.
“We dot the I’s and cross the T’s,” said USA Wrestling national teams high performance manager Cody Bickley, who added that his organization discussed Snyder’s situation with members of Ohio State’s athletics compliance office and a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee staff. “You don’t just write an NCAA athlete a check. They have questions on how it works. We made sure that Ohio State understands what the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic Committee has offered up.”
[...]
Ohio State’s Snyder — the youngest world champion in American wrestling history — will be at the Games, and as with any U.S. wrestler, a gold medal will bring him a total of $250,000 from USA Wrestling and the USOC, a silver $50,000 and a bronze $25,000.
Seems reasonable to me, though now I'm concerned about those college football fans who say paid players would ruin the "purity" of the sport. They will sit down expecting to watch an amateur contest, but real money is at stake! Let's hope their families aren't around when their brains explode.
ZEKE INJURED. Last month, I fretted about the Dallas Cowboys running Ezekiel Elliott's body into the ground.
Yesterday, this:
Ezekiel Elliott is dealing with a hamstring issue. Cowboys VP Stephen Jones told reporters that the rookie RB will miss some time
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) August 3, 2016
Elliott will reportedly sit out a week, which if true shouldn't deter anyone from drafting him No. 1 overall in computer football.
HERMAN'S KEYS TO SUCCESS. Here's a thing I didn't know: Tom Herman founded MENSA, the organization for geniuses, in 1947.
Given the simplicity to his four keys to success, it's easy to why he's a certified genius.
From sbnation.com:
- Play great defense
"That is everybody on the team. Offense, your job is to go out, take the ball, protect the football, make two first downs and then we’ll jog out the best punt team in America. We’ll punt it, 44-yard net punt, we’ll jog out the best defense in America, hold ‘em to three-and-out and flip the field and go do it again. You can’t win championships without playing great defense."
- Win the kicking game
"We need to be dominant in the field position battles, basically."
- Win the turnover battle
"If you win the turnover battle, you’re gonna win more than you lose — and quite a bit more than you lose."
- Score touchdowns in the redzone
"We don’t kick field goals. We go for it on fourth down a bunch in the red zone, because the stats’ll tell you that the chance to get seven is worth the reward of just three, especially when you’ve got a good defense."
If those quotes were read to me blind, I would think Urban Meyer had stumbled into a radio interview.
That Houston–Ohio State playoff tilt will be like looking into a mirror. While Meyer may lack the MENSA credential, at least he'll have better players.
THOSE WMDs. My girlfriend's boss encroached on our relationship... Five years after the tsunami, a husband searches the sea for his wife... The many lives of Satoshi Nakamoto... The rise and fall of Savannah... Do your neighbors think you're running a marijuana grow-op?
