Welcome to the Skull Session.
Ohio State football plays Indiana in four days.
I don't know what to do with my hands.
Let's have a good Tuesday, shall we?
CHILLS. STRAIGHT CHILLS. Before Ohio State's battle with Georgia in the CFP last season, I discovered a Game Trailer from "Buckeye Productions" and "Buckeye Frank," an Eleven Warriors reader and a member of the Ohio State Twitter community.
Buckeye Productions labels its trailers "The Best Damn Hype Videos in the Land." After I watched the Peach Bowl Game Trailer, I learned that Frank does, in fact, make the Best Damn Hype Videos in the Land. That claim proved true once more when Frank released a Game Trailer for the Ohio State-Indiana season opener on Saturday.
The heartbreak of Ohio State's missed FG kick in the Georgia game met with Gus Johnson's "World Famous Ohio State Buckeyes" call and a voice that yells, "We are doing the hunting now!" Ooooooooooo, baby.
Chills.
Well done, Frank. Well done.
DA-NA-NA-NA-DUN-DAA-NA-NA. It's an iconic theme song, CBS college football music – so iconic that some readers may have read the section title and heard the song in their heads. Here is the tune, complete with a video of Big Ten football teams that will compete on the network this fall:
Hello, @B1Gfootball.
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) August 18, 2022
Hit the music. pic.twitter.com/PbMHPql1Cz
So good.
Ohio State's season opener with Indiana will mark the Big Ten's first appearance on CBS since the conference inked a billion-dollar deal with FOX, CBS, NBC and Peacock last summer. PBP announcer Brad Nessler, color commentator Gary Danielson and sideline reporter Jenny Dell will provide television coverage for the conference matchup, with kickoff scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on CBS.
CBS Sports has released its announcer lineup for the 2023 College Football season.
— CBS Sports PR (@CBSSportsGang) August 16, 2023
Coverage begins Saturday, Aug. 26 with Week Zero on @CBSSportsNet while CBS and @paramountplus kick off Week 1 with two Big Ten matchups.
Full release: https://t.co/F8VXI2CV7F pic.twitter.com/TIa3a5MUR2
Ohio State has fared well in its all-time games on CBS, as the Buckeyes possess a 9-5-1 record across 15 appearances from 1982 to 1998. Here is a look at all the matchups the Buckeyes have played on the network:
*Ohio State's 2014 season-opening win over the Navy in Baltimore, Maryland, was broadcast on CBS Sports Network, a premium cable channel that falls under the Columbia Broadcasting System umbrella
| DATE | OPPONENT | SCORE | RECORD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov. 20, 1982 | No. 13 Michigan | W, 24-14 | 1-0 |
| Sept. 24, 1983 | At No. 7 Iowa | L, 20-14 | 1-1 |
| Oct. 13, 1984 | Illinois | W, 45-38 | 2-1 |
| Oct. 27, 1984 | At Wisconsin | L, 16-14 | 2-2 |
| Nov. 17, 1984 | Michigan | W, 21-6 | 3-2 |
| Oct. 19, 1985 | Purdue | W, 41-27 | 4-2 |
| Oct. 26, 1985 | At No. 20 Minnesota | W, 23-19 | 5-2 |
| Nov. 2, 1985 | No. 1 Iowa | W, 22-13 | 6-2 |
| Nov. 23, 1985 | At No. 6 Michigan | L, 27-17 | 6-3 |
| Sept. 13, 1986 | At No. 17 Washington | L, 40-7 | 6-4 |
| Nov. 15, 1986 | At Wisconsin | W, 30-17 | 7-4 |
| Nov. 22, 1986 | No. 6 Michigan | L, 26-14 | 7-5 |
| Jan. 1, 1987 | No. 8 Texas A&M (Cotton Bowl) | W, 28-12 | 8-5 |
| Sept. 26, 1987 | At LSU | T, 13-13 | 8-5-1 |
| Sept. 5, 1998 | At No. 11 West Virginia | W, 34-17 | 9-5-1 |
By all accounts, Ohio State should improve to 10-5-1 on CBS after it disposes of Indiana on Saturday.
The CBS crew will probably love that they must make the Buckeyes' matchup with the Hoosiers interesting as Ohio State blows out Tom Allen's inferior squad – regardless of who starts at quarterback for the men in the Scarlet and Gray. Still, Nessler, Danielson and Dell had ample practice doing that from when Alabama and Georgia demolished SEC bottom-feeders for the past few decades. CBS should have that act down to a T!
JUST A BIT OUTSIDE. "There is no profession in the world like that of a college football coach," writes Chris Vannini and Bruce Feldman.
The Athletic's duo of senior college football writers created a college football coaching tiers list before the 2023 season, in which Vannini and Feldman ranked Ohio State's Ryan Day as a Tier 2 coach behind Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney.
For the second consecutive year, The Athletic spoke with coaches, agents and industry experts to rank 116 FBS coaches into tiers. In a change from last year’s exercise, this year we have expanded to eight(-ish) tiers, to better evaluate and differentiate the group. It’ll stick at that number moving forward, to compare year-to-year movement.
We weighed everything from measurable success (including championships), resources, length of track record and more. Has a coach sustained success for a long period of time? Have they done it at multiple schools? What kind of situation did they take over? We lean heavily on the complete body of work, not just reacting to recent seasons. This isn’t a list of coaches we would hire right now in this order. It’s an evaluation of relative accomplishments.
...
Five active coaches have won FBS national championships, but just three have done it at their current school. This most recent season gave us a third active coach with multiple titles. That elite group starts us at the top. (Each tier is in alphabetical order.)
Here is a look at The Athletic's top-tier college football coaches:
| TIER 1A | TIER 1B | TIER 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Nick Saban, Alabama | Kirby Smart, Georgia | Ryan Day, Ohio State |
| Dabo Swinney, Clemson | Luke Fickell, Wisconsin | |
| Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M | ||
| Jim Harbaugh, Michigan | ||
| Brian Kelly, Notre Dame | ||
| Lincoln Riley, USC | ||
| Kyle Whittingham, Utah |
In Tier 3, Penn State's James Frankin, Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, Minnesota's P.J. Fleck and Nebraska's Matt Rhule were among the 24 coaches named. Their nominations boosted the Big Ten to seven coaches in the top three (or four) tiers.
Illinois' Bret (Bert) Bielema also landed in Tier 4, Rutgers' Greg Schiano and Michigan State's Mel Tucker landed in Tier 5 and Indiana's Tom Allen and Maryland's Mike Locksley landed in Tier 6. Purdue's Ryan Walters and Northwestern's David Braun were not ranked as head coaches in their first season.
On Day, Vannini wrote:
Lincoln Riley and Ryan Day are a noteworthy comparison. They both inherited elite jobs at Oklahoma and Ohio State, respectively, and neither took their team to a national championship like the previous coach. Riley is 66-13 at Oklahoma and USC; Day is 45-6 at Ohio State. Riley did greatly improve USC in his first season, but the Trojans lost their last two games to less-talented teams in Utah and Tulane, and he has stumbled in some unexpected places, like against Iowa State. The narrative around Day has turned after consecutive losses to Michigan. He doesn’t have enough big wins, but the Buckeyes haven’t lost a dud game to a far inferior opponent under his watch.
“One of the reasons Lincoln is still a question mark is that his teams start out incredibly hot and they tend to collapse,” the agent said. “If I’m comparing the two, I’d probably take Day a little higher.”
I would, too, Mr. Agent. I would, too.
I would also take Day over every coach not named Nick Saban and Kirby Smart. I could hear an argument for Dabo Swinney. He is very successful as a two-time national champion head coach. I merely have a distaste for Swinney's coaching and leadership styles and the Clemson football program in general.
The bottom line is that Ohio State is in phenomenal hands with Day as its leader. If he can help the Buckeyes defeat the Wolverines in Ann Arbor this season, that will be a unanimously-held opinion around Columbus. If not, then... well, it may be more difficult for me to make that claim in the future.
So win The Game, Coach Day.
Please.
MIC'D UP WITH MIYAN. This week, the Ohio State football media team took us behind the scenes at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center with a video titled "Mic'd Up with Chop" that placed a microphone on running back Miyan Williams and shared his [FOOTBALL NOISES] from a preseason practice.
with
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) August 27, 2023
@okmiyan_ pic.twitter.com/8Im4T8FOUn
I loved this entire video, but my favorite moment was Williams' exchange with wide receiver Emeka Egbuka around the 37-second mark.
EGBUKA: Miyan, how tall are you? Like, 5-1?
WILLIAMS: I'm 6-3, bro.
For reference, Derrick Henry is 6-foot-3, 247 pounds. According to his Ohio State bio, Williams is 5-foot-9, 226 pounds, so he would need to add six inches (maybe more – bios always add a couple of inches) to be 6-foot-3.
Good news: Despite the size difference, Williams runs with a similar hair-on-fire, hit-the-hole-at-one-thousand-miles-per-hour mindset that Henry developed at Alabama and has perfected with the Tennesee Titans.
Hopefully, we will see Williams make some more Miyan Ruins in 2023. Perhaps another five-touchdown performance against Indiana?
SONG OF THE DAY. "Hells Bells" by AC/DC.
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