Eleven Warriors

One thousand thirteen days ago, I wrote my very first piece on Eleven Warriors. At the time, I spent 8 hours, 5 days a week answering phone calls from irate consumers entering a world of strangeness and unfamiliarity and helping them make sense of it all. In my spare time, I aimed to provide passageway on a similar bridge, but in the opposite direction.

Today I depart 11W after almost three years of features, news, pop culture references, probably enjoying hearing the sound of my own voice too much, times that can never be taken away from us, and memories we'll never get back. The ride was equal parts terrifying adrenaline rush, humbling plunge into the unknown, exhausting marathon, and Indian Summer. But like all good things, it must eventually come to an end.

The evolution of the site during my tenure has been remarkable. From a space where a low double digit number of some beautifully mad devotees to the likes of P.J. Hill and drive by visitors combined to scrape together four figures of eye balls on a good day, to one that laps all its nearest competition combined. There's no question that the Death Star in the Ohio State blogging galaxy is now fully operational.

I'd be remiss if I didn't thank the man that keeps the 11W trains running on time, Jason Priestas. Under his leadership the site has become the only not optional destination on the internet for Ohio State news and analysis and will unquestionably be the standard bearer for years to come. The entire site leadership core, amongst them Chris Lauderback, Alex Gleitman, Corey Carpenter, and later Ramzy Nasrallah, are every bit as awesome people as they are writers (which is to say, really something) and the heart of the site beats in time with the blood, sweat, and tears they've poured into making it what it is. And of course I have to give special credit to my long time Dubcast cohost and brother in aural arms, Johnny Ginter. I've spent more time in the last two years on "the phone" with him than any significant other and my parents combined; that pretty much says it all. I couldn't be prouder to have had the privilege to have my name printed in the same byline space as so many incredible people.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who constitutes the phenomenal readership of the site (ed. note: this means you). The Ohio State fan base has for too long taken a beating and been dragged through the mud unfairly for supposedly being a short sighted, inwardly focused, myopic group of bandwagoneers. Anyone from the great state of Ohio or who's spent longer than a fortnight around these parts can't possibly say anything but otherwise. I can not imagine a more passionate, critical, but above all else, invested group of people, and I'm honored to share the same school of affiliation.

Essentially everything I have good in my life, both professionally and personally, I owe on some level to each and every one of you. I genuinely thank you from the bottom of my scarlet and gray blood pumping heart.

I like to imagine that if we wave goodbye indefinitely, over a long enough time line, we'll simply be waving hello. Until we get there in the continuum, you can follow me on twitter or heck, we're all family here, e-mail me (luke dot zimmermann at sbnation dot com) should the motivation ever strike.

Good luck, godspeed, and of course, Go Bucks.

As was first reported on pay sites and the like then later corroborated (ironically through twitter), Urban Meyer's first act beyond forcing the players to meet at 7 AM the morning following a game and long flight back to Columbus was to forbid the Ohio State football players from using the popular social media service twitter.

Much of what needs to be said has already been hashed out in the comments in the Buckshot linked above, however, cutting briefly to brass tacks:

• You either get twitter¹ or you don't. If it's not your cup of tea, your opinion is probably that this is a good thing.
• You're not right (at least not in full). Freedom for young people to embrace responsibility while establishing their independence and sense of self/identity is paramount to the college experience, the experience of a student athlete, and what helps establish the tone for individuals for the rest of their lives. Yes, while the majority of what the athletes have to say amount to minutiae at best, it's no different from much of the jawing that goes on around the bunk beds four student athletes share in the towers or in a curiously accessorized off-315 apartment multiple players spend the majority of their times at. There is bad, wasteful narcissism on twitter², but these kids being themselves don't constitute it. 
• If you genuinely believe telling 18-22 year olds to not use a website/communication medium is an effective form of discipline, you're not considering the wide variety of channels and avenues these individuals have to potentially distract themselves. Lest we forget that (now former) Kansas coach forbid his players from cursing as a means to instill morals and self discipline (2-year profanity free seasons of 5-19 football later...) while Louisville coach Charlie Strong attributed a critical November conference loss to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the distraction it caused his team. Speaking as someone who would stay up watching golden era seasons of The Simpsons then sleeping through Psych 110, stay in the dorms until the only possibility was to arrive at recitation at asshole o'clock to play an extra quarter of Madden 05 on PlayStation 2, or, you know, forego homework/studying to do the sort of taboo things college students on their own for their first time (and certainly without the time commitment of a student athlete in a money sport), if individuals want to find a distraction from their obligations/responsibilities, they will. Need proof? Call it Facebook. Google+, BlackPlanet, WorldStarHipHop, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or whatever; taking away one channel does not remove the television. If Meyer and co. were carrying out such an initiative strictly for disciplinary purposes, I'd be ripping it a new one for being the same mindless, hollow class of motivating tactics that removing the names on the back of a jersey or taking the logos off a helmet until a player earns them  fit into . Without the utmost creativity (or an audience with an attention span shorter than most television shows and an acumen to match), gimmicky ploys like that seldom amount to anything that pushing the proper buttons would anyway (see: the removal of Nebraska black shirts under Bill Callahan or the green Notre Dame jerseys under EVERYONE).
• Lastly, the above premise (that this is some kind of disciplinary tactic) is completely bunk. This is almost assuredly strictly for restriction of trade purposes. Urban and his deputies are masters of pre-emptive crisis communication and they want to control the message by any means necessary. If you support Machiavellian strategery and playbooking from the likes of Rove and Carville, celebrate this move accordingly and get ready for more of the same.

Whew. The further irony of people whining in either direction about the topic on social media (particularly at going to such lengths as to merit our questioning their credentials to even be on it in the first place) is hopefully not lost on us, but what is important is to remember the good times we had. Regardless of your stance on players' freedom of speech/expression or your thoughts on the medium/practice as a whole, laughing is something we all champion dearly. Sure a twitter blackout may snuff out a few amateur level scoops that beat types, bloggers, and fans would love to claim first dibs on (which, you know, is something obnoxious internet comments from the mid 2000's did), but what it will really deprive us all of is the unintentional comedy vicariously living through someone with a uniquely different world view than our own can provide. We begin with food, which Ohio State players left little to the imagination as to what they liked. In order:

If you watched a television (or re-)broadcast of last night's classic, you were probably mindful that until the mind boggling, game definitive touchdown pass (and even then not without a bit of internal facial muscle tape delay), Braxton Miller showed approximately zero reactions conducive to that of being a normal, reactive human being. In honor of his stoicness, it's only appropriate to see the dead pan look he modeled (with great applomb, mind you) through the entirety of the contest until it became impossible for even a robot to not learn to love except instead throughout important corner stones in history and pop culture alike:

(For DJ)