Eleven Warriors

As if I couldn't be more disinterested with the beginning of tonight's NFL Draft, the cold hard facts suggest a B1G player won't be selected in the first round for the first time in 60 years. 

As it stands, the conference will be lucky to even land a second-round choice, which would likely come in the form of DE Kawann Short out of Purdue or else Buckeye defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins. 

Meanwhile, the SEC is projected to have roughly a dozen first-round picks. 

Though it's a virtual lock none of the Buckeyes from last year's squad will hear their name tonight, here's a list of those hoping to be drafted over the weekend with both Hankins and John Simon projected to be scooped up sometime Friday night:

Hankins, Simon, Reid Fragel, Jake Stoneburner, Nathan Williams, Zach Boren, Etienne Sabino, Ben Buchanan, Storm Klein, Orhian Johnson, Garrett Goebel, Travis Howard and Zach Domicone.

The expectation is a majority of these guys go undrafted while Fragel, Stoneburner and Williams are most often mentioned as Buckeyes to hear their name called from the podium.

Who is your sleeper to go undrafted but stick with a roster? I'll go way out there and take Domicone. I can see him possibly carving out a Donnie Nickey-ish special teams role for a few seasons. 

It's Wednesday, April 24, 2013, and Ohio State is halfway through their quest to fill up what will most assuredly end up as a third straight top-five class for Urban Meyer and his Buckeyes.

McLean is a sophomore DL from Maryland

That quest has seen the Buckeye coaches flying from coast to coast, attempting to "plant flags" in all corners of the country with the hopes of removing the SEC's firm grip on the national championship trophy.

One trip this week was to North Potomac, Maryland's Quince Orchard High School, the home of 6-foot-2, 260-pound sophomore defensive lineman Adam McLean. McLean has the size and speed to be a high-level national recruit by the time his high school career is finished, and has already garnered offers from powerhouse programs Florida State and Nebraska.

"Coach (Luke) Fickell by came to visit me, and they told my coach that they really like me," McLean said. "It was the first time I'd heard from them. They say they want me, so maybe the offer comes soon, but it hasn't come yet."

Because of NCAA rules, the Buckeyes were not able to talk to the sophomore star directly, but they were pretty clear in the message that they were relaying.

"(Coach Fickell) told my coach that they heard about me and they had checked out my tape out and loved it, and wanted to meet me," he said. "He said that they will definitely be in touch and that they would like to come down and visit me again in the spring."

McLean is one of many very exciting prospects from around the state of Maryland, and made sure that he was a part of the "Next Level Nation" combine in Frederick, Maryland. The "NLN" is one of the finest football prep programs on the East Coast and makes an annual trip to Columbus for Ohio State's summer camps. McLean stood out among the prospects in attendance. 

Going for it on fourth down necessarily entails some degree of risk acceptance by the head coach. 

Braxton wasn't too shabby in converting fourth downs

Fourth down conversions should be overwhelmingly attempted by teams that are (1) trailing and (2) in the fourth quarter. While there are certainly serial risk takers out there (interestingly, air raid teams are among the most willing to go for it), coaches often attempt fourth down conversions because their team is behind and there is a chance to win, or because there is no hope and, frankly, why not?

Stevieyo's study of 4th down conversions found that:

64 of the 87 attempts by teams trailing by more than one score above (dark red) came from teams that were, in fact, down by more than two scores, meaning my original theory was incorrect. The only justification I have to explain the numbers is that these teams are already down by such insurmountable amounts that even a failed pass attempt, and the subsequent field position of their opponent, is no longer a sufficient disincentive.

So what were Urban Meyer's 2012 Buckeyes like on fourth down? Was the points deficit ever so large that he might have well believed the Buckeyes would lose? If so, why not just sling the ball downfield or have Braxton try to make some magic on fourth? 

In short, no. Meyer was in fact the best in the country at risk management on fourth downs. 

Through 12 games, the Buckeyes attempted nine fourth down conversions, gaining a new set of downs on seven of those plays (77.8%). This ties Clemson for the best fourth down conversion percentage in the country.

While part of this may be explained by good judgment on when to punt versus attempt the conversion, a lot simply has to do with the relatively few fourth quarter deficits the Buckeyes faced.

Beyond Meyer's judgment and the Buckeyes' few overall attempts, the Buckeyes were undeniably proficient at converting fourth downs. Let's find out why. 

The game of football has changed. A lot.

Barker has waited patiently, is he over it?

Those changes have been for the good in some cases – like the commercialization of the sport which helps mid-major colleges gain television exposure they never would have had access to in years past – and bad for the game in some cases, like the commercialization of the sport which has taken college student-athletes and turned them into celebrities to the nth degree. 

As the game has changed on the field, and the attention paid to it off the field has increased, the attention paid to recruiting and recruiting websites (thankfully) has also increased exponentially, prompting thousands of fans and prospects alike to flock to Twitter, Facebook and whatever other medium that can be found. Day in and day out, overzealous fans pimp their favorite programs, hoping to somehow lure the nation's elite to whatever college campus serves as the home for their glory days. At the same time, recruits and their families work tirelessly to promote themselves and their talents so that they can land whatever offer they covet the most. 

It's actually kind of beautiful. The passion, the intensity, the love of the game; but the rush ends at some point, the appeal of non-stop attention ends at some point and when it's all said and done, the recruit who was so fawned over during his recruitment becomes just another small potato at a football factory pushing out order after order of large fries. It's a constant push for attention and affection from schools that offer much with little guarantees, and the players eat it up, often without truly considering half of the schools that offer them a scholarship, yet each offer is met with screams from the mountaintop.

One prominent Midwest high school football coach can't really understand that concept. Why clamor for offers and yet not truly consider every school that's willing to pony up hundreds of thousands of scholarship dollars for your services?

"Why do they want offers if they never take visits?" he said. "I don't understand it. How do you truly know what you want? I just wish kids would make sure. If you've waited your whole life for one school, then jump on it, but it's folks who never explore their options that I worry about. I'm just trying to make sure our kids see more schools, it's good for everyone."

COME AT ME

"Urban Meyer straight up died today," ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports, and literally every sports news website in the world will say. "We tried to warn him, ask him how his heart was doing, but did he listen? No. And now he is dead. Super damn dead. Here's what his heart looks like: phhhbbbbtttt."

It's what they're looking for, right? Seriously, they don't put most athletes through the same kind of wringer with regard to health questions that they do with Urban Meyer. Now almost a year and a half into his hiring, he's still fielding questions about his health, as he did in this ESPN segment. To wit:

 Asked by ESPN to compare the current Urban Meyer to the one who won the national 2006 national championship at Florida, Meyer said, “I’m in a good place right now. I think once you hit a certain point in your life you don’t want to go back there. I feel great and I’ve got a bunch of good guys I’m working with and I trust my staff, and in the off-season I’m off. ”

So, story over? Of course not! Why would you listen to anything that comes out of Urban Meyer's mouth? The dude is a walking boil of pent-up rage and heart palpitations, literally seconds away from blowing an indeterminate number of valves in front of a recruit and destroying the WHAC in the process. He and his family (who affirm that he's in full Jimmy Buffett mode) cannot be trusted to give accurate information about personal family matters.

There are not many spots left in the Ohio State 2014 recruiting class. Some experts say there may only be 10 spots left; others are a bit more optimistic and think the Buckeyes could stretch it from the current seven commitments to upwards of 20. There are a number of names that are well known still on the board that have been talked about ad nauseam like Raekwon McMillan, Dante Booker, Demarre Kitt, Jabrill Peppers, and any number of quarterbacks. 

Jalen Jelks is gaining recruiting steam

There are lots of opportunities for the next group of young men with the talent and the desire to join Urban Meyer's "Chase" for the next Buckeye crystal ball.

One player who does not yet have the chance to say "yes please" to the Buckeyes, but would be more than happy to receive that call is Phoenix (Ariz.) Desert Vista defensive end Jalen Jelks, a 6-foot-7, 250 pound lineman who has recently picked up major scholarship offers from some of the nation's elite football programs.

Arizona, Arizona State, Boise State, Oregon, Oregon State, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin have all offered the junior, who was born in Sidney (Oh.) but raised in Arizona since he was four years old, despite the fact that he's only played two years of competitive football.

"I played freshman football, but got injured and couldn't play," Jelks said. "I was able to start on JV when I got back and was moved to varsity."

When you're 6-foot-7, it's easy to get attention, but Jelks admits that he was not really ready for this sudden surge in recruiting interest. He is aware, however, of the best way to handle it.

"It was all very overwhelming at first," Jelks said of the attention, some of which got started on the forums of Eleven Warriors.

"Over time you just have to try and get used to it and make sure you make the right decisions."

It's essentially a dead period for Ohio State fans. The baseball season is ongoing, and the baseball Bucks still have a very good shot at winning a regular season Big Ten championship before thinking about the NCAA baseball tournament. Further, men's tennis is obliterating everything in its path with the goal of securing that elusive NCAA championship in a sport that the Buckeyes have dominated regionally. However, these are unlikely to elicit a statewide focus, though the author encourages the reader to attend a few baseball games and invest in watching the men's tennis program pursue a national championship.

J.T. Barrett

Alas, it's football that dominates the Ohio State fan's attention in April and Eleven Warriors' series previewing the incoming freshmen continues here. In the 10th installment of the fifth edition of this now 25-part series titled Better Know A Buckeye, I profile J.T. Barrett. Barrett, a quarterback from Wichita Falls, Texas, committed to Ohio State fairly early into the recruiting process, roughly three weeks after an unofficial visit in the spring of 2012. A very promising quarterback prospect who is recovering from a significant injury to end his senior season, Barrett enrolled at Ohio State in January to get started on what could be a very bright collegiate career.

His recruitment is retold below, focusing on the eclectic offers he had as well as his interest in Ohio State as the total package. Thereafter, I include a breakdown of strengths and weaknesses, focusing the latter mostly on the extent of his leg injury and how he recovers. I include highlights, a projection of a redshirt (spoiler alert: yes), and some miscellaneous things about Barrett you may find interesting before I conclude he is better known. He is put on "the board" accordingly.

Height: 6'1
Weight: 230 lbs
Fake 40: 4.6
High School: S.H. Rider High School; Wichita Falls, Texas

Follow @Jt_theQB

Conference realignment has been a source of frustration for fans since the first momentous shift in the summer of 2010. Nebraska abandoned its home of more than 100 years to join the Big Ten, while Colorado left behind more than a half century of traditions and memories for the Pac-12. 

The Cornhuskers were charter members of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association when it was founded in 1907. Save for two years – 1919 and 1920 – Nebraska enjoyed a 101-year relationship with what would eventually be known as the Big 12 Conference. But in the senseless era of conference expansion, it all came to an end.

Now athletic directors, who have been supportive of realignment largely because it fattens their wallets, will live the hindrance firsthand. It was reported last week that the Big Ten will move to a nine-game conference schedule, similar to what the Big 12 and Pac-12 have already instituted.

This scheduling philosophy will always have kinks because it requires a handful of teams to play more road conference games than home games. But it makes sense why a 10-team league like the Big 12 would be in favor, because it allows a round-robin format where every team plays one another.

For the Big Ten and other leagues with more than 10 members, the addition of one game to the conference schedule makes less sense when you consider the 14 teams will not match up together. What it would do is add even more value to one of college sports’ most valuable brands.

Naming things is hard.

Every year, millions of people are born into the world, and every year some parents name their children weird things. In spite of all the reasonable people naming babies Joshua or Olivia, a few radical souls name their children Morpheus or Moondog or Apple or something. These people may not be insane, but rather become overwhelmed by the enormity of naming a person who's going to be around for decades.

That's hard enough as is. Now imagine that you have to name a corporation. If you get it wrong, you're not screwing up a kid (you can always make more kids anyway), you're screwing up the effort of dozens or hundreds of people.

To make a long story short, trying to come up with a fancy name makes rational people lose their minds from the pressure in the process. This is the rationale I assume is behind the announced name of the new college football playoff... the College Football Playoff. The website is here, and the Twitter handle for it is here.

It's not impressive — milquetoast isn't bland enough to describe it — but it's accurate and parsimonious. If you ask for more creativity from these people, you'll get ideas that make Leaders and Legends look as sensible as East and West. At least Jim Delany has a dry sense of humor about the thing:

"I'll be happy with whatever. Obviously I'm not great at names."

The name of a playoff doesn't change much about the NCAA: the inconsistencies of wealth distribution, big money games, and movers and shakers remain in place. We still don't know many specifics about the playoff, other than six (!) sites hosting semifinals. But the name change makes college football a little more intellectually honest, and college football can be redeemed with more honesty.

The Ohio State coaching staff has done excellent work landing elite cornerbacks the past couple of years, thanks mostly to the impressive recruiting jobs from head coach Urban Meyer and defensive backs coach Kerry Coombs.

Jabrill Peppers is a five-star safety.

In the 2012 class the Bucks landed high upside corner Armani Reeves. They followed this up in the 2013 class by landing a stellar list of names including the likes of Eli Apple, Cam Burrows, and Gareon Conley.

This good run continues with the current class with the pledge of Detroit Cass Tech's Damon Webb, considered by some to be the best player in the state of Michigan.

You can never have enough elite corners, however, and many are still considering the Buckeyes. The list of cornerbacks on Ohio State's radar includes Jabrill Peppers, Jalen Tabor, Tony Brown, and Quincy Wilson, among others.

Saying that, the staff will probably only accept one more commitment from a corner, unless it's Marshon Lattimore and another corner who both want to commit since Lattimore could play on the offensive side of the ball at the college level.

Join us after the jump for a look at where Ohio State stands with Peppers, Tabor and some of the other corners mentioned above.