Wednesday Skull Session

By Chad Peltier on February 13, 2013 at 6:00 am
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Good morning, Buckeye fans and welcome to your Wednesday Skull Session. 

In case you missed it yesterday, our fearless leader issued his SOEW — State of Eleven Warriors.

We've had a pretty excellent year as Buckeyes and Eleven Warriors was no exception. Thanks for helping make this place the raddest website of all time. 

Eleven Warriors wouldn't be complete without a little revelry in the failings of That State of North. Thankfully, the Michigan basketball team provided an opportunity for schadenfreude last night as they fell to Michigan State, 75-52

It wasn't even close either:

Michigan State didn't trail once, led by as many as 16 points in the first half and enjoyed 30-point leads in the second. The game was so lopsided that both coaches filled the court with reserves during the final minutes.

When Michigan State is on, it's really a scary team. Of course, the same could be said for almost any team in the Big Ten this year. "Buzzsaw" seems like a fairly apt descriptor here. 

In other roundball news, Florida beat up Kentucky last night as well, proving that they really are head and shoulders above the rest of a poor SEC basketball conference.

SO WOODY AND A TURTLE WALK IN TO A BAR... Stop me if you've heard this one before, but apparently some people can't understand a joke

“He reaches down and grabs this box, slides the top and there was something in the box moving around. He reaches in and he pulls out this turtle. He reaches down, this turtle’s snapping and he says, ‘I’m going to show you toughness.’

I think you can fill in the rest (or watch it for yourself). 

Urban made that joke about Woody Hayes and the privates-eating turtle (which he's done before even!) at the recent OHSFCA Ohio High Schools coaching conference, but it seems like almost the entirety of America has heard this "legend" by now.

In fact, it got to the point where Ohio State was forced to actually comment on the joke, sending a report to journalists that the obvious joke was indeed an obvious joke. Thankfully Twitter captured everyone's dismay at this news:

ALVAREZ SPEAKS THE TRUTH. One immediate result of the new playoff system is the increased importance of strength of schedule for teams hoping to make the final four playoff cut. 

Ohio State has actually done an excellent job of scheduling marquee out of conference opponents each season (in addition to a nice cupcake or two) and now it looks like the entire Big Ten is in agreement. Last night on his monthly radio show, Barry Alvarez mentioned that: 

“The nonconference schedule in our league is ridiculous,” Alvarez said on WIBA-AM. “It’s not very appealing…

“So we’ve made an agreement that our future games will all be Division I schools. It will not be FCS schools.”

This is a win for everyone involved (except for the cupcake teams who used these matchups as a payday), but especially for the fans. Ohio State's 2013 schedule includes such heavyweights as Buffalo and Florida A&M, so this will be especially welcome in the 2014 season and beyond.

With ticket prices set to rise and attendance at a low, students and fans alike are unwilling to pay for lame out of conference matchups, so this Big Ten Gentleman's Agreement is promising. 

Simpler days when a joke was a jokeThe University issued the oddest press release yesterday

SCARY BETS. College football might not have the league-wide parity of the NFL, but that doesn't make it any more predictable, either. 

College Football by the Numbers took a look at how Vegas spreads related to actual results over the course of the entire 2012 season: 

Out of the 697 regular season games involving IA opponents, 261 of them (or 37.45%) finished within one touchdown of the betting line. In other words, more than a third of the time, you're hard-earned money was one play away from either nearly doubling or floating away. Think about that the next time your buddy has a 'sure thing'. Overall, over two thirds (67.00%) of the games finished within two touchdowns of the betting line and fewer than one of every five games differed by more than 20 points.

As Senator Blutarsky points out, this should make you fairly wary of betting on the college game. 

THE SEC MIGHT BE HERE FOR A LITTLE WHILE. While Urban launches his campaign to dethrone Alabama, the SEC as a whole will probably be the king for the near future at the least. 

SEC Blog Saturday Down South took a look at where the top 100 recruits choose for school and finds that the SEC has been gaining a larger share of these blue chippers over the years:

In college football, success begets more success. The latest batch of youngsters entering the league were in 5th grade the last time a non-SEC team won the BCS Championship. Many of these kids don’t recall the dominant days of Miami or USC. For them, the SEC is where the big boys play, and big boys are what they want to be...As you can see the trend is accelerating. 2013 was the first year where over 40 of the top 100 recruits in the country headed to the SEC.

Thankfully Ohio State did just fine last year, snagging nine recruits in Rivals' top 100.

APPLICATION COMPLETE. Football Scoop reported that there was an open, unpaid internship for aspiring football coaches open with Ohio State yesterday:

Ohio State: The Ohio State University has an unpaid internship available to aspiring coaches working on offense. Interested applicants please email coachk88@yahoo.com for further information. 

Don't mean to get your hopes up, as apparently everyone and their grandma submitted an application, forcing OSU to close the gates: 

Hope one of you manages to snag this opportunity! 

LINKS ALL DAY. A 350 pound running back has to be seen to be believed. The future is here... John Infante of Bylaw Blog fame comments on recruiting deregulation... Ask a compliance officer, hilarity ensues... Westminster dog show rankings, because we're able to make rankings for anything!... It's a real steal to be an Alabama football player right now /terriblepun... Oregon always gets the cool stuff... Sit Clowney? Yeah right. 

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