In case you missed it, last night's NFL game was basically just an advertisement for Ohio State football.
Lots of former Ohio State players in tonight's NFL game:
— Dan Hope (@Dan_Hope) November 30, 2018
Saints Michael Thomas, Marshon Lattimore, Eli Apple, Vonn Bell, Kurt Coleman
Cowboys Ezekiel Elliott, Rod Smith, Noah Brown
ICYMI
- Parris Campbell went from a freshman dropping a crucial touchdown pass to a senior burying Michigan.
- Ohio State's destruction of Michigan was Fox's most-watched regular season college football game ever.
- Dwayne Haskins named a finalist for this year's Manning Award.
- House Money: Our picks against the spread.
- Mid-Week Notebook: Looking for a repeat slob performance, Ryan Day coaching rumors and K.J. Hills fantastic special teams jacket.
- Northwestern Q&A with Davis Rich
- Five things to know about Northwestern
Word of the Day: Execrable.
SCOUTING THE B1G. The regular season is over, which means we're pretty much in the thick of draft season now – as if it ever stops for the folks that relish it.
Here's an excellent Big Ten regular season postmortem analysis of some of the conference's top prospects, from Kyle Crabbs of The Draft Network:
5 BEST DEVELOPMENTAL PROSPECTS
1. Parris Campbell, WR, Ohio State
If you can teach Parris Campbell how to run his routes with speed at the top of his routes, look out. Campbell is still limited as a route runner but he’s an explosive athlete in the open field and a big play waiting to happen with the ball in his hands.
5 PROSPECTS I STILL QUESTION
2. Dre’Mont Jones, DL, Ohio State
Can Dre’Mont play the run? I haven’t seen it yet. And too many plays end with Jones blown 5-yards off the football, which concerns me as well. He’s a splash defender but I’d very much prefer a more well-rounded skillset to prevent liabilities against the run.
...
5. Isaiah Prince, OT, Ohio State
Prince is an experienced player who seems to struggle with the fundamentals and techniques of his position. He’s a promising functional athlete but his polish is nowhere near where it needs to be if he’s going to stick at the NFL. Can he learn technique?
5 BIGGEST SLEEPERS
1. Robert Landers, DT, Ohio State
*Whispers* Landers is the best defensive tackle on the Buckeyes roster this year. Yeah, he’s a little stocky…but he stacks up blocks great and has shown an ability to play into gaps.
...
3. Mike Weber, RB, Ohio State
Shadowed by a younger running back in J.K. Dobbins, Weber is flying under the radar after finally looking like his old self from 2016. Weber can be a valuable member of an NFL running back stable going forward, I don’t question that for one second.
You can't really write a Big Ten NFL scouting article that doesn't include quite a few Buckeyes, so there's a lot more than that.
Crabb has Nick Bosa and Dwayne Haskins as two of his top-five prospects, K.J. Hill as one of his most improved players and Tuf Borland as one of his most overhyped players.
He also has Michigan's Lavert Hill and Rashan Gary as two of his least improved prospects. Which, yeah.
HASKINS ON THE RISE. When you slice apart the nation's top defense in front of a record audience, it's probably going to mean good things for your draft stock.
In Dwayne Haskins case, it meant a boost up Mel Kiper Jr.'s draft board to No. 11, the second highest-rated quarterback in the class behind only Oregon's Justin Herbert.
From Mel Kiper Jr. of ESPN.com:
"I waited to agree on Dwayne Haskins, because you would as a third-year sophomore, one-year starter like Mitchell Trubisky, but the Michigan game forced me to say 'hey, I'm not going to wait any longer.'
"I'll put him in at No. 11 right now. He could obviously move up from here, with Justin Herbert, quarterback in Oregon right now at No. 6.
"You look at his 42 touchdowns, only seven picks. He's at 69 percent – he's over 73 percent in six game, never threw more interceptions than touchdowns, always more touchdowns than interceptions every game.
"I'd like to see ball placement improve a little bit, but he's certainly a guy I think deserving of being in that early-to-mid first-round discussion."
If the season ended today, Green Bay would have the No. 11 pick in the draft. Haskins would make one hell of an heir to the Lambeau throne.
NO MORE PRINTABLE TICKETS. In a new episode of bad people ruining good things, printable tickets are now a thing of the past at Ohio State sporting events after a rise in counterfeit tickets.
From Jennifer Smola of the Columbus Dispatch:
“It’s not a good situation,” Scarbrough said of fans discovering they’ve been duped. “It’s one of the hardest things that we do.”
Fraudulent tickets have been an increasing problem though, one that has already led to changes to ticketing procedures for Ohio State events moving forward.
Beginning with the current winter sports seasons — including basketball, hockey and others — Ohio State will no longer allow print-at-home PDF tickets at athletic and other events. The change was put in place when winter sports tickets went on sale, Scarbrough said. At that time, the football season was already underway, but no printed PDF tickets will be allowed at next year’s football games, he said.
...
Ohio State officials said they do their best to scrutinize fake tickets and educate fans about what makes them invalid.
“Number one, they’ve typically shelled out a lot of money, and they’re obviously very upset that their ticket doesn’t work,” Scarbrough said. “To the untrained eye, to them, it looks like a perfectly valid ticket.”
You can still use mobile tickets your phone or the good, old-fashioned tickets from will call, but the home-printed variety ain't going to cut it anymore.
So if Jimmy on the sidewalk tries to scalp you a sheet of printer paper to get you in the game next year, don't take the bait.
ESPORTS MAJOR COMING? Parents rejoice – it will soon be possible for your son or daughter to major in video games.
From Carrie Ghose of Columbus Business First:
An undergraduate esports major could be offered as soon as this fall after two years of planning, said Deborah Grzybowski, OSU co-director of game studies and esports curriculum development. The program is a collaboration of five colleges: arts and sciences, business, education, engineering and medicine.
Faculty turned to industry leaders for the type of skills they're seeking in employees, she said on the panel. Research will touch various aspects of the industry – underlying technology, design, marketing, applications in education and healthcare, and the health impacts on players themselves.
Half a floor in Lincoln Tower will be renovated to make an 80-seat game arena for classes, research, intramural esports teams – and free use by students for gaming when it's not scheduled.
When I read the headline, I was initially unstoked. While I'm all for esports, along with university-sponsored teams and scholarships, it shouldn't be a major any more than football or basketball should be a major.
But then I read past the headline – folks, take notes – I realized that it sounds a lot more like a esports industry major than just four years of teaching teens to pwn kids online.
So as an alum with a voice, my official stance is this: Sure, it can exist.
A RECKLESSLY BAD #TAKE. I don't usually put people on blast for their opinions and Internet words because I'm a permanent resident in the glassest of houses, but I stumbled across this abomination from an Oklahoma columnist and I'm still amazed.
College Football Playoff committee never has rewarded a team with a bad loss. https://t.co/oQ2UjiFAkt
— Berry Tramel (@BerryTramel) November 29, 2018
And shockingly, it doesn't get much better when you click the link.
Here is the headline, which has not been corrected, even though the story was updated 20 minutes after it was initially published: "Playoff teams haven't have bad losses"
Moving on, Berry makes his claim, and then lists out literally every loss a playoff team sustained during the regular season, half a dozen of which were either blowout losses or losses to a sub-.500 team.
He's getting absolutely destroyed on Twitter, but he has no idea, because he doesn't seem to have actually used his Twitter account for anything other than a content stream for years.
HOW NOT TO ATTRACT A HEAD COACH. Hi, so if your favorite college football team is in the midst of a coaching search, maybe don't threaten arson against candidates who turn the job down. That's probably bad for business.
I feel like that should go without saying, but here we are:
STORY: St. Matthews Police investigate threats to burn down Jeff Brohm's high school after he didn't accept the head football coaching position at the University of Louisville. https://t.co/CtzoAW9Gpx
— Jody Demling (@jdemling) November 29, 2018
Here I was thinking Vols fans were untouchable in this category.
LINK LOCKER. Depressing photos from the final days of Toys 'R' Us... Museums use "Nazi tactics" to keep art stolen by the Nazis from Holocaust survivors and their heirs... Pot is edging out alcohol as teenage drug of choice... 16 U.S. Postal workers took bribes to deliver cocaine in metro Atlanta... Woman farts in a store, then pulls knife on an offended customer...
