Eleven Warriors

Good morning. For a Tuesday in May, yesterday sure was a busy day on the college sports news front.

Let's see: Three years later, Bruce Pearl's son still has Aaron Craft on his mind, Michigan uses footballs that are definitely not made in Ohio, TBDBITL keeps getting better, Braxton Miller now stands at 13/2, trailing just Johnny Manziel at 9/2 to capture the Heisman Trophy and the Detroit Lions want to replace the Little Caesars Bowl with a game at Ford Field that will match the ACC and Big Ten.

Then, last night, Bossier City (LA) Parkway's Brandon Harris, the nation's top-ranked dual-threat quarterback, announced plans to visit Ohio State as part of a stop in Columbus for the Elite 11 quarterback camp on June 1.

There are seven Elite 11 camps held throughout the country – Dallas, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Chicago and San Francisco are already in the books – with the top participants selected for five-day event at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Notable alumni of the event include: Matt Leinart, Vince Young, Troy Smith, Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow, Ryan Mallet, Landry Jones and Andrew Luck.

Harris, long thought to be an LSU or Texas A&M lean, had planned to visit Ohio State at the end of June, but will get a look at the nation's best campus much sooner. Following his announced schedule change, our Jeremy Birmingham caught up with him.

“I can't wait to spin it now,” Harris said. “Just looking forward to the chance to throw in that beautiful stadium.”

Yes, please.

While Urban Meyer and his staff are in the midst of building a very impressive 2014 recruiting class, it's hard to forgot about the top three class the Buckeyes signed in 2013.

Marshall is expected to make an immediate impact

A couple of weeks ago we took a look at the players I felt would come in to Columbus and make the biggest impact freshmen year. 

Today is a first part of a three part series (defense will have two parts) that will take a look back at the players the Buckeyes got in the 2013 class. I will breakdown the impact the recruit could make in Scarlet and Grey.

First up is a focus on the prospects the Buckeyes signed on the offensive side of the ball. The offensive players signed include: quarterback JT Barrett, running back Ezekiel Elliott, athlete Dontre Wilson, wide receivers James Clark, Jalin Marshall and Corey Smith, tight end Marcus Baugh, and linemen Timothy Gardner and Evan Lisle.

Join us as we break down what these signees mean to the Ohio State program in 2013 and beyond.

For Ohio State to fulfill expectations of themselves, fans and the national media - aka winning the 2013 BCS national championship - the Buckeyes will most likely have to post an undefeated 13-0 record. 

Sure, a healthy smattering of one-loss teams have won the national title, including six of the last 11 squads to hoist the crystal football since Ohio State ran the table back in 2002, with Alabama taking back-to-back titles despite dropping a game each season.  

Not surprisingly, all six of those one-loss champs hailed form the Southeastern Conference. 

Meanwhile, the B1G was busy morphing into the nation's punching bag. That fact, along with Ohio State's unquestionably weak schedule, makes it pretty safe to deduct the Buckeyes must run the table if they have any designs on meeting the growing expectations by capturing the final installment of the BCS national championship. 

Looking at the unimpressive schedule, the march to 13-0 would have to feature a non-conference win at Cal, and shortly thereafter back-to-back wins over Wisconsin and at upstart Northwestern, both under the lights. 

Jared Abbrederis of the Leaders Division third-place five-loss Wisconsin Badgers celebrates the 2012 B1G Title.

The Big Ten's deteriorating reputation in football has been a tragic comedy in three acts.

First, there's the Southeastern Conference, which is 17-8 in BCS bowls and owns the past seven crystal balls. That kind of ruthless domination requires a counterbalance, and since no one seems to notice or care that the ACC is 3-13 (with landmark wins over Northern Illinois, Cincinnati and a pre-ACC Virginia Tech) or that the Big XII is 9-11 in those games, the Big Ten (13-14) gets to be the big slacker. Act I: Perception.

Second, despite the BTN money train and nationally-competitive athletics spending overall there seems to be very little appetite among the majority of B1G programs to join the arms race in football, which results in no fewer than seven programs who are consistently punching up in games against other major conference teams.

Michigan and Ohio State are the only two programs consistently recruiting with significantly higher aspirations than simply achieving bowl eligibility. Unfortunately Penn State had to replace its naked emperor with crippling sanctions, otherwise that could be a three-team league. Act II: Reality.

And third is Wisconsin, which emerged 20 seasons ago from the Big Ten's basement under Barry Alvarez and has overstayed its welcome recently with the aid of both a blighted conference blinded by easy television money as well as deliberately weak and fortunate scheduling.

The Badgers, the defending B1G champions, are pursuing their fourth consecutive Rose Bowl trip. In any other period this would easily be the mark of a dynasty. In this era, it reinforces just how far the Big Ten has fallen.

Act III: Historical context. If Wisconsin is what now constitutes the B1G's national protagonist, this conference must be pretty awful.

Ohio State has long had an acrimonious relationship with the Southeastern Conference. On the football field, the SEC has made a habit out of defeating the Buckeyes and, in some cases, embarrassing them. Tennessee and Kentucky added to the frustration on the hardwood, when the two schools bounced Ohio State from the NCAA Tournament in years that offered high hopes. Aside from Michigan, no one is more hated in Columbus than the SEC.

The competition is even entering band circles now. SEC bands have traveled extensively through the years, often attending every football game in a season. The Ohio State University Marching Band will soon be joining that list, thanks to a new source of funding.

Gordon Gee, Gene Smith and the powers that be at Ohio State got together and determined that the College of Arts and Sciences and athletic department would continue financing the band. But one key change would be the addition of the Development Office of the President. Instead of a miniscule $220,000 operating budget – ninth in the Big Ten – the Buckeyes will have $1 million, which vaults them to first. With it comes more travel.

The band will attend road games at California, Purdue, Illinois and Michigan. The Cal trip will include a performance in Los Angeles, a drive up the California coast and stops at Pixar Studios and Skywalker Ranch, home of Star Wars creator George Lucas. The journey to Pixar will be a reunion for some employees, as the film company has roots at Ohio State and is known to employ OSU graduates.

Good morning, and welcome to the Skull Session.

Because an intro ought to have something fun in it, Urban Meyer's visage in stone is one tough-looking dude (truly, he has granite chin). However, the focus today is on reflection on something more sober: the tornado that hit Oklahoma yesterday.

The tornado has wrought extensive damage and killed dozens; by some reports it is the most powerful tornado in history. Because of the destruction, whatever material support you can provide will help.

The American Red Cross's site is here. There are other ways to donate, and other worthy charities as well. Though intangible, thoughts and prayers do matter as well. Getting involved, however you choose to do it, matters.

With that said, onto some Buckeye news.

Fossils.

I love 'em! Little ancient monster bones buried in the dirt, they're like terrifying Easter eggs put in the ground for weird kids and weirder adults to dig up and show off to other weird kids and weird adults.

And if you were a weird kid (I was), you likely spent a fairly large percentage of your waking hours looking for fossils, hoping that by some insane stroke of luck you'd find a T-Rex femur or Deinonychus claw stuck in the sheet rock that your neighbors used to edge their lawns. After all, that's more or less how dinosaur fossils were found in the late 1800s, and if it was good enough for Othniel Marsh then it was good enough for Johnny Ginter.

One advantage that I had was that I grew up near Caesar Creek, where I did a lot of fishing and staring at rocks in order to find the remains of whatever goofy thing the Cambrian era decided to spit out into the universe. I was fascinated by the sheer amount of fossils around and how incredibly crappy most of them were; sometimes you would find a petrified shell thing, which was awesome, but most of the time it was just bits and pieces of an evolutionary dead end that we'd now serve as an appetizer at Red Lobster.

State fossils gave me hope. Because dagnabit, if there's enough of a certain type of fossil within a state to make it the official state fossil, it stands to reason that there must be literally trillions of the things buried in the ground, and all I needed to do was dig around with a trowel in my backyard long enough and I'd find one, probably way more though because I labored under the impression that I was smart.

I wasn't, and I'm not, and I never found anything cool outside of Caesar Creek or apologized to my mom for tearing up her yard. But official state fossils are still pretty rad. 

Part of the infamous clown show, the Ohio State receiving corps was coming in with little fanfare in 2012.

A year prior, the combination of an inexperienced freshman QB coupled with an offense in the absence of Jim Tressel gave the receivers few chances to showcase their abilities (See example A). The terrible mix ultimately lead to a team high 14 receptions over the course of the season.

Heading into 2012, it was evident the receivers’ heads were swimming as they struggled to grasp Coach Meyer’s spread offense.

Dropped balls, shoddy routes and a lack of a clear number 1 had everyone in Columbus fearing the worst for the passing game.

Luckily the group stepped up. While far from the best receiving corps in the country, the likes of Corey Brown, Devin Smith, Evan Spencer and Chris Fields presented themselves as a serviceable unit, able to make plays when called upon.

By now, you’ve probably seen the 2014 Ohio State and/or Big Ten football schedule. As with any football schedule, there are easier and tougher games and stretches along the way.

The Buckeyes have a schedule that seems to settle somewhere between easy and difficult, although much can happen before the 2014 season arrives. The purpose here is to take a way-too-soon look at Ohio State’s road in 2014, and also to check out some of the more interesting aspects of the B1G schedule.

Ohio State’s schedule starts with a rare neutral site contest in Baltimore on Aug. 30, against the option attack of the U.S. Naval Academy. It’s currently the only non-conference game away from Ohio Stadium. Should the Buckeyes prevail, they’ll carry all the momentum into…a bye week.

There’s still time to add a game for Sept. 6 down the road, but perhaps Urban Meyer will opt to keep that open date to adequately prepare for a home tilt against Kent State. The Golden Flashes will bring their brand of MACtion to the Horseshoe on Sept. 13

The 2014 non-conference highlight occurs seven days later when the Virginia Tech Hokies of the ACC visit the banks of the Olentangy. The non-conference schedule concludes Sept. 27 against Cincinnati. Things can get unnecessarily close for comfort when the Buckeyes and Bearcats dance.

Rod Smith is not Ohio State’s starting running back entering his junior year. His career trajectory hasn’t been in lockstep with the mental map drawn up his senior year of high school, but don’t let his place on the depth chart fool you. Smith factors in nicely for what head coach Urban Meyer and offensive coordinator Tom Herman hope to accomplish on offense.

There was no competition for the starting running back spot in the spring. Carlos Hyde’s nearly 1,000-yard season and subsequent return for his final season as a Buckeye put an end to any musical chairs. But the second-string competition also was nonexistent, and that’s because of the flare Smith displayed in Ohio State's 12-0 year.

When it comes to making the most of opportunities, Smith took the ball and ran – literally. He only received 32 carries in nine games, but his total rushing yards added up to 215, an average of 6.7 yards per carry. Two plays stick out from the others: a 33-yard touchdown run against Nebraska that included five broken tackles and a 51-yard touchdown reception versus Illinois.