Eleven Warriors

Schedules are never expected to be easy when you play in a major conference. There are years when a league might be down, but anticipating stress-free Saturdays from September through November is not advised. If that’s the mindset, a letdown is inevitable.

When the Big Ten announced it would be going to a nine-game schedule in 2016, there were mixed reviews. What was immediately evident was the fact that Ohio State was placed in the tougher of the two divisions. Doing the age-old eye test and examining historical data of the past 20 years reveals the likes of Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland have had a wider range of success than Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Northwestern.

“I think Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State and Nebraska were the four that were looked at as No. 1 seeds,” said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. “Three of the four are in the East, and also Iowa and Wisconsin were viewed as the line right below that. With Nebraska and the emergence of Northwestern as a 10-win team, we felt there was enough competitive balance.”

I started writing for Eleven Warriors nearly two years ago, in the summer of 2011. In many ways, it seems like a longer than that because my life has changed quite a bit, almost entirely for the better¹, either directly or indirectly as a result of being part of this site.

After numerous Skull Sessions — one almost every single week since I began — today's will be my last. When I first started, I remember comparing myself to glass ceiling-breaking Peggy Olson, and like Peggy, I knew when it was my time to step away. 

Admittedly, the analogy kind of dies there, since I'm not leaving for another agency and really, the most recent episode of Mad Men threw that storyline for a loop. Regardless, I will still be out there somewhere in the interwebs, though I will try to contain my thoughts on Ohio State sports and TV to 140-character tweets. 

Other than this pretty cool video, yesterday wasn't a very eventful day for Ohio State — which is at least good news in relation to the Fulmer Cup — so if you'll indulge me, I'd like to take a minute to thank everyone, from the other writers on the site to the readers.

Everyone on staff here puts a lot of time and effort into 11W, so please remember that and be nice to them. Not only do I like these guys personally, but I'm also a fan of their work and will continue to read it. 

By and large, the commenters have been very kind to me, which I have always greatly appreciated. I hope you have enjoyed my take on the Buckeyes, my pop culture references, my beloved footnotes², and for those who listened, my year of co-hosting the Dubcast with Johnny. Since this past football season, I've also been working behind the scenes as a copyeditor and even if you didn't know that, I hope you noticed fewer typos and the proper usage of premiere vs. premier around here.

I'm extremely grateful for my almost two years with the site and I will sincerely miss being a part of its daily operations, but I'm also looking forward to spending some of that free time with Netflix and finding out if I have the attention span anymore to read books. 

Now that I've more or less said goodbye, it's time for the actual Skull Session portion of this post. It'll be One More for the Road, but as we know, All Good Things... must come to The End. Enough of the Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, though. Everyone's Waiting.

Flowers.

They're everywhere. Surrounding us. Plotting. Planning. Scheming.

Naw, just foolin'! As we discussed a few weeks ago, birds are the true messengers of Satan, not the lowly flower. Roses and carnations are okay, I guess, but if we're being real (realer than real), I have pretty much zero interest in the bourgeois nonsense that is the modern day house flower industry.

Nope, I like my flowers wild and free, like me. Plus, I'm always fascinated by the process in which a state actually goes out of its way to select a state wildflower. It's like magnets, man; how does it even work?

Still, many states are lame and do not have a designated wildflower, and in that instance I decided to debase myself by ranking their boring ol' regular flower instead. I know, I feel dirty too.

So today I've decided to talk a little about the wildflower or flower in question, and then offer up my best theory as to how it ended up as a meaningless symbol of a state that likely was trying to burnish its green thumb cred without actually having to do anything effectual that would actually burnish its green thumb cred. Enjoy!

Beyonce demanding a ring for 2-10 Illinois

If you are in any way pleased with it than you should put a ring on it. 

That’s the message being sent by some college football coaches who have decided to hand out gaudy finger pieces to players as a signifier of a successful season, even if “successful” is up for interpretation.

As you know, your very own Ohio State recently caught some heat for distributing 12-0 rings to players to commemorate an undefeated season.

Let’s hear it, Mark!

Obviously Mark May despises the idea, but I’m of the camp that believes any flawless outing in terms of a sporting record shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Slightly more controversial is the practice of handing out rings commemorating valiant, albeit flawed campaigns. Let’s take a look at some of the 2012 efforts coaches deemed ring-worthy.

A year ago, Lenzelle Smith Jr. had a career that appeared to be trending toward David Lighty territory. Smith showed he could defend and do whatever was necessary to help his team win — scoring, rebounding, and slashing into the paint to either score or open up a teammate. He just needed to become more consistent.

For Lenzelle Smith Jr., consistency has been hard to find.

Smith appeared to be an important cog to the 2012-13 Buckeyes, especially early.

He opened the season with 33 points in the first two games, on 12/20 shooting. He hit 5/6 from the three-point line and 4/6 from the stripe in those games, grabbing nine boards, with three assists. That was the Smith we expected to see, despite the level of competition (Albany, Rhode Island) not exactly being the highest quality.

Then the inconsistency showed up. Smith went 0/5 and failed to score in Ohio State’s 77-66 win over Washington. A passable 13-point performance against Missouri-Kansas City was followed by 6/21 (3/12 from three) in games against Duke and Northern Kentucky.

That trend continued throughout the season for Zelle. A 7/10 performance against UNC-Asheville was good. A 3/13 (0/7 from three) night against Kansas was not.

Smith couldn’t seem to put together a prolonged stretch of solid play. He started the B1G schedule with 17 points (6/9 shooting, 5/7 from three) and six boards against Nebraska. But in the next four games — at Illinois, at Purdue, vs. Michigan and at Michigan State — Lenzelle scored 20 total points and turned the ball over 13 times. Two of those games were losses. He did manage 29 rebounds in those games, but his 7/26 shooting in that span was less than optimal.

There were times during that stretch when the Buckeyes were much better off with the junior on the bench. That was partly due to Shannon Scott's emergence, but also Smith's inconsistency.

Zelle backed up a pair of average outings against Iowa and Penn State with just five points in the home win over Wisconsin on Jan. 29. Then he destroyed Nebrasketball again with 6/6 shooting (3/3 from downtown) in Lincoln, finishing with 21 points, but he tallied more turnovers (2) than rebounds (1) in the contest.

It’s easy to strike up a conversation about Ohio State’s football schedule when the Buckeyes have “Michigan” printed for late November. The annual clash of college football titans is regarded as one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports. It’s a throw-the-records-out type of game that is competitive and physical on an almost yearly basis.

Trips to Ann Arbor are especially treacherous for Ohio State. But that isn’t until the 12th game. Before that, the Buckeyes must navigate a relatively light course. All it takes is one slip-up, though. It only takes one glance at the past, oh, 143 seasons to understand the difficulty of traversing a full schedule unscathed. Even in victory, last season’s Purdue game was a perfect example.

When Ohio State finished 12-0 last year, chatter about a national championship haltered fairly quickly due to the Buckeyes’ strength of schedule. It could be a detriment again in a season Ohio State is eligible for the postseason. A September trip to California will not present the Buckeyes with an easy victory, as the Golden Bears showed in Columbus last year. Cal has a new, up-tempo offense this season and the first road test is never relaxed. But where the slate got tougher was the announcement of a night game at Northwestern.

More than 57,000 students, families and friends were on hand at Ohio Stadium yesterday to take in Ohio State's Spring 2013 commencement – the school's 403rd commencement and second-largest ever.

Of the 10,143 degrees and certificated awarded, 111 of them went to current and former Ohio State student-athletes. Among those walking included Max Stearns, Zach Boren, Tiffany Cameron, Amanda Furrer, Brady Hjelle and C.J. Magrum.

Stearns, the 2013 Big Ten Medal of Honor winner, was a three-time All-American on the sabre, including first-team honors during Ohio State's 2012 national championship fencing run. More impressively, he graduated with a 4.0 GPA in political science and netted a NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, which he'll use at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State in the fall.

Cameron leaves Ohio State as the school's all-time leading goal scorer, Furrer was a 2012 London Olympian on the shooting team, Hjelle became just the third Buckeye to earn First Team All-America accolades as a wall of a goalie for the hockey team and Magrum leaves Ohio State with more than 80 wins as a wrestler, but again, more importantly, a four-time Ohio State Scholar Athlete and Big Ten Distinguished Scholar.

Boren, of course, is America's favorite fullbacker, and was one of six members of the undefeated 2012 Ohio State football team to receive undergraduate degrees Sunday. Joining Boren (sports and leisure studies) were: DL Dalton Britt (criminology), FB Adam Homan (exercise science), CB Travis Howard (family resource management), S Orhian Johnson (sports and leisure studies) and LB Ross Oltorik (communications).

Another former player, Mike Collins, a three-year starter on the defensive line and team captain in 2001, graduated with a degree in sociology through the athletic department's degree completion program.

Congratulations to every Buckeye, whether an athlete or not, for completing one of life's big journeys.

It's been my experience that there are few fan bases that have fans as committed and as thoroughly excellent as Ohio State fans. They are a dedicated bunch indeed, supportive of the program through the ups and downs and always willing to show up and cheer on their eleven warriors, brave and bold.

Relax Buckeye fans.

It is that commitment to the Buckeyes that no doubt drives their refusal to settle for any hint of mediocrity within the school's large – and often in charge – athletic department. Coaches with historical winning percentages, responsible for rebuilding and maintaining the nation's elite sports programs, are often discarded and replaced by the "next" great coach, and so on and so forth. 

For Buckeye fans, it's been a fairly pleasant ride the last 15 years or so. The football program has remained in the national spotlight – albeit with a few bumps in the road – and the lure of playing football at Ohio State has not worn off for most of Ohio's best and a good number of the country's finest athletes who recognize a chance to play at Ohio State as rare and special.

CAN YOU WIN WITH MEDIOCRE RECRUITING?

From 2002–11, Ohio State – despite a historic 10-year stretch that saw a 105-25 record – struggled (for the most part) to land nationally lauded recruiting classes.

In fact, during that 10-year run, only three times did Jim Tressel put together a Rivals.com Top 10 recruiting class at Ohio State. His average finish? Just 14.4, and only three classes (2002, 2008, and 2009) finished in the top 10 of Rivals rankings.

One area that saw the Buckeyes struggle mightily in recruiting was the offensive line, an area that Tressel seemed to allow his offensive line coach, Jim Bollman, to recruit as he saw fit. The normally hands-on and micromanaging Tressel must've turned a blind eye to Bollman's recruiting, because there's no other explanation for how it could have produced such lackluster results.

Recruiting has become a sport inside a sport. In the Midwest and Deep South, tracking blue-chip prospects is a weekly venture. It takes a special coach to process in-season strategy and recruiting all together. But Urban Meyer has mastered that craft, signing top-five classes for what seems like every year in the past decade.

Once again, when Signing Day came along in February, Meyer inked a (five) star-studded group of future Buckeyes. A handful are considered to be elite playmakers that could make an immediate impact this fall. But as Meyer and offensive coordinator Tom Herman said during spring practice, they’re concentrating on the guys that are already present.

One current member is wide receiver Corey “Philly” Brown. And after a 60-catch season, he – and the coaches – is looking for an even bigger impact during his senior season.

“We were not near as good as what we needed to be, so they knew coming into this winter what they had to do,” said wide receivers coach Zach Smith about his position group. “There was not a lot of explaining, planning or motivating because they knew what they had to do. They have to finish out the rest of the spring strong, and then this summer has to be the best summer in the history of Ohio State football for my group.”