Thad Matta's squad never won the Big Dance, but a few years later, a group of them have a chance to win a much smaller dance with a much larger paycheck.
Carmen's Crew plays for $2 million and the TBT title tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPN.
Get dumped then, former Marquette players!
ICYMI
- Damon Arnette is all grown up.
- Malik Harrison is building on last season.
- Liam McCullough's shirt in its final form.
- Drue Chrisman's love story, in custom shirts.
- Scoonie Penn joins the Memphis Grizzlies.
- Season ticket renewals fell 4 to 5 percent.
- Five playmakers that should worry Ohio State.
- Tyvis Powell to the Cowboys.
Word of the Day: Fervent.
A BACKUP TO BELIEVE IN. Gunnar Hoak might never play a first-team snap for Ohio State, but in my mind, he's already perfect.
See, the problem with backup quarterbacks is that when push comes to shove, very few of them are actually cool with being a backup quarterback. And so while those guys are transferring out of those situations all over the country, Hoak transferred in to one of those situations.
He's still going to compete and do his best, but he knows damn well what the situation is, and he came anyway.
From Doug Lesmerises of Cleveland.com:
“I get it, I get it, I understand,” Hoak said toward the end of a question about the assumption that Fields was going to start.
“You’ve just got to compete every single day no matter what,” Hoak said. “I never have that mentality of giving up. You’ve always got to come out and show the coaches what you’ve got and the team what you’ve got, and the coaches will decide who the best guy is and we’ll roll with it.”
I’ve said and written before that Hoak -- an Ohio quarterback who attended OSU-Michigan games as a fan, who gets being a Buckeye and therefore may be less likely to bolt if he doesn’t start -- is exactly the kind of quarterback Ohio State should target in its recruiting every three years or so. Get a backup to believe in, and a backup that will probably stay.
Kenny Guiton is the best recent example, though he’s from Houston. Guiton served ideally as Braxton Miller’s backup, saving the 2012 Purdue game after Miller’s injury and starting two others in 2013, without ever being a true option as the long-time No. 1 QB. But he served a valuable role, earned the praise of coaches and jumped right into the coaching profession upon graduation. He was named the the receivers coach at the University of Houston at age 25 in 2017. Hoak, with an undergrad degree from Kentucky, is getting his masters at Ohio State with an eye on coaching.
If you don’t win the starting job at Kentucky, you won’t ever make money playing football. But you certainly can make a life in the game. For that, Ohio State made sense for Hoak. There’s also the realization that he’s one Fields twisted ankle away from starting for one of the 10 best teams in college football.
I think Doug is spot on with the Kenny Guiton reference, but I think he might have even undersold him just a bit. Yeah, he never won the starting job, but he finished a game, started a game, saw regular meaningful first-team snaps, started a game and even holds Ohio State passing records to this day.
Everyone likes to point to J.T. Barrett and and Cardale Jones as what could happen for a backup quarterback at Ohio State, but a career like Guiton's sure ain't bad either. It gets you a standing ovation on senior day.
SEASON-DEFINING LOSSES. Y'all, we're getting somewhere. It appears Jim Harbaugh has finally admitted his 0-4 record against the Bucks matters quite a bit.
From Isaiah Hole of Wolverines Wire:
Considering that when he was hired, the thought was that Harbaugh would balance the scales of the rivalry — Michigan has only won once against the Buckeyes since 2003 — that he went 0-4 against Urban Meyer has been nothing short of disappointing.
Now, he’s outwardly placing emphasis on The Game, whereas before, he always spoke about the importance of taking things on a week-by-week basis. He’s still doing that, but he explained why that’s the case.
If you beat Ohio State but lose the other games, then Michigan will still fall short of what it aspires to be: a Big Ten champion and College Football Playoff contender.
However, he still notes that the final game of the regular season defines whether or not the season was a successful one.
“It defines the season, but there’s also 11 important games in front of that that dictates whether you won the Big Ten championship and whether you go to the playoffs,” Harbaugh said. “And then, the last game defines the entire season.”
So here's where we're at.
If that game defines the entire season and Harbaugh has not won that game in his entire four-year career at Michigan, that means that in his own words, every season so far has been defined by failure. Take that even further, it means his entire Michigan career is defined by failure.
Happy Tuesday!
COX DISMISSED AT UGA. Some of y'all might remember five-star defensive end Brenton Cox, who was a long-time Ohio State commit before he flipped to Georgia late in the 2017 class.
Well, he's no longer at Georgia.
From Anthony Dasher of UGASports.com:
Sophomore linebacker Brenton Cox has been dismissed from the Georgia football team, sources confirmed to Radi Nabulsi of UGASports on Monday.
The dismissal occurred Sunday, according to the same sources.
UGASports later confirmed that Cox has placed his name into the NCAA’s transfer portal. He was not at practice Monday afternoon.
...
Although it’s unclear what the dismissal was for, Cox was facing a possible suspension following an April arrest for a misdemeanor possession of marijuana.
In regards to Buckeye commits who ended up decidedly elsewhere, I have a bit of a confession to make. I have seen seven Ohio State commits play high school football live in my life. They are as follows:
- Antonio Henton
- Eric Glover-Williams
- Todd Sibley
- Danny Clark
- Emory Jones
- Brenton Cox
- Joe Burrow
Needless to say, I will never go near a high school football game involving a potential future Buckeye ever again.
GET THAT PAPER. It looks like the student-athletes ain't the only ones getting it done in the classroom.
Ohio State men's lacrosse coach Nick Myers just finished up his master's degree.
Officially a Buckeye Grateful for the support of family, friends & amazing professors here @OSU_MSpC #GoBucks #MastersDegree pic.twitter.com/LwzncCT3SV
— Nick Myers (@MyersJMZ) August 5, 2019
That's an extremely baller move and hell of a way to lead by example. He wasn't asking his kids to do anything he wasn't willing to do alongside them.
SPONGEBOB IS A HERO TO HARBAUGH. I'm not ashamed to admit it, we're four years into the Jim Harbaugh experience in Ann Arbor and I still find the man absolutely fascinating and I love almost nothing more than to admire him (from a distance).
The dude is a caricature of a head football coach.
The infatuation with milk and steak/distain for poultry, pouring gatorade in his cereal when he ran out of milk, lighting up a 10-year-old in laser tag at a bachelor party, bringing a baseball glove to a game as an adult spectator, making the winners run at practice instead of the losers, playing shirts vs. skins football with recruits without a second thought, and good lord this isn't even close to a complete list – if they parodied a football coach on Saturday Night Live, it would be Jim Harbaugh.
The Khaki'd King did an entire 40-minute interview with Pardon My Take, and you'll be absolutely shocked to learn that he said more batshit insane things!
Spongebob is the ultimate lunch pail guy according to Coach Harbaugh pic.twitter.com/ycEZ5lWsnl
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) August 5, 2019
Today we learned that Jim Harbaugh uses Excel for EVERYTHING @PardonMyTake pic.twitter.com/2qeeBhQ7CF
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) August 5, 2019
I seriously can't get enough of Harbaugh.
If he manages to beat Ohio State even once, I'll probably change my tune. But until then, the dude is just Wile E. Coyote in my eyes. You know damn well he's not catching the road runner, so there's nothing wrong with being entertained by his antics as he tries.
May he live forever.
NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. The true story of the viral 9/11 photo everyone thought was a hoax... The psychiatric "wonder drug" that almost no one is using... The fervent fan club for the "worst car ever built"... CAPTCHAs are getting pretty damn annoying... A goal to meet 10,000 people, one at a time, for an hour at a time... A man finds a rare NES game in his attic and sells it for $9,000... A growing number of people have decided not to wash themselves with soap, trusting bacteria to do the job instead... Facebook is building tech to read your mind...
