Prayers to the 11 victims of yesterday's cowardly attack on campus. While they're fortunate to be alive, months (years?) of physical therapy and a lifetime of psychological ramifications could be ahead. It helps knowing the Ohio State community will offer them every tool they can.
But shoutout to Columbus and Ohio law enforcement and first-responders.
And special shoutout to Ohio State police officer Alan Horujko for neutralizing the threat in under a minute.
The @OSUPolice confirm Officer Alan Horujko shot and killed the suspect, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, Monday morning. pic.twitter.com/6BuZ9GN1zY
— OSU Police (@OSUPOLICE) November 28, 2016
He should absolutely dot the 'i' at the next Ohio State game. And may he also suffer no psychological ramifications from taking a life, no matter how garbage.
We now return to your locally scheduled #content.
SAY WHAT? Malik Hooker said Monday, "right now" he's "100% sure" coming back to Ohio State.
Right now, I'm 100% committed to eating a healthy lunch at home. However, that will probably change when I open my fridge and only see three Hoptical Illusions and extra chunky peanut butter.
What if Malik Hooker wins the Thorpe Award and a national title? What would there be left for him to prove at the collegiate level?
He'll probably take a step closer to his destiny later today when the Big Ten names him the Defensive Player of the Year.
From espn.com:
Austin Ward: The standout redshirt sophomore came into the season without any previous starting experience, and therefore no hype or name recognition. That seems to have hurt him in the national awards race, but anybody paying attention would know that no defender in the Big Ten has had a greater impact from start to finish.
Josh Moyer: He’s been a consistent force all season, and he set a program record with three interceptions returned for touchdowns this season. Said defensive coordinator Greg Schiano: “He’s got the potential to be as good as anyone I’ve ever coached -- and I’ve coached Ed Reed.”
Jesse Temple: This one is simple. Hooker tallied more interceptions than any other Big Ten player (six) and more interception returns for touchdowns than anybody else in the league (three). He registered a huge pick-six in Ohio State's win against Michigan, which has positioned the Buckeyes for a potential playoff spot.
Hooker returning would be like finding $100 in a pair of jeans you wore six inches ago.
But I'm not banking on it. King of Castle will get a first-round draft grade and see the potential millions of dollars sitting on the table. Football is too brutal of a sport to risk another year before starting his professional clock. My default setting on matters like this: Go get that money.
WHY URBAN MEYER WENT FOR IT. Urban Meyer faced a choice in the second overtime: Kick a field goal and potentially send the game into the third overtime or put the ball in J.T. Barrett's hands.
As it turns out, it wasn't a hard decision to make.
From 247sports.com:
“My AD at Florida actually used to always tell me, he said, ‘If you can't get that far, you're not a championship team,’” Meyer said. “We used to talk about that all the time, and I agree with him. So that actually crossed my mind – if you can't get that we're not a championship team anyway.”
The Scarlet and Gray had already missed field goals of 37 and 22 yards in the game. Meyer knew he was going against one of the country’s best defenses, which contained Ohio State for much of the day, but Meyer had J.T. Barrett, who he’s always said he trusts in clutch situations.
And there's the difference between Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh. When presented with an opportunity to go for the throat, Meyer took it. One play later, his team won the game.
Harbaugh failed to go for two after scoring a touchdown in the first overtime. If Michigan were a championship team, it would've gotten two more yards and won the game.
I think OSU loses if UM goes for two there. But thankfully we'll never know.
TECHNOLOGY IS GOOD, ACTUALLY. FIFA embraced goal-line technology and never looked back. I fail to see why football can't make a similar move and thus eliminate human error from spotting the ball.
from forbes.com:
That said, we will never know if The Spot was right or wrong. Why? Because we are human. Our eyes do not compare with Bald Eagles. But we do have brains. Our brains make machines, create algorithms and computers that enhance our ability to get it right. We’ve made computer chips. We’ve made satellites, put them in the clouds, and created our own electronic storage units in “the cloud”.
So someone tell me why we cannot embed a chip in a football to be stored in the cloud. If I am lost around Butte Montana, and my GPS can keep me from a wrong turn that takes me over the cliff, why can’t we triangulate the yard markers with a chipped football to give precision to a spot? Police already use technology to triangulate and record high crime areas. They have created algorithms to predict and match personnel with those areas. I have to believe the technology exists to experiment with ball marking. We will probably be more precise than our than the driverless cars currently on the road.
Mgoblog.com used fancy math and concluded J.T. Barrett, in all mathematical likelihood, made the first down by one or two inches. (This hasn't stopped credentialed Michigan outlets trying to organize a Big Ten boycott.)
Although Westworld made me think about this harder than in the past, we should still get humans out of the refereeing business as soon as possible. That poor crew from Saturday probably split a couple thousand bucks and now they're wondering if they need to put their kids into witness protection.
TOUCHÉ, TACO. Here's how much Saturday's loss singed Harbaugh's soul: He couldn't bother with his weekly press conference.
Jake Butt and Taco Charlton will be the representatives on the U-M radio show tonight, sitting in for Harbaugh.
— Mark Snyder (@Mark__Snyder) November 29, 2016
Urban Meyer signed Adolphus Washington and Noah Spence in his 2012 class and Joey Bosa, Tyquan Lewis, and Tracy Sprinkle in his 2013 class.
Though Washington and Sprinkle moved inside, that's still quite the defensive end haul. It also meant four-star Pickerington, Ohio DE Taco Charlton went unoffered.
He was Michigan's best defender on Saturday, and he harnessed extra motivation to do so:
Charlton said he was motivated to show OSU why they should have offered him
— Mark Snyder (@Mark__Snyder) November 29, 2016
When I'm President, I'll issue an executive order decreeing Ohio kids no longer count against Ohio State's 85 scholarship limit.
TEXAS TOM CASHES OUT. Well, folks, it happened. The founder of MENSA is on to his next challenge. Texas presents its own set of challenges (like dealing with a powerful booster syndicate) but it's easy to see why he made the leap.
From sbnation.com:
Herman is a dynamic recruiter, and specifically in the city of Houston, which is not necessarily traditional Longhorns’ territory, as it is just 100 miles from Texas A&M. Houston has some elite-level prospects considering Texas this year, including defensive tackle Marvin Wilson, offensive tackle Walker Little, and defensive end K’Lavon Chaisson. Texas’ only national championship since 1970 came when it was recruiting the Houston area well, most notably in signing QB Vince Young.
Herman is getting a pretty sweet gig from a talent and recruiting standpoint. And what’s more, the new guy will be able to put that talent to use against the least talented competition of any Power 5 league. It’s likely he’ll be able to do what Charlie Strong could not: win.
Strong lost 21 games in three years. I’d be shocked if Herman doesn’t cut that in half in his first three.
Also: Money. The money and perks Texas threw at Herman would bankrupt Houston.
Which, go get the money. But I wonder what he said to five-star DT Ed Oliver during his recruitment? Or about the brotherhood he preached whenever reporters were around? It probably wasn't "I'll be gone in two years."
A big thing college football needs to fix is how players have to sit out a year or drop a division when coaches can disappear in the dead of night for the first bag of money they hear jingling over yonder hills.
If a coach leaves, players he recruited should be allowed to leave too.
THOSE WMDs. How Ohio campuses respond to active shooters... Oakland Army vet earns Horizon League honor... How a grad student found spyware that could control anybody's iPhone from anywhere in the world... When facing predators, male monkeys do whatever females tell them... Two rooms, 300 kittens... Finding the real Rasputin... Free rides for all.
