We begin this sacred Friday for America's gentle laborers with an important message from the world's No. 1 local fan, Buck-I-Guy, and former Ohio State and United States Marine heavyweight wrestler George Pardos (left):
Suicide Prevention Hotline pic.twitter.com/JBBqqnro6n
— Buck I Guy (@RealBuckiGuy1) May 25, 2017
To anybody struggling with their mental health: You're not alone and somebody cares about you.
ICYMI:
- The local team opens its 2017 season at 8 p.m. on ESPN against Indiana and 7:30 p.m. on ABC against Oklahoma.
- Ohio State hit the paintball park.
- Four-star safety Josh Proctor became the sixth 2018 Buckeye commit to earn an invite to The Opening.
- Olentangy Orange's Zach Harrison is a top 2019 prospect, and it's easy to see why.
- Five Stings: The five most crushing defeats in the last 25 years.
- Help put a life-size statue of Woody Hayes in his hometown of Newcomerstown, Ohio.
Word of the Day: Munificent.
MEYER ON EARLY SIGNING. Urban Meyer went out of his way last year to inform folks how much he despised the idea of an early signing period. Proving nobody runs everything, the NCAA enacted an early signing period earlier this month.
Meyer will adapt his strategies—as he always does. He has another area of criticism. Despite living in an era of exploding salaries, he wants to know when coaches can spend time with their families.
From cleveland.com:
"When does a coach -- this may not be important to some people, but it's very important to me -- when does a coach get to go watch his daughter play softball?
"I want our coaches to go see their families. I want our coaches get reinvigorated, refreshed. That's why I am seeing some of these people make decisions who have never recruited before and I'm very alarmed by that."
Thank you to Meyer for standing up for the little man.
I know nobody cares about bloggers... but these night games are getting a little out of hand! Sure, I remember the days as an amateur fan, when I could stand in a parking lot for 12 hours and drink Lady Bligh out of a purple thermos with a bendy straw. Back in those days, a night game used to sound like a grand social occasion.
[Hold on, I need to fire the intern who just tried to interrupt me.]
But when are bloggers supposed to mingle with our cats? When do I get to go on a bender in a parking lot? Society calls it alcoholism if you do it on a Tuesday.
When Meyer retires, they should make him the sport's czar to bring reforms people don't yet know they need.
NO PLATOON, THANKFULLY. Generation Z isn't old enough to remember #QBgeddon when Ohio State's quarterback situation switched from good to bad seemingly overnight. They were dark times indeed.
This year, there will be no competition for J.T. Barrett's starting spot. But given Urban Meyer's precarious historical record with quarterback health, it's fair to wonder how Joe Burrow or Dwayne Haskins — whomever Kevin Wilson crowns this fall — could be used to supplement Barrett's load.
From theozone.net:
Admittedly, the quarterback rotation in 2015 didn't work, but that was because there was no hierarchy. There wasn't an established starter like there is now.
Provided he is playing well, there would be no reason for Barrett to look over his shoulder or for Burrow or Haskins to try and be something they are not.
So could we see more than one quarterback this season? I asked new Ohio State offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson that very question this spring.
"I don’t know, that’s kind of hard," he told me. "I haven’t talked to Coach (Meyer) about that. In my opinion, sometimes you get out of rhythm. I have dealt in previous years where one guy could run and one guy couldn’t. One guy could throw, one guy couldn’t. J.T.’s pretty well rounded, and those guys are too."
Hopefully, Wilson is around to carry this philosophy into 2018 when #QBgeddon2 makes its expected impact in Columbus.
BUYER'S REGRET. Imagine a world where Jim Delany has cashed out his millions and sits on a Hawaii beach drinking alcohol from coconuts. A statue of him stands outside Big Ten headquarters for having the vision to scoop up Maryland and Rutgers for their valuable East Coast market just in time for the explosion of television contracts.
Delany will see himself as a winner. (Not hard at all to imagine, right?)
But as history shows us, bubbles never last. With television audiences constantly shrinking, it's just as easy to envision a time when networks no longer shell out billions of dollars to broadcast a regional sport nationwide.
In that case, Rutgers and Maryland would not be worth their membership.
From awfulannouncing.com:
We’ve reached the point where outrageous live sports rights figures will diminish. It’s hard to see ESPN or FOX shelling out stupid money for college football today, much less in five or six years. The Big Ten negotiating a shorter TV deal to hasten the next round of negotiations no longer looks like a masterstroke.
A Big Ten Network reliant on active subscribers and ad revenue may not be viable in its present form. The network’s best bet would be bundling with Fox News (median age viewer: 68) for the future, which may not be a long-term strategy.
[...]
We could see a model where the ten best Big Ten football games per season are on Amazon Prime. The Big Ten is streaming the rest of its football package and almost all of regular season college basketball on its own.
Cable subscribers no longer matter in that scenario. Fans who watch do, the very fans the Big Ten blithely disregarded. Rutgers and Maryland become dead weight.
What would this ultimately do to Delany's legacy? All I know is he wouldn't care. Not that I blame him. If somebody bonused me $20 million I wouldn't show up to work Monday (not that I'm a lock to show up any Monday).
FICKELL NEEDS MORE THAN A FEW GOOD MEN. Luke Fickell replaced a professional grifter in Tommy Tuberville at Cincinnati. He could make excuses as he inherits a roster of players he didn't recruit.
But that's not Fickell's way. He thinks he has the tools to win now. It's going to take more than that to reach their goals, though.
From daytondailynews.com:
“We’ve had six months now, and there are a lot of things that have come together, but we haven’t had a true test just yet,” Fickell said Monday night during a visit to the Miami Valley to speak at the Agonis Club awards banquet in Kettering. “That’s what the season kind of brings for us. We’ve got a base here, we’re into summer and then fall camp, but our whole objective is to build a team.”
For that, he has a plan that sounds like it could have come straight from his last boss, Ohio State coach Urban Meyer.
“We know we’ve got players,” Fickell said. “We can win games with players, but it takes a team to win a championship and that’s what our objective is going to be.”
I'll be shocked if Fickell doesn't make his stamp on the American Athletic Conference much like his former counterpart, the MENSA-founding Tom Herman, did in two years at Houston.
The good news is a Power 5 team will Godfather him before he can build the Bearcats into a perennial nuisance of Ohio State. Hell, it might be OSU that hires him away.
Regardless, let's just hope we don't start seeing those awful bUCkeye state shirts we saw a couple years back before Tim Tebow eternally damned them in the 2010 Sugar Bowl.
STEELER ATTEMPTS TO REDEEM SOUL. When judgment day comes for former Michigan State and current Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell, he must account for his local heresy and demonic affiliations.
I'm not sure a soul comes back from that. It's still good to see Bell trying to atone by donating $750K to Groveport Madison:
Congrats to Groveport grad & Steelers RB Le'Veon Bell. He's donated $750K to his alma mater for new field turf in time for this season. pic.twitter.com/WbVMunnoLU
— Jerod Smalley (@JerodNBC4) May 24, 2017
THAT'S SWEET, BUCKY. Camp Randall, the most iconic stadium in the country (non-Horseshoe division), turns 100 this year.
As such, Wisconsin is doing a cool promotion featuring throwback tickets:
As part of the #CampRandall100 celebration, each @BadgerFootball home game will feature a retro-themed ticket.
— Wisconsin Badgers (@UWBadgers) May 24, 2017
https://t.co/3Yal4wErzn pic.twitter.com/Sp8zZnrRMz
If historical football things are up your alley, the Ohio State Archives has albums of program covers dating back to the 1910s on its Flickr, which is a great way to the three hours to the lunch hour when we all log off for the weekend.
THOSE WMDs. Richard Sherman won't let go, and it's a problem... The exquisitely English (and amazingly lucrative) world of London clerks... Quitting the paint factory... 51 spectacular images of our world... Germany's outdoor preschools... Norman Lear: Comedy Godfather.
