Skull Session: Chris Olave is Freaky Fast, Ohio State is a Wide Receiver Factory, and Ohio State Loses Food Delivery Robots

By Kevin Harrish on March 3, 2022 at 5:25 am
Chris Olave is fast in today's skull session.
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Ohio State plays a basketball game today. Do with that information whatever you'd like.

Word of the Day: Assiduous.

 FREAKY FAST. One of my favorite pieces of offseason content to copy and paste to y'all (we call it "content aggregation" in the business to feel better about ourselves) is Bruce Feldman's annual "freaks" list where he ranks the freakiest athletes in college football based on his general knowledge, his conversations with coaches, and also just his good, old fashioned opinion.

It's the purest and most enjoyable of any subjective list out there. Thankfully for us, he decided to give us a special NFL combine edition of his freaks list this week, and Chris Olave's speed earned himself a spot in the top-40.

30. Chris Olave, Ohio State, wide receiver: He’s torn up the Big Ten over the past three years, catching 33 touchdowns. Simply put, the 6-foot-1, 190-pounder is effortlessly fast. It probably wouldn’t shock anyone if he clocked a 4.30 40.

I'm going to be honest, if I had to pick one of Ohio State's receivers in the draft to put on this list, it would have been Garrett Wilson, and he probably would have been higher than No. 30. But I think that says more about what I think about Wilson than it does Olave, because everything Feldman wrote is spot on.

"Effortlessly fast" is the perfect descriptor of his game. He doesn't seem to do anything special until you realize you're 30 yards downfield and don't have a shot in hell at sticking with him.

 SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE. My good pal Ari Wasserman is paid the big dollars to have opinions about recruiting these days, and he had a good one on Wedensday, picking Ohio State as the school a five-star receiver should go to in order to best get to the NFL Draft.

First, I want to start by making sure that people don’t immediately run to the comments and get into “Position U” arguments. I am going to attack this answer with a ton of recency bias because I’m going to be putting myself in a 2023 prospect’s shoes. I don’t care if receivers Keyshawn Johnson, Mike Williams and Dwayne Jarrett went to USC. Yes, we all remember those players fondly, and those legacies will matter forever. But none of that is relevant to what a recruit would be considering right now.

...

WR: Ohio State. Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave may both be first-round picks in the upcoming draft. The Buckeyes have 10 scholarship receivers on their roster, and eight are former top-100 players. Michael Thomas went there. Brian Hartline is the receivers coach. Ryan Day has a pass-first offense. This one is a layup.

To be fair, "Ohio State and Brian Hartline are very good at producing wide receivers" is not at all a difficult #take to arrive at, but part of Ari's rules here make this a little more fun and interesting.

I want to make a note that I’m not doubling up on any one school

And he went with Brent Venables at Oklahoma for the defensive line. Meaning, he thinks the Buckeyes are currently better at developing wide receivers than they are at developing defensive linemen, even with Larry Johnson still on the coaching staff. And I... fully agree?

That's not something I would have ever expected 3-5 years ago, but I guess times are changing.

 GOODBYE, RUSSIAN BOTS. Due to Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, Ohio State will no longer have robots delivering food throughout its campus as has become commonplace during the global pandemic of the past two years.

(I would love to time travel and read that sentence to myself five years ago and allow my brain to process the fact that "food delivering robots" is by far the least jarring thing stated).

Anyway, Bella Czajkowski of The Lantern has the #scoop:

Grubhub will end its partnership with Yandex, the Russian company that supplies on-campus food delivery robots at Ohio State.

Grubhub is working with its campus partners like Ohio State to find alternate service options as the company shifts away from Yandex over time, Grubhub spokesperson Katie Norris said in an email. Grubhub’s cancellation of its contract with Yandex comes as the U.S. and other countries impose economic sanctions on Russian leaders and oligarchs following the invasion of Ukraine.

This would seem to open the market for some good, old-fashioned American innovation. But perhaps our robotics experts are occupied at the moment...

It looks like tonight's episode will take place during the second half of the Ohio State vs. Michigan State basketball game. Again, do whatever you need to do with that information.

Maybe they could make the whole BattleBots thing more interesting – the losing robot is relegated to food delivery. You have to figure a Grubhub robot with a flamethrower would be far less likely to be vandalized, too – two birds with one stone!

 FIVE-STARS SHARPEN FIVE-STARS. It's been a minute since Ohio State signed a five-star cornerback. But this week, we got to see the last five-star corner to sign with the Buckeyes working out with what Ohio State hopes is its *next* five-star corner.

As for the chances he ultimately ends up signing with Ohio State, things were trending in a bad direction for the Buckeyes for a bit, but based on the way he's Tweeting – an extremely exact science, I know – it appears the good guys are right back in the game.

I sure wouldn't say no!

 SONG OF THE DAY. "Still Don't Know My Name" by Labrinth.

 NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. The inevitability of the office romance... The girl who saw too much... The fight to combat Russian misinformation via Google restaurant reviews... Australian scientists plan to resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger... Workers are accused of running a ‘fighting ring’ at an assisted living facility... 

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