Eleven Warriors

As a fan of the Almighty Cleveland Browns, the NFL Draft is akin to Christmas Day. Usually, the Browns are taking a Top 10 talent before the Browns chronic ineptitude ruins them by the end of their rookie contract. Other times, we’re spending first round picks on 28 year-old rookie quarterbacks. Yet, every year, like the kids of deadbeat parents, us Browns fans awake on draft day with a naïve twinkle of hope in our eyes.

This, however, isn’t about the Browns’ struggles since their valiant return to the league in 1999. I doubt ElevenWarriors has the bandwidth to host such a diatribe, nor would this ever be mistaken for a Cleveland Browns blog; there’s way too much optimism here and not nearly enough self-loathing.

Yet, the NFL Draft, led by autocrat Roger Goodell, offers another chance to shame the league about something not involving concussions and the long-term mental health of its players: its lack of a minor league.

My three readers know there is no love lost between the NCAA and me. In fact, when reports surfaced on Twitter of a possible college football bowl in Dubai, my first thought was “These two institutions built on the back of the indentured servitude deserve each other.” 

The NCAA is in dire need of reform, something which I believe will finally happen once the O’Bannon verdict is delivered this summer. This is all well and good, and should be welcomed by anybody who believes in fairness. But any rant against the NCAA, and believe me, my pasty digits have typed plenty of them, usually falls short of naming another culprit with even more blood on its hands: “the National Football League” (said in my ESPN Analyst Serious Business Voice).

I can see how the NCAA spiraled out of control. When the NCAA was ordained in 1910, it’s not as if its Earthshakers envisioned multi-billion dollars in television contracts being handed out annually. I have less sympathy for the NFL, whose owners compromise some of the most ruthless business people in the world. (Doubt me? Browns owner and billionaire Jimmy Haslam’s Flying Pilot J, a Fortune 11 company with 17.77 billion dollars in revenue in 2011, was just caught chiseling a few million dollars off trucking companies in a cost-plussing rebate scheme.)

I have zero clue how the NFL has gotten this far without a minor league system, but if I listen closely enough at night, I can almost hear NFL owners clinking Scotch-filled glasses together as they chuckle at their ability to weld their minor league system to the NCAA. How many miles on their private jets has this bought them? I shudder to think.

If I were Mark Emmert, I would make my appeal thusly: the NCAA was never meant to be a minor league system for the NFL and NBA’s talent. Perhaps Emmert is holding this card up his sleeve for a rainy day, because I doubt NCAA football would be as lucrative if the Terrelle Pryors and Greg Odens were replaced with Joe Bausermans and Evan Ravenels, but it’s something that makes sense.

Elite football prospects have two options after graduating high school: go to college or take three years off from playing competitively, and given not too many NFL draftees are hailing from their mother’s basement, the system has been rigged to funnel elite prospects into the collegiate ranks. This is where the NFL wants them: where NFL teams aren’t spending money on the development of talent in their de-facto minor league system.

This use to not be the case for the NBA, but after years of NBA general managers failing at evaluating talent (aka their jobs), the NBA raised the age requirement to enter its draft. This has led to the “one-and-done” phenomenon; something Mark Emmert himself has said makes a mockery of his fabled white unicorn, the student-athlete.

Could a professional minor league co-exist with the NCAA? Looking at college baseball, there’s no reason to see why not. In that sport, prospects have the option: sign a minor league contract or go to college for at least three years. That’s why you never see the glut of “WE MUST PAY THESE ATHLETES” rants about college baseball like you do about football and basketball athletes... because choice exists in baseball.

I get that an 18 year-old basketball prospect could forgo the collegiate system and head overseas to play professionally, a la Brandon Jennings or Jeremy Tyler, but how many 18 year-olds are ready for that kind of independence? How many prospects have the kind of support network to help them through the inevitable culture shock?

Choice is the crux of American society, is it not? While the NFL has grown into becoming the most moneyed league in the Americas, it has left prospects bereft of a viable alternative to the NCAA and its colleges. The same is true with the NBA, only to a lesser extent.

If every prospect was ready fit for college or came from a family of privilege, perhaps this wouldn’t be the case, but one only needs to skim the backgrounds of this year’s draftees to the reality of the situation.

A sky-scraping pile of criticism has been heaped at the foot of the NCAA’s throne; most of it is fair, yet perhaps it’s not as big as culprit as people have been led to think. If the NCAA wants to avoid paying its players, and by every indication it does, then perhaps it should pass the buck upward.

If there's one thing America isn't good at, it's naming our scandals. What would we do if Richard Nixon hadn't paid Joe Paterno to break into the Watergate Hotel? Where would we be? With the originality of the goofs who dubbed the college football playoff "the College Football Playoff", I shudder to think.

Regardless, coming off a 12-0 season and entering the walkthrough that will be the 2013 regular season campaign, I think it's a good time to remind everyone just how lucky we were for "Tatgate" and its subsequent bowl ban. I was an unabashed defender on Terrelle Pryor on this very website, and since then my opinions of TP and his misdeeds at Ohio State have only grown more favorable.

Is there any rational thinking Ohio State fan (somewhat of a paradox, I admit) who would choose Jim Tressel over Urban Meyer? Because, without Tatgate and the Senator's inglorious exit, Urban Meyer would be plying his trades at another, lesser university than the one found in central Columbus.

Jim Tressel was a great coach, an Ohio State legend, and one of my life's regrets is I wasn't old enough to riot in the aftermath of the 2002 national title game. Yet, I truly believe we had witnessed the unforgiving ceiling of the Ohio State program under Jim Tressel: a lofty winning percentage sprinkled with disappointing losses to the likes of Purdue and Illinois or from programs like USC or Texas. Maybe I am on my own with this belief, but I do not think Jim Tressel would have ever won another national title while at Ohio State.

Winning the Big Ten used to suffice when the Big Ten was a legitimate football conference. Those days have gone the way of standard definition television and CD players. Sure, Tressel owned Michigan in a way few Ohio State coaches ever have, but it came in the twilight of Lloyd Carr's career and the abomination that was Rich Rodriguez's era.

With Urban Meyer, Ohio State will get all of Tressel's glory plus the talent required to take the Buckeyes into honest national title contention. For me, it boils down to 2006's BCS Title Game. It was Urban's best vs. Jim Tressel's best, and Florida gave us an ass-kicking that still makes me grimace in pain when I recollect on it. Had Urban not called the dogs off at half-time, they may have hung 100 points on Ohio State. And if you think Teddy Ginn would have made a difference, please turn off your computer and take a long walk outside until the drugs and alcohol dissipate from your brain and central nervous system.

No, Tatgate had to happen. I love Jim Tressel, and I thought him returning for this year's Michigan game was one of the best trollings of the 2012 calendar year, but I don't have any sympathy when it comes to his ouster. At best, Jim Tressel was strategically negligent with his star quarterback's extracurricular money-ginning.

I think he knew what was going on, and each time Terrelle Pryor pulled up to the WHAC in a new car, Tressel turned a blind-eye because he knew in the snakepit of college football, what Pryor was engaged in was a small-time misdemeanor. (He also knew JOE FREAKING BAUSERMAN was the back-up quarterback.)

As awful as the 2011 season was, it's a tax I'd pay tenfold to lead to yesterday and tomorrow's glory. The bowl ban ended up being a blessing, because I'm not sure Ohio State could've banged with Alabama in last year's national title game. While I doubt Urban Meyer's teams will ever get handed a mauling akin to the ones suffered by Tressel's teams from time to time,  12-0 was a perfectly acceptable capstone for me, the liquor-swilling fan whose game day preparation includes "which Ohio State shirt I'm going to wear."

I'm sure the players felt it left something to be desired, and that's the perfect scenario entering this season. Urban Meyer, pop psychologist, knows this. It's what has lead to "the Chase" you hear so many Ohio State footballers referring to this off-season. The 2012 season might have been an unsatisfactory meal for them, which is good, because it means there's still a hunger within.

Granted, I predicted the 2011 team would finish 11-1 with a Rose Bowl Victory, but last May I also predicted Ohio State would finish 12-0. I was laughed at both times, but this year, I feel even better about my prediction for the team: 12-0.

There are some who prefer to revel in past glories, "back when a handful of nickels kept the jukebox rolling all night." Some prefer to live in the future, where things can yet be altered, but to me, neither is worth as much as the present. Without the bowl ban, I'm not sure if I would feel as confident. I definitely wouldn't feel as confident if Ohio State was coming off a national title win or loss, and either way, it would have all weighed the same as everything else in the past: about as much as wind.

And to think, the storm that is brewing in Columbus started with Terrelle Pryor and others getting discounted tattoos. If Urban Meyer wins multiple national titles at Ohio State as I think he's poised to do, perhaps one day Ohio State will erect a statue of another Ohio State legend: Terrelle Pryor... tattoos and all.

In a week that saw the bombing of the Boston Marathon.. its subsequent manhunt that put Boston under martial law... a dilapidated fertilizer plant blowing up in West, Texas that killed at least 35 people... an earthquake in China that caused 200 deaths and over 8,000 injuries... a bomb in a popular Baghdad coffee shop that killed at least 27 people... a quadruple murder in Akron that still lacks motive or suspect... the continued American use of extrajudicial international killings via flying kill-machines...  and a plane crash that killed an Air Force Major General... I have found my palette for sports entertainment suddenly lacking.

Granted, this is a trajectory I have been as my body rots with increasing age, but last week was kind of a smack in the face for Americans who do a rather remarkable job insulating themselves from world news and the plight of their fellow human beings. (LOL if you think I don't include myself in that last sentence.)

This is why I have come to detest the camera-whoring antics of the likes of Buck-I-Guy or whatever ridiculous moniker some grown-ass man has taken before caking himself in levels of makeup that would make a prostitute blush and heading down to the Horseshoe. Have people like that ever removed themselves from the bubble of adolescence required to make their behavior acceptable?

How privileged and unbecoming am I, the guy who feels real emotions over a team of millionaire strangers kicking or passing a ball about a field? What the hell would I be able to say to somebody who lost their legs in the bombing of the Boston Marathon? Or worse yet, somebody who lost their legs in the woebegone effort in Afghanistan?

Somebody will read this, hop off their leather recliner, (spilling the latest powder-infused Frito Lay chip all over their grease-stained sports shirt), and guffaw something like, "BUT THIS IS WHAT THE TERRORISTS WANT, TO TAKE MY FREEDOM AWAY!!!11" In this scenario, I'd point out that ONE nineteen year-old stoner on the lamb was able to put a major American city under martial law, but I feel my point would be lost on my astute, fictionalized, chip-mongering critic.

I don't understand the notion of "healing through sport," as if my running a marathon is supposed to bring back the dead or ease the daily horrors that plague this world. To me, continuing to find the same utility in sports would be akin to sticking my head in a vat of sand. There is nothing special about sports, it's just another pointless activity used by humans to kill time as we hurdle through space on a galactic pebble. Sports has the same healing power as knitting or conventional baking.

Will I continue to watch and try to enjoy sports? Yes, because like all human beings, I am a creature bequeathed of deep flaws rooted in hypocrisy. I don't know any other way.

But I doubt it will ever be like it used to be, and perhaps that's a good thing.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

  - Robert F. Kennedy

When I look at the Spring Game, this RFK quote is what comes the rum-saturated sponge that masquerades as my mind. (I'm a lot like Robert Kennedy in that we're both privileged white guys, and my naïve worldviews will one day lead to a crazed gunman putting me out of my misery.)

I'm pretty sure the only thing that has come out of Spring Games since the first year of George W. Bush's first Presidential term is low-hanging jokes involving the lack of regular season production from the game's MVP. This year, I didn't even bother watching the annual scrimmage because I'll be damned if I watch football involving Paul Brown Stadium that doesn't involve the almighty Cleveland Browns.

Ohio State fans have interest in the Spring Game in the same way a man would have in the last drop of water in a cantine before wondering into an open desert for the next four months. (Sure, there is the glorious NBA play-offs, but I recognize my opinions on this matter put me in the minority, and unless you're over 65 year-old white guy, please don't pretend baseball is relevant.)

So seeing this, why not spruce up the only hit of football us fiends will have for the next four months?

Coincidentally, I have an original thought to fix this. (NOTE: When I say "original thought", I mean "an idea I cribbed from a tweet by 11W's Michael Citro.") Why not allow soccer-styled "friendlies" between programs, if that's so what they choose?

Would fans have more interest in the Spring Game as currently constructed, or if the Spring Game involved Ohio State and Notre Dame's excuse of a football team?

For all I care, these games could include no kicking-off, fair-catching of all punts, and coaches putting flag football belts on their quarterbacks. Wouldn't coaches rather trot out their prophesied first-team lineups against another high-caliber program rather than another intrasquad scrimmage? Wouldn't a friendly against another program give more of a game-like experience, thus making it better to judge the talent you have on hand?

I realize tinkering with college football, even using typed words on the internet as a tool, will cause some people to throw their hands up in disgust with me, but tell me how an intrasquad scrimmage is better than friendlies against other high-caliber teams? Like nobody here would make the trip to South Bend, Indiana, to enjoy spring weather by guzzling canned beer and talking trash to Irish fans?

Hell, that might even more fun than drinking beer outside on an 86 degree August day with 90% humidity in Columbus before Ohio State rips open the Buffalo Bulls, as they're scheduled to do later this year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Nick Saban is the typical tinpot dictator who presides over indentured 18-22 year-olds at football programs around America. We saw what happened when he made the moves to the pros, where he didn't enjoy the same competitive advantages he had in the collegiate ranks, and was required to coach fairly-compensated men.

Last October, however, Saban nearly broke the irony meter when he took to the media to whine about the direction of football in the 21st century:

"I think that the way people are going no-huddle right now, that at some point in time, we should look at how fast we allow the game to go in terms of player safety...

... I just think there's got to be some sense of fairness in terms of asking is this what we want football to be?"

Yes, that's Nick Saban, a man who has wrenched and bent nearly every rule of the land in attempts to glean a competitive advantage, unironically appealing to fairness and "player safety." This all came before Johnny Manziel threw for 250 yards, two touchdowns and ran for 90 more yards and another score in Texas A&M's no-huddled victory over Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium. I assume the loss at the hands of a redshirt freshman did little to alter Saban's worldviews.

The cool thing about the space-time continuum is that it only goes forward. Eventually, despite whatever Alabamians tell you about the six thousand-year history of Earth, Nick Saban will be nothing but dust in the wind. 

Urban Meyer will be the one to push Nick Saban into his coaching grave, and the first blow against Saban's reign of terror will come this January when the Buckeyes and Crimson Tide meet to decide the 2013 BCS National Title.

Some people claim that it's the SEC which has dominated college football ranks for the better part of the last decade, but really, it's just two coaches: Nick Saban (4) and Urban Meyer (2). Yes, LSU won one because Brian Robiskie dropped an open touchdown pass and Ohio State started a quarterback named "Todd". Eugene T. Chizik won another by riding Cam Newton like he was a prize-winning horse, but Saban and Meyer were the ones who laid the foundation to the SEC's post-millennial trophy case.

Haters and other degenerates will say, "Urban Meyer is nothing without Tim Tebow," and they will do this by ignoring the fact Urban Meyer has been made a winner out of every program that has had the sense to hire him.

Looking ahead to Ohio State's 2013 schedule, I'm having a hard time seeing where anybody is hanging a loss on the Buckeyes; Michigan State is off the schedule, and Penn State and Wisconsin are both at home. Brady Hoke has never won a conference title, so I doubt his pathetic team will be in position to do anything significant on the last Saturday in November.

In other words, the Buckeyes are literally their biggest obstacles to appearing in the 2013 national title game. 

It is my hope that an SEC member will be the opponent, and if I am allowed to get greedy, I hope it is Alabama, the winner of three of the last four BCS titles. Whether it's Cam Newton, Johnny Manziel, or (hopefully!) Braxton Miller, Alabama has persistently struggled to contain mobile quarterbacks... the ones who make the No-Huddle so tough to game-plan for.

Offensive innovation is the future of football. Nick Saban knows it, and that's why he gnashes his teeth at it like an over-the-hill executive does to a younger, hungrier challenger. Time and Change is coming for ol' Nick Saban, and he can feel the ice cracking under his toddler-sized boots.

I love Columbus; it has the greatest reservoir of untapped potential of any metropolis in America. After washing ashore on the muddied banks of the Olentangy in 2008 with only a tortoiseshell cat named "Betsy Ross" and bottle of Lady Bligh in my possession, I have never contemplated leaving the Capital City. Outside of the abomination that is Power 107.5, however, one thing has truly driven me insane about Columbus:

Only 25% of the people who drive cars should be allowed on the open roads.

I don't know if this is a by-product of America's car culture, or yet another wanton failure of our government, but I'm only here to point my bony, pasty finger at the Neanderthals who can only be described in the words of Bill Burr as "In-the-Way People." Seriously, spend a day driving aimlessly around Columbus and you will be left with such questions as: "How do these people operate a blender, let alone a 2,500 lbs. vehicle capable of instantly dealing death to other human beings?"

Most people in Columbus aren't aware of this hidden trick discovered by a stay-at-home mom, so allow me to illuminate: in your car, usually on the left of your steering wheel, is a lever called a "turn signal." Now, as the phrase may suggest, this can be used to signal which way you attend to turn your vehicle. Before you engage in a sudden turn across three lanes of traffic (because you've failed to grasp the numerically named streets originally set up for your convenience), it might be best to hit your turn-signal to save somebody from t-boning you... because chances are you're driving without insurance.

If you're making a left hand-turn, PULL UP INTO THE INTERSECTION. That way, the cars immediately behind you won't have to wait a whole light cycle to make the same turn you just did.

This next one may be too big of a concept for the feeble mind of the average Columbus Driver, but I'm going to roll with it anyway. If you're approaching a red light/stopped traffic, always stop before side-streets. This allows other people to turn on/off that side-street and not congest traffic any further than it already is. Driving is all about give-and-take (another concept lost on Columbus Drivers), and it's the best drivers who defer to others.

On that same vein, if you're at, let's just say a 4-way stop intersection, and somebody waves you on, GO. They have offered you their turn, SO TAKE IT. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, sit there like a clown and wave them on instead. YOU HAVE JUST WASTED EVERYONE'S TIME AND SQUANDERED THE CHARITY.

Speaking of four way intersections, wow. I'm not going to even go there because given the antics I've seen by Columbus Drivers, it'd be like trying to teach calculus to people who still write with crayons. The same goes with the merging, which is something that has probably baffled Columbus drivers since the days of the Model-T. We're too far down our hellacious path to attempt Enlightment now.

The best piece of advice I can offer to Columbus drivers is REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE SIX-INCH BUBBLE OF SELF-AWARENESS you have swaddled yourself in and PAY ATTENTION. It might be earth-shattering for most of Columbus' drivers, but there is an entire world outside of the six inches in front of your face. Driving is really not that difficult, as evidenced by the government allowing dipshit 16 year-olds to do it.

This is all without exploring another concept which Columbus drivers fail to grasp: street-parking. In short:

• You're supposed to line your front-bumper up with the meter, not the middle of your car. You should be able to deduce this from simply looking at the placement of the meters, yet here we are.
• You don't need six yards between you and the next car parked on the street. Obnoxious parking like that just screws other people out of precious parking spaces in Central Columbus, which is the purpose of this exercise: to expand your worldview past the six-inches of your gaping, oxygen-sucking maw.
• If you're bad at parallel parking, it's because you want to be. It's not a quirky part of your personality that you get to laugh at with your friends, and you should be stripped of your license immediately because you're a terrible human being.

Columbus is a dragon who is only now being awoken. By 2020, the sky is literally the limit for this great city. Do you want to be a thoughtful, functioning denizen of the Capital City? Or do you want to be another short-sighted, self-absorbed sieve on what we're trying to accomplish?

Believe it or not, your driving goes along way towards answering that question.