My new vision isn't just franchising a food truck for my driveway. It's making the food truck my entire house.
ICYMI:
- Athlon ranked the Buckeyes No. 2 and put J.T. Barrett on its Big Ten Preview cover for the second-year running.
- Ohio State unveiled high-quality renderings of its future Athletics District.
- Only Sam Hubbard's high school coach saw the defensive end's rise coming.
- Better Know a Buckeye: Four-star LB Pete Werner.
- The first ever Film Study Q&A.
- The New York Jets waived 2015 second-round pick Devin Smith.
- Help put a life-size statue of Woody Hayes in his hometown of Newcomerstown, Ohio.
Word of the Day: Torpor.
IT SWITCHED. I'm old enough to remember when the Big Ten was considered the worst football conference ever assembled. It was never that bad, but it wasn't great either. (Tremors about the Florida and LSU championship losses still find me in the deepest abysses of sleep.)
Thankfully, it switched. And that transformation started when Ohio State plucked Urban Meyer out of an ESPN studio in November 2011. Monday at a golf charity outing in Chicago, Meyer reflected on how far the conference has come.
From csnchicago.com:
"It's night and day what it was," Meyer told CSN's Pat Boyle at Monday's Golf.Give.Gala in St. Charles, hosted by Michael Phelps and Jason Day. "And I was actually shocked at the disrespect and the lack of respect that the Big Ten had. I never looked at that. I grew up here.
"There's a lot of reasons why that's happened. The schools have hired very good coaches, the recruiting is off the chart now compared to the way it used to be. There's a lot of credit. And you better show up every week now, and it wasn't that way when I first got there in 2012."
I love Meyer's everyday syntax. "I never looked at that." Pretty sure that's fluff because you can't tell me he didn't tour the Big Ten as a media member in 2011 and see a hapless Michigan, a sanctioned Penn State, and an Ohio State with an interim coach and not see a gold-bricked path to a national championship in front of him.
And other conference schools (without College Football Playoff trophies) can thump their chests in tribal pride but never forget Meyer's "SEC-like" recruiting tactics rankled coaches when he first arrived.
SPRINKLE SPOT SALT ON MY SOUL. It's been six months and schadenfreude of Michigan spot salt has yet to show signs of diminishing returns like every other drug should show after a six-month bender.
Famous swimmer/pot enthusiast Michael Phelps, a Michigan Man, hosted the aforementioned charity golf outing with PGA golfer and Westerville resident Jason Day.
"We got screwed," Phelps told ESPN's Adam Rittenberg.
Sure, he said it in a joking manner. Yet we all know the pain of defeat that trickled down his spine when he said it. Not even 7 gold medals can assuage that. (That sound you hear is definitely not me cackling like a supervillain from my subterranean lair under the Miami River.)
INTERNS DETAIL FANCY NEW JOB. Meyer makes it clear in his program: If you handle business on and off the field, you will be rewarded with perks like internships at corporations like Nike and Goldman Sachs. This applies to everyone from the All-American quarterback to long snappers and walk-ons.
Two Zone-6 compatriots, Parris Campbell and Terry McLaurin, will spend time interning for ESPN and Nike this summer.
From scout.com:
The H-back added that he will only be at ESPN for a couple of days because of summer workouts and classes. McLaurin, meanwhile, is aiming to be in Beaverton, Ore., where Nike is headquartered, for The Nike Opening Finals, which will be held June 28-July 3.
“I’m looking at possibly going around The Opening time,” McLaurin explained. “Helping out with that camp and just getting some experience how Nike works through high schools and through their company. It’s a really good experience for myself and something that I possibly want to do with personal relations or coaching. There’s a lot of opportunities that (Ohio State head coach Urban) Meyer and his staff make available for us. We just try to take advantage of those.”
The behind-the-scenes competition between apparel companies for the attention of high school athletes alternates between fascinating and creepiness depending on my mental health that day.
CIGS: STILL NOT HEALTHY. You might be one of the last people on Earth who smoke a cigarette and think "This is healthy." Ohio State researchers are here to show why you're wrong.
From dispatch.com:
Ohio State University researchers are urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start the formal process to regulate and possibly ban so-called light cigarettes.
The team, including lung cancer, public health and tobacco regulation researchers, did an analysis of existing literature that “included chemistry and toxicology studies, human clinical trials and epidemiological studies of both smoking behavior and cancer risk,” according to the university.
Today’s cigarettes are more dangerous than they were 40 years ago because cigarette makers add more holes in cigarette filters, said Dr. Peter Shields, deputy director of the university’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. The ventilation holes in the cigarette mix the air with smoke.
Ah, the classic American trick of looking at something and saying, "Well, it's not the worst poison I could put into my body, which actually makes it a healthy option."
I do that with guacamole. It has avocado, the lifeblood of the Millennial people, in it. That makes it part of a balanced breakfast.
HAVE YOU SEEN ZIPPY? Some idiot, who will probably soon be apprehended by Akron University security, apparently stole two of the school's kangaroo mascot costumes.
From fox8.com:
On Thursday, a staffer from the Alumni Association’s event staff contacted university police to report that two Zippy the Mascot kangaroo costumes were missing.
The staffer noticed they were where they should have been and contacted all of the school’s student mascots. When none of them had the costumes, a report was made to the police.
Zippy costumes do not come cheap: their cost is $2,500 each.
What are you in here for?
"I'm the guy that got drunk and stole two kangaroo costumes."
THOSE WMDs. The secret life of urban crows... The Higgins Boat: Wood, steel, and purpose... Alone on the road: Truckers feel like throwaway people... Habitual sub eater may move lunch spot because of Tonawanda resident's gripe... A place where something evil happened.
