Skull Session: Urban Meyer Dumps Notre Dame (Again), Gene Smith on Early Signing, and More Oklahoma–B1G Smoke

Only 106 more days until Ohio State kicks off its 2017 season in Bloomington, Indiana, against the Hoosiers.

Memo to the #business tycoons: I opened my email for the first time since 2013 yesterday and will shove a messenger pigeon into a fax machine by the end of the week.

Thanks to everyone who reached out, even the guy who only wrote "deez nuts."

ICYMI:

• Four-star Toledo LB Dallas Gant committed to Ohio State.
• In Gant, the Buckeyes landed one of the most aggressive and physically mature tacklers in the country.
• Ohio State supplants Penn State for the No. 1 spot in Big Ten 2018 recruiting rankings.
• An autopsy of Ohio State's 2015 football and basketball recruiting classes.
• Incoming students don't remember when Ohio State was bad at football.
• Help put a life-size statue of Woody Hayes in his hometown of Newcomerstown, Ohio.

Word of the Day: Roustabout. 

 GET DUMPED THEN, NOTRE DAME. Here's my favorite thing about the commitment of four-star Toledo St. John's linebacker Dallas Gant: Urban Meyer dumped Notre Dame, again.

I had lost count. Thankfully some downtrodden Irish fans (repetitive, I know) kept score for us too lazy to look at the scoreboard.

From SB Nation's Notre Dame site, onefootdown.com:

In 2008, the Journal of Sports Economics published a study that suggested a recruit’s decision on where to attend college is “governed by a handful of primary factors” including “the opportunity for individual success and exposure, a team’s recent on-field success and the distance to the school from his hometown.”

Meyer is 61-6 since being announced as Ohio State’s coach on Nov. 28, 2011. Brian Kelly is 43-22 during that same time period.

There are 53 players who were offered scholarships by Notre Dame and ultimately signed with Ohio State since Meyer’s hiring. In addition, there are four athletes in the class of 2018 who have committed to the Buckeyes despite having an Irish offer.

Yes, yes, yes. Don't forget about poaching Ed Warinner, Tim Hinton, and Tony Alford as well.

One thing I love about the Notre Dame–Ohio State "rivalry" is the Irish have nothing to trash talk us about other than "academics" ... whatever those are. They better buckle up, too, because each recruiting class gets farther away from the Irish's last national title, which even I, a 30-year-old, don't remember.

Notre Dame hasn't beaten Ohio State since the Great Depression. To top it off, Ohio State's coach, who once saw Notre Dame as his dream job, has already won a national championship and lampooned Brian Kelly in the only 2016 Fiesta Bowl I recognize.

Fun aside: On the eve of the 2012 title game, my friend bet an Irish fan $1,000 on the fabled floor of the OK Café in Marion that Notre Dame wouldn't win a title in the next 10 years. After the 2016 Fiesta Bowl, the Irish fan blocked my friend, who swears he will one day sue for payment in $2 bills.

Notre Dame is over and will never win another title. Feel free to put that on my tombstone, despite my epitaph growing longer with every post.

 EARLY SIGNING: GOOD OR BAD? The college commissioners approved an early signing period last week. Is it good or bad? It's tough to say; I see both sides.

Gene Smith, however, disagrees with the move. He elaborated why during a meeting of Big Ten athletic directors at conference headquarters in Illinois.

From yahoo.com:

“We really feel that young kids today are pressured into making a lot of decisions early, and we’re part of that,” Smith said. “I really watched our culture change so much, and I’ve seen it in basketball and now it’s reversing in basketball but I really like the timeframe for a young person to make their decision, to be firm in it. We’ve had kids, and we all use the term ‘flipping,’ in February and January, and so I’m a little old school on that, so I always felt that was the appropriate time — season’s over, you might be playing basketball, whatever, get your time to make your visits and go.

“But the data shows that there’s a lot of kids who made early decisions and they stayed true to those. That was my opinion on it but the larger majority rules the day and we move on.”

Smith likens the rules change to that of the Olympic sports, saying he has visitors in his office now who are too young to even have their drivers’ licenses.

I see Smith's point. HOWEVER, I also like the idea of an early signing period allowing these recruits to see the true weight of their offer.

This measure, unfortunately, won't be enough to stop the recruiting race to the bottom, which ends with Lane Kiffin camping out maternity wards throughout the Southeast before getting shot with a hunting rifle by an enraged father who thinks his wife got back on Tinder.

 MORE SOONER PLUMES. How excited are you guys to talk about conference expansion again? Every day I wake up and type "conference realignment rumors also i would like to die" into google.

WE GOT A LIVE ONE TODAY, Y'ALL. YEEEEEHAW.

From omaha.com:

But as much as I’ve tried to dismiss the idea as the impossible dream in the past, [Oklahoma University president David] Boren kept referencing the Big Ten.

He predicted the next wave of realignment would come when the major conference TV deals expire — beginning, he said, in four or five years. The Big Ten’s deal runs through 2022-23.

He also praised the Big Ten and Pac-12 as deserving of their “stature in the academic community.” He said the fact that Oklahoma is not a member of the Association of American Universities would not keep OU out of the Big Ten.

Let's just fast forward to when America has three college football super leagues and out-of-conference games are handled on a rotational basis so we no longer have to sit through Ohio State bludgeoning Bowling Green for the 26th time.

 SOME MORE INTERNS. Long snapper Liam McCullough and walk-on senior cornerback Trevon Forte are interning with Goldman Sachs in New York City:

Looks like @TgiForte & @LiamMcCullough2 aren't having too tough a time at their Goldman Sachs internship in NYC... pic.twitter.com/t3uBVRLfvf

— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) May 16, 2017

Take it from the big boy blogger: the business world looks down on the short-sleeved dress shirt. The true power move is showing up in sweats and smirking at people who spend thousands of their own dollars on work uniforms. If there's one thing people in expensive suits hate, it's being smirked at.

 THOSE WMDs. Dad's life behind a bar... A letter my mother will never see... 29 dishes for new parents... Cuba's crazy used car market... Was the Olentangy River moved for Route 315?