Eleven Warriors

February was a great month for Eleven Warriors. We recorded an all-time high of 2,369,510 pageviews for the month, which is the best single month in our history and good enough for an 714% increase over our February 2011 total of 291,075 pageviews¹.

Recruiting -- and Alex taking our recruiting coverage to a new level -- is a big part of this and is highlighted by the nearly 200,000 pageviews we logged on National Signing Day (2/1).

In short, we're growing and having a lot of fun on the ride.

Since we're asking you to help us grow, I think it's important that we share growth updates with you guys², so I put together a couple of charts breaking down various dimensions of our February traffic.

First up, the top 10 states that visit the site:

It's no surprise seeing Ohio at the top of the list. The Buckeye state sent us 48.35% of our traffic last month. Michigan at the #2 spot makes sense as well and I'd imagine Ohio would rank highly on MGoBlog. Keeping tabs on the enemy and all.

Next up, the top 10 cities in Ohio:

You might figure to see Columbus so well represented, but the fact that we get 26% of our pageviews from the epicenter of Buckeyeland always surprises me. Cincinnati, for all of the heat it takes for not being a Buckeye town actually checks in second with 3.16% of traffic, while Toledo (2.91%) edges Cleveland (2.60%) for third on the list.

Ashley (population 1,216!!) and Tallmadge (population 17,537), we see you. People of New Albany, yes, you can buy a membership to our board of directors.

Moving on, we have the browser breakdown:

IE, not dead yet. Which owes to the large number of you that visit the site from workplaces that don't give you the option to change your default browser.

Our Safari numbers are a little higher than what you'd see in global browser stats, but only because Google Analyitics groups Safari across all platforms (Mac, Windows, iPad, iPhone, etc.).

Which brings us to mobile device usage:

Apple's iOS, thanks to 26.12% of our mobile visitors accessing the site via an iPad does really well here. When you filter down to just phones, it's about 36.27% iPhone to 33.71% Android-based phones.

Hopefully some of you enjoyed this look into our numbers. I'll try to remember to do these every now and then going forward.

• ¹ To be fair, we had one extra day of business in February 2012.
• ² Our historical numbers are up on Quantcast for you to check out whenever curiosity strikes.

Appearing on his weekly television show during the 1955 season, Woody Hayes was discussing the troubles he had keeping players in school because football kept them too busy to hold meaningful jobs. Hayes then admitted that he often loaned small amounts of money to players that needed help. Oops.

Shortly thereafter, Sports Illustrated ran The Ohio State Story: Win or Else, highlighting the pressure Hayes faced in Columbus and the nature of Ohio State football as a "vast profit-making amusement enterprise with amateur dressing".

Robert Shaplen's exposé featured the "football tail is wagging the college dog" quote from a concerned professor and the requisite story of a star player flunking out, despite the assistance of four tutors. Thankfully, there were no stories of rigged charity raffles, but the piece did not paint Ohio State football in good light. Primarily because of this passage:

Once signed, a recruit can count on some financial help from Hayes if he is "in need." Woody insists that he never forks up for a luxury—another narrow line—but it's certainly also true that he makes sure he won't lose any valuable men by financial default.

Much like 2011, Buckeye fans took to 1955's Twitter to back their coach, but Ohio State had a problem.

Big Ten commissioner Kenneth "Tug" Wilson paid a visit to Columbus as part of a three-month investigation and Hayes admitted to lending about $400 a year to players in need of assistance. Wilson also discovered a "serious irregularity" in the off-campus work program provided to athletes.

The trouble was that in numerous instances the athletes seemed to have collected their wages in advance, without anybody notably concerned if they ever performed the work for which they had been paid. 

Sound familiar?

Unlike Jim Tressel, Hayes told the truth and escaped with his job, though his team received a one-year probationary sentence from the Western Conference, meaning they would be ineligible for the Rose Bowl should they win the conference in 1956.

Under this cloud, the Buckeyes would go on to start the 1956 season 6-1 with comfortable wins over Nebraska, Stanford and Wisconsin¹, rising to #7 and setting up a showdown at #6 Iowa. The Hawkeyes, led by tackle Alex Karras scored the game's only touchdown in the 2nd half and emerged with a hard-fought 6-0 victory, locking up the school's first-ever postseason bowl and snapping Ohio State's 17-game conference winning streak.

The following week, the Buckeyes lost to Michigan 19-0 to finish the season 6-3, ranked 15th in the AP poll.

In 1957, the team's first post-probation season, Ohio State avenged the previous season's loss to Iowa, thumped Michigan 31-14 in Ann Arbor and wrapped things up with a 10-7 win over the Oregon Ducks in the Rose Bowl, securing the school's 3rd national championship.

This fall, we kick off 1956 all over again.

• ¹ The lone loss during this stretch was a 7-6 heartbreaker to Rip Engle's Penn State squad. In other news, Ohio State's out-of-conference schedule used to read: Nebraska, Stanford and Penn State.

As Thomas Francis Gilroy once said, "With great traffic, comes expensive server upgrades." Or something like that...

On Thursday morning, at approximately 5am ET, we will be upgrading our server again. We're trying to position the site to withstand the unbelievable traffic we'll experience on National Signing Day (2/1), but if you're keeping score at home, this will be the fourth server upgrade we've performed (from a shared hosting account to a VPS6 box) since the start of football season.

This is clearly a good problem to have, but it's not cheap. Our server costs are approaching a nice car payment each month and I'd like to once again ask for your help. As you're probably all aware of by now, we're holding a fundraiser to hire our first full-time beat writer. The funds we raise will go to paying this person's (our first-ever real employee) salary and benefits as well as to help out with travel, technical, marketing and other exepsnese.

We're committed to keeping this site free and proving that model will work in the long run. We'd also like to keep the ads to a minimum. Some of our peers, who we respect immensely, resemble NASCAR rigs with the amount of ads and although we'd prefer to keep things clean/minimal around here, we can't do it without a little help.

Every little bit helps, whether you're a whale and want to party with the crew after the Spring Game or you just have a few bucks to spare.

Please consider donating today and we'll spare you further photos of Brian, our server tech.

On behalf of the entire Eleven Warriors team and the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research, I want to thank you for purchasing a VIP ticket to Eat Too, Brutus 2011. As you know, the event will be held this Saturday, October 29th, prior to the Wisconsin game. To ensure smooth planning, this guide will cover everything you need to know.

DRINK TOO, BRUTUS

Please join us for a happy hour in the Arena District to kickoff the weekend on Friday night. It's a great chance to mingle with D-list site writers and meet other readers.

• LOCATION: Bar Louie in the Arena District (504 Park Street)
• DATE/TIME: Friday, October 28th @ 7:30pm

EAT TOO, BRUTUS

This is the main event and will be catered by City BBQ and Cheryl's Cookies. Since you purchased a VIP pass, your food and drink are covered for you. You must only show up, ready to have a good time.

• LOCATION: The RV lots behind the Schottenstein Center (Detailed Map).
• DATE/TIME: Saturday, October 29th, 1pm - 6pm

Although you're more than welcome to wear your t-shirt to the event, you do not need to. However, to secure your VIP wristband(s), you must bring a photo ID.

Your food and drinks are covered at this event, but, if you make a mean chili or batch of brownies and you want to show off your cooking skills, you're more than welcome to bring additional food to the event. What quicker way to make additional friends?

Among the activities planned for the event is a charity raffle to help generate even more money for the Stefanie Spielman Fund. We will be selling raffle tickets for $2 each and will be able to accept cash or credit cards. Among the items up for raffle:

Mark Titus' sock from the Final Four

• Chris Spielman autographed helmet
• Mike Vrabel and Matt Finkes autographed helmet
• Cris Carter autographed football
• Robert Smith autographed football
• A poster autographed by the 2010-11 Ohio State men's basketball team
• A Final Four-worn sock, autographed by Mark Titus
• LeCharles Bentley autographed football
• Jimmy Jackson signed photograph
• Gameday prints from M. Walton Keys
• Phil Steele autographed previews
• Buckeye Vodka gift basket

POSTGAME PARTY at SCHMOOGATE

Last, but not least, your VIP wristband will gain you entry to a postgame party held by our friends at SchmooGate, so please don't discard it after the tailgate is over. Once the Badgers are vanquished, there's no telling where the night will go.

• LOCATION: 263-265 W Norwich, Columbus, OH 43201 (Detailed Map)

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you, again, for your support of the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research. We're looking forward to seeing you on Saturday.

As many of you know, Eat Too, Brutus is sold out this year (thank you!) and we're looking forward to an epic Saturday that leads to us giving the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research a nice fat check.

While we still have many surprises in store for Saturday, we wanted to go ahead and announce Drink Too, Brutus, which is a companion happy hour for the main event. Whether you purchased a VIP pass to Eat Too, Brutus or not, you're welcome to join us for drinks on Friday 10/28 - 7:30pm at Bar Louie in the Arena District.

This is a great chance to meet your favorite D-list bloggers and site regulars while enjoying the standard happy hour fare: $3 beers, and half-off appetizers. DJ has promised to show up in a top hat and a cane, and will be posing for photos, and Pitbull guarantees you'll have a real good time.

Again, just to bullet Drink Too, Brutus 2011 up:

• LOCATION: Bar Louie in the Arena District (504 Park Street)
• DATE/TIME: Friday, October 28th @ 7:30pm
• DECONSTRUCTING BOLLMAN, A SYMPOSIUM: To begin one hour into the night, or when everyone is drunk.

As Ramzy pointed out a few days ago, Blogs With Balls has launched the Untitled Sports Media Awards Project to recognize some of the shining stars in online sports journalism.

There are literally hundreds of different awards shows in entertainment, media and sports, but none of them have acknowledged a growing list of great internet sports writers who certainly deserve the recognition.

So we thought we’d create one.

We’re not just limiting this awards show to bloggers, either. We’ve always tried to gray the line between mainstream and independent media, so it certainly made sense for us to include bloggers, mainstream media, radio and TV in one amazing event.

The winners will ultimately be determined the fans, meaning that each award is backed by what the public really thinks. Who is the best sportswriter in the country? Who is the best in-game analyst? Who is the biggest rising star in our industry?

You help decide.

Now, we're pretty biased, but we're pretty proud of the hard work we put into 11W and would tickled (sans stuffed bear) if you could help spread the good word by taking a few minutes out of your day and nominating this site and its writers where it makes sense.

To do so, please visit the ballot here: http://blogswithballs.com/bwb4/usmap/

If we may do so, we humbly submit the following categories for your consideration:

• Best Sports Site - Writing Quality: Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com / @elevenwarriors
• Best Team-Specific Site: Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com / @elevenwarriors
• Best Sportswriter: Ramzy Nasrallah / Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com / @ramzyn
• Best Sportswriter - Humor: Ramzy Nasrallah / Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com / @ramzyn
• Best Young Sportswriter (Under 25): Johnny Ginter / Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com / @johnny11w
• Best Audio/Video/Radio Podcast: Eleven Dubcast / Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com/category/podcast
• Rising Star in Media: Ramzy Nasrallah / Eleven Warriors / http://www.elevenwarriors.com / @ramzyn

Thanks again for helping to make this the best Buckeye destination on the web. 

Just two days after delivering the incredibly scandalous (and incredibly incorrect) scoop behind the departure of Shelly Poe as OSU's football SID, SPORTSbyBROOKS is back with "previously unseen images" of the letter from the Department of Justice that started our winter of discontent.

For the first time ever -- EVER I say -- you can take a gander at the letter from the United States Attorney that spelled out the details of the player merchandise found in the possession of tattoo parlor owner Edward Rife, himself embroiled in a criminal investigation.

What's that you say?

The Cleveland Plain Dealer released that document way back on April 28th?

Whelp, carry on then.

Just received a university release spelling out some of the details for the Jesse Owens Spring Game. Because of a lack of bodies, it had been disclosed that the game would be O vs D, but here we find out more about the format, such as the fact that the ball will be spotted to create game-like situations with 3-6 scripted plays to follow.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Jesse Owens Spring Game honoring America’s finest is this Saturday as the Ohio State football team holds its annual spring scrimmage, presented by Nationwide, at Ohio Stadium. The football action will be in an offense-vs.-defense format, with both units battling for the right to wear the scarlet jerseys for August practice.

The Ohio State men’s lacrosse team will host Fairfield in an ECAC Lacrosse League game at 11 a.m. in the first portion of the doubleheader, with the football scrimmage beginning at 1:30 p.m. The Big Ten Network will televise both contests. Gates will open at 10 a.m., and the popular FanFest will begin at 10:30 outside St. John Arena. The Jesse Owens Classic in track and field will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium and will resume Sunday at noon.

In the football scrimmage, the ball will be put in play at various spots to create a variety of game-like situations. Each drill will consist of 3-6 scripted plays. If the offense sustains its drive on its first possession, it will be allowed to continue the drive beyond the scripted plays to its conclusion.  However, if the first drive is stopped and the offense starts over, the drive will end on the prescribed play no matter where the ball is located. Penalties will be assessed and will not count as a play if accepted. If the penalty is rejected, the play will count. Points can be scored by both the offense and the defense according to predetermined values for first downs, turnovers, long plays, etc.

Tickets are $7 in advance and $15 on Saturday at the stadium. Advance tickets may be purchased at the Athletics Ticket Office, online at OhioStateBuckeyes.com, through Ticketmaster and at area McDonald’s locations. Day of game sales are cash only. Ohio State students get into the game free with a valid ID. Children age 6 and under will be admitted free of charge. Seating is general admission. Proceeds from various events surrounding the scrimmage benefit the Ohio National Guard Family Readiness and Warrior Support Program, LiFE (Learning in Fitness & Education) through Sports Program and the Ruth and Jesse Owens Scholars Fund.

Special recognitions during the day will involve members of the Jesse Owens family and Buckeye football All-Americans. A number of active military and veterans groups, along with their families, will also be recognized. OSU coaches will wear military caps and the football team will be wearing special helmets painted in a silver, gray and black camouflage pattern registered and designed specifically for Ohio State. Each helmet will feature an American flag decal on the front and a Jesse Owens commemorative decal on the back, along with decals in memory of Jake Nickle, an OSU weight room volunteer, and Colleen Dobbins, daughter of assistant men’s lacrosse coach Dave Dobbins.

 

Open parking will be available in most of the lots surrounding Ohio Stadium. Shuttle service will be provided free of charge to fans parking in West Campus lots beginning at 9 a.m.  Disability parking is available in the lot directly east of Ohio Stadium. RV parking is at Bill Davis Stadium.

Saturday’s forecast calls for rain throughout the day.  Please be sure to dress appropriately; umbrellas cannot be used in Ohio Stadium. 

Buckeye fans set national records when 95,722 were on hand at the Horseshoe for the football Spring Game (2009) and 31,078 watched the lacrosse action in 2010.

From a university release:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Big Ten Conference announced its 2013 and 2014 conference football schedules today. Ohio State, a member of the Leaders division, will play four home and four away league contests in each of those seasons.

In 2013, the Buckeyes open Big Ten play hosting Wisconsin Sept. 28. Other Big Ten games in 2013: Oct. 5 at Northwestern; Oct. 19 vs. Iowa; Oct. 26 vs. Penn State; Nov. 2 at Purdue; Nov. 16 at Illinois; Nov. 23 vs. Indiana; Nov. 30 at Michigan.

Ohio State has two non-conference dates confirmed for the 2013 season: Aug. 31 vs. Vanderbilt at Ohio Stadium; and Sept. 14 at California.

In 2014, Ohio State begins Big Ten action hosting Purdue Oct. 4. Other Big Ten contests in 2014: Oct. 18 at Iowa; Oct. 25 vs. Northwestern; Nov. 1 at Wisconsin; Nov. 8 vs. Illinois; Nov. 15 at Penn State; Nov. 22 at Indiana; Nov. 29 vs. Michigan.

The Buckeyes’ non-conference games for 2014 are Aug. 30 vs. Navy in Baltimore; followed by three games at Ohio Stadium: Sept. 6 vs. Cincinnati; Sept. 13 vs. Kent State; and Sept. 20 vs. Virginia Tech.

The champions of the Legends Division and the Leaders Division will meet in the Big Ten Football Championship Game on the first Saturday of December, with the winner earning the Big Ten Championship and a chance to play in the Rose Bowl Game or Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game. The inaugural Big Ten Football Championship Game will be played in prime time on December 3, 2011, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, while the second Big Ten Football Championship Game is scheduled for Dec. 1, 2012, at a site to be determined. FOX Sports will serve as the official broadcast partner of the 2011‐16 Big Ten Football Championship Games.

Woo -- here's to playing in Evanston when it's not ice cold.

Cameron Heyward appeared on PFT Live earlier today and was asked about the Tressel situation (7:25):

Transcript:

It's been a rough process up here. I just got up here Sunday, but you know I'm a Buckeye through and through and I'm with Coach Tressel to the very end. Coach Tressel is a great guy and a great guy with great morals and you know, people make mistakes and I'm not saying I'm any better than anyone else, but it's how you deal with mistakes and how you bounce back from adversity that really shows the type of person you really are. I'm wishing the best for him. It's a tough process, you know, Ohio State is being looked upon very differently now and it's almost about the way we build it right back up. I mean, everyone knows at Ohio State, we don't rebuild, we reload. I think through all of this adversity, it's only going to make us stronger and they're going to do some amazing things next year.