Happy(?) Tuesday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session. Many of you may still be feeling the effects of the weekend, but fear not! For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy for all the people: it is Homecoming week, a revenge week, and at the end of this post I will enthrall all of thou with some of the most embarrassing promotional videos American colleges have ever produced. So hold your heads high, Buckeye fans. Now is not the time to panic, or to seek salvation in the golden calf known as the NFL. No, now is the time for level-headedness, preparation, and like the man featured in the picture and my muse for day, we must stay cool as ice.
Indeed, to paraphrase that great poet Robert Van Winkle, this coming Saturday we will get revenge for those wackheads playing baseball with our bikes in West Lafayette last year, as I am fully confident we will go into Ohio Stadium and schling a schlong.
So it has been said, and so it shall be done. But first!
Depth Chart No changes this week, although truthfully that doesn't mean much. The status of Ross Homan is still very much up in the air, and it is unknown if he will actually play. Remember, Stoneburner was listed first on the depth chart for both of the weeks he was out, which again tells me that pretty much the only time you're going to see a significant change on this thing is if someone gets run over by a train or robs a bank or something. In semi-related news, Clyde Barrow (of "Bonnie & Clyde") was once captured in my hometown in 1930. He did not appear on Sam Willaman's roster that week.
An Apology, And Some Stats During the aftermath of the Wisconsin game, things obviously got heated in the comments thread and personally I feel that I did not do a great job of keeping a level head, and for that I am sorry. As a contributor here part of my job is to make sure things are run smoothly in the comments and to keep things civil, and I didn't do that job. One of the things that got me way too riled up was the assertion made by a few people that Jim Tressel is an equal to or worse than John Cooper as a head coach at OSU. Instead of getting angry, I should've just posted this:
| Seasons | Record | Win % | 10+ Win Seasons | 4+ Loss Seasons | Best/Worst Record | Bowls | Big 10 Titles | vs UM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tressel | 10 | 100-22 | .820 | 7 | 2 | 14-0 / 7-5 | 5-4 | 6 | 8-1 |
| Cooper | 13 | 111-43-4 | .715 | 5 | 7 (!!!) | 11-1 / 4-6-1 | 3-8 | 3 |
2-10-1 |
The numbers speak for themselves. You can claim a weak Big Ten helped Tressel to his success, but the plain facts are that for nearly a decade he has sustained a level of excellence unheard of in an Ohio State coach since Woody Hayes. I'm not suggesting that Tressel is infallible, or that some of his decisions shouldn't be questioned, but I am saying that by any valuable statistical metric Jim Tressel is not only easily a better coach than John Cooper, but it is probable that he is the second best OSU coach of all time (sorry Carroll Widdoes). I am also saying that given this, and the way he conducts himself on and off the field, I find it hard to believe that many of us would trade him for any other coach in the country. Again: infallible? No. Frustrating? Often. Pretty freaking great overall? Yes.
More On This Week In Perspective People who can be infallible, according to Catholic doctrine: popes. Not covered under this stance are people named after popes, and EDSBS sums up Urban's discontent and Florida's current 4-3 record in one nice fake magazine picture. How does this pertain to Ohio State? Florida's 10-7 loss to Mississippi State dropped them out of the Top 25 for the first time in 89 weeks, meaning that no team is even close to matching OSU's current 91 week streak (Alabama is second at 40).
Let's Be Honest, Gridiron Is A Pretty Sweet Name I've been sitting on this link for a while, but for all of you expats living in the UK or people trying to introduce friends to the greatest sport ever devised by man, this series of videos put out by the BBC is a delightfully sophisticated approach to educating the Queen's masses about our strange and glorious pastime. Narrated by Nigel Ficklebottom III, he uses elegantly carved figurines to haha no I'm just kidding, it's really a big scary UK gridiron coach talking over clips from a Dolphins/Cowboys game. Still, it's an interesting perspective because it's directed at an audience way into sports, but not at all familiar with American Football. Oh, and also there's going to be a game between Notre Dame and Navy in Ireland in 2012. That's going to be sweet.
The Grand Finale Over the years a few colleges have made some utterly horrible promo/sports videos, and I think it's high time someone put em in one place. If I leave any out please let me know, but otherwise... "enjoy."
