Welcome to your Friday Skull Session, folks. The Sugar Bowl is already three days in the rearview and Buckeye fans are still gobbling up any sort of game multimedia, so here's a roundup of the best that's out there to get you through the last day of the work week:
- BuckeyePlanet user "werlinrm" has the game in all of its HD glory in two forms: a direct download via DropBox (amazing service if you haven't checked it out, BTW) and, of course the torrent, if sharing is your thing.
- Mocksession has the game in screencaps with accompanying Twitter commentary.
- ESPN, by way of YouTube, has the "Sugar Bowl Speed Game", which has absolutely nothing to do with what took place in trailers across Fayetteville Tuesday night, but is instead an 18-minute, condensed version of the game. Perfect for your lunch break.
- Last, but certainly not least, this made its way into a Buckshot yesterday, but deserves some top of story love. If you didn't catch it, an enterprising Superdome employee (best guess) recorded Jim Tressel's tunnel speech to the team before the start of the 2nd half. Despite what some commenters on YouTube and here on 11W have said, it's most certainly James Patrick Tressel and quite honestly, it's refreshing to hear a little bit of passion out of the man. For all we know, he's like this in all big games, but a decade into his run in Columbus, this is our lone glimpse past the senatorial wall. TWO GOOD-ASS TEAMS!!!
EVERYBODY PANIC! It's anybody's guess where Jim Harbaugh will eventually end up, but the odds of that destination being Ann Arbor are somewhere in slim-to-none territory, despite the school digging into its deep pockets for Rich Rodriguez's replacement. Andrew Luck's decision to return for another year could lead Harbaugh back to Stanford, where the Cardinal would be contenders to play for the MNC next season, or the coach could still wind up in one of several open positions in the NFL. However, if Brandon's presser didn't drive the point home enough, Michigan will have to look elsewhere. Naturally, this has our fine friends from up north in a frayed state.
There are still plenty of more-than qualified options out there for AD Dave Brandon, but another one that is now off the table is Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald. I realize it will be hard for any AD to pry Fitz away from his alma mater (especially when it's another conference team doing the prying), but let that sink in for a second. While still an elite post, we're now living in the age when Michigan, the winningest program in college football history, is getting a "thanks, but no thanks" out of the coach at Northwestern. Wow.
As if that's not enough, Michigan fans and bloggers alike are fretting about the late termination and conducting a search this deep into January. Not wanting to provide too much comfort to the enemy, but it's worth pointing out Cooper was fired in January of 2001 and Tressel wasn't announced as the new coach until January 18th. Things turned out okay.
Finally, Rich Rodriguez got around to issuing a statement yesterday, and honestly, it was all class. After getting piled on by the local press and fans alike from day one, he could have taken his shots via some form of passive-aggressive gratefulness, but took the high road instead.
We will be talking about this for eight more days. It seems like a day doesn't pass without people wondering whether any of the suspended five will be back for their senior campaigns, despite any promises made to Tressel. Boom Herron has reiterated his commitment to return, while Mike Adams is now saying he's unsure of his plans and will wait and see how the school's appeal for a reduction in suspensions turns out. That may be tricky to pull off because he's not likely to know the results of the appeal until after the date underclassmen have to declare, January 15th.
Meanwhile, random NFL draft website is saying Mike Brewster has told teammates that he plans to leave early for the NFL, but would he go out of his way to do this if he were really leaving?
