Participating in the Great Miami River Cleanup today. It'd be great if litterbugs learned some respect and heinous sloths stopped throwing old tires into one of Ohio's most prominent rivers.
ICYMI: Ohio State hosted its sixth annual Friday Night Lights. Though no #booms were immediately forthcoming (as of this writing), I'm told it'd be wise to stay vigilant for some today.
We also uncovered the silkiest autograph shark operating in Columbus:
Ah yes, the autograph seekers are still alive and well. Solid getup, though. pic.twitter.com/yyzcwyQlTp
— Tim Shoemaker (@TimShoemaker) July 22, 2017
Look, I get autograph sharks are extremely bad. But that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ensemble switches him to extremely good. I don't make the rules; folks, I just enforce them.
ICYMI:
- Preseason All-Big Ten.
- Sportsbook lists Greg Schiano at +1500 odds to replace Hugh Freeze at Ole Miss.
- Help put a life-size statue of Woody Hayes in his hometown of Newcomerstown, Ohio.
Buckeye athletics programming note: Ohio State alumni face Bradley alumni in the Sweet 16 of The Basketball Tournament at noon on ESPN.
Word of the Day: Lilt.
KISS OF DEATH? Good news, folks! Assorted Big Ten media picked the local team to win the 2017 Big Ten Championship over Wisconsin. Bad news, folks! The Buckeyes have never won the championship after being picked.
From cleveland.com's annual preseason poll:
The Buckeyes were predicted to win the Big Ten by 29 of our 38 voters from around the conference. Wisconsin and Penn State each received four votes, while Michigan earned one.
It's the third straight year and the fourth time in the last five years that the Buckeyes were the choice of this poll, which serves as the closest thing to an official Big Ten prediction since the league doesn't conduct its own balloting.
The Buckeyes have never won the Big Ten when this poll has picked them to do so. Tabbed the preseason favorites in 2013, 2015 and 2016, they saw Michigan State, Michigan State again and Penn State win the title those years. In 2014, the Buckeyes weren't the pick - and that year they did win.
My loyal readers know I'd prefer to see the battlin' Buckeyes ranked somewhere between 11 and 14 in preseason polls.
But as we know, that preseason target is an expectation at Ohio State, and thankfully past preseason polls have nothing to do with how this season plays out.
I do hope Ohio State plays literally anyone else in the championship game than Wisconsin. Not because they're intimidating or anything, but I'm tired of seeing the Badgers represent the West.
I'd like to see Kirk Ferentz earn his paycheck for once, but he plays Ohio State in the regular season unlike Wisconsin.
HORNY MILLIONAIRE WILL RETURN. In most professions, ordering hookers on your sex phone is a career-ending mistake. But there are only so many coaches with winning pedigree at the highest levels of college football.
And though Hugh Freeze may never be a head coach be again, he will not be blackballed from the sport.
From yahoo.com:
“Everyone in these situations,” [former Arizona State, UNLV and Washington athletic director Jim[ Livengood said. “They all coach again.” Livengood’s sentiment was echoed by multiple university officials and industry sources on Thursday night and Friday morning, with one notably laughing “of course he will” get hired again.
This column is not an endorsement of Freeze’s coaching future, but a reminder of the inevitability of it. College sports is a cold-blooded, zero-sum business that disguises its billions in television revenue with ideals like amateurism, student athletes and core values. In college athletics, winning accompanied by tabloid scandal trumps losing with grace. Breaking NCAA rules and dialing an escort, in the eyes of those who run college sports, is far better in the rear-view mirror than a sub-.500 record. To the victors, the scandals are a mere inconvenience. Only the coaches with losing records are dispatched to the used-car lots. Livengood maintained a simple reason for Freeze being a college head coach again: “Because he won.”
What's hilarious is Jim Tressel was blackballed from the sport over peanuts compared to Freeze's transgressions.
Not that I think Freeze deserves being blackballed for trading money for sex. It just makes Tressel's blackballing all the more ludicrous, which honestly I didn't think was possible at this point.
NFL OWNERS DON'T WANT TO PLAY EZEKIEL ELLIOTT. Dan Patrick reports NFL owners are lobbying Roger Goodell to keep the Cowboys' feet to the fire by suspending Ezekiel Elliott, because the NFL is a good organization and not a cartel of lizard people.
Via 11W member Hrobbs:
FYI: Patrick flubbed some details. Ezekiel Elliott wasn't accused of sexual assault, just regular assault. And that happened in July 2016, when he was a Dallas Cowboys draft pick gearing up for his rookie season.
As the illustrious Fatpants said, if owners are this pressed for disciplinary action, they're free to look at their own roster. Chances are they won't have to look hard.
THOSE WMDs. The brutal rise of El Mencho, Mexico's next-generation narco... Horror stories from the grossest apartments we ever lived in... These #teens make six-figures lip-synching for their summer job... The forgotten steroid trial that almost brought down Vince McMahon... #Teens recorded a drowning man and laughed, but face no charges.
