Eleven Warriors

If Saturday night's alright for fighting, what do we Saturday morning? I imagine there's some level of calisthenics we all have to do in order to prepare for fighting tonight.

Perhaps such preparation for tonight's fight comes in the form of a Saturday Skull Session, which leads off with the latest black eye Rutgers has to show around the country.

 RUTGERS CAN'T BUY A BREAK (SPOILER ALERT: IT CAN'T AFFORD ONE). Of course, all of this has to happen with Rutgers delivered to the Big Ten. We can't LOL at the Big East for this, in large part because it no longer exists in its familiar form.

We're all aware of the recent basketball scandal at Rutgers, which saw its former head coach, Mike Rice, videotaped hurling verbal abuse at his players and using basketballs a projectiles at his players' faces. The scandal became even bigger than it could have been because Rutgers' then-athletic director, Tim Pernetti, was aware of the extent of the abuse and offered a small punishment that did not fit the crime. His effort to rehabilitate Rice proved inadequate and eventually he resigned his position.

Meanwhile, Rutgers hoped to start anew by hiring Eddie Jordan to lead the program into the Big Ten. Eddie Jordan is arguably Rutgers' basketball highest profile alumnus, having been a part of the school's celebrated 1976 Final Four team and rising to the top ranks of basketball coaching with the Sacramento Kings, Washington Wizards, and Philadelphia 76ers.

If only he were an alumnus of the actual university he attended.

It turns out Eddie Jordan did not graduate from The State University of New Jersey like the athletic department claimed he did in 1977.

Around the Oval is Eleven Warriors' weekly love letter to Ohio State sports that don't get the coverage they should.

Another week, another conference championship. After seeing the men's tennis team revel in their fantastic Big Ten tournament win, the Ohio State men's lacrosse team decided to get in on the act themselves, winning the ECAC Championship after beating rivals Denver.

Having already upset the No. 2 seed Loyola in the semi, attentions turned to the championship and a Pioneers team who—like Loyola—had gotten the better of the Buckeyes during the regular season. That game finished 10-9, and Saturday's final was just as tight with a halftime score of 6-6. Each team took the lead in the third quarter but again honors were even once the final period began. 

Parity remained in tact until a little over four minutes were left on the clock, when professional scorer Logan Schuss scored his fortieth goal of the season to give the Buckeyes an edge that felt like a championship-winning one. Fast forward a minute and that was no longer the case. Denver's Eric Law found a way past goalie Greg Dutton to tie things up yet again. When all seemed to point to an extra session, sophomore Turner Evans combined with Jesse King to fire a shot into the net and score the winning goal with only :24 remaining. 

The 11-10 victory gave the program their first ECAC title, and now they host an NCAA tournament game for the first time, against Towson on Sunday at Ohio Stadium. The game is at 3 p.m. and can be seen on ESPNU. 

Let’s face it, being a fan and/or alum of THE Ohio State University is a source of great pride. One of the most common ways that Buckeyes show their pride is by taking the now-famous O-H-I-O photo.  As with anything in life, there are right ways and wrong ways to do this.

A bit sloppy with the H, bro, but a decent overall effort.

Our goal here is to help you avoid the pitfalls of taking a bad O-H-I-O picture and maximize the quality of your keepsake photograph. You don't want to embarrass yourself, and Buckeye Nation. Don't worry, we’ll show you plenty of examples after the jump, noting the positives and negatives involved.

There are three major components to preparing a high quality O-H-I-O photo — location, form, and creativity.

Location is the least important element in your picture. Obviously, the more exotic the locale, the more interesting your photo will be. An underwater O-H-I-O in scuba gear, although done many times before, is much more interesting than your back yard (unless you have a really cool back yard).  The top of Kilimanjaro is a better location than your local dog park. Ohio State fans have taken pictures all over this world of ours, from Peru, to Cameroon, to Afghanistan, to China, to Australia, and everywhere else. The best O-H-I-O photos capture the flavor of their locations.

Form is a very important part of your O-H-I-O experience. If you’re going to do this thing, be sure to do it right. If you’re an O, make your arms as round as possible. An H should hold its arms up straight as if signaling a Braxton Miller touchdown pass. Extend the arms directly above the shoulders, with elbows straight. The I is the trickiest letter to represent. The best I is achieved by placing the hands together, with full overhead arm extension and as little elbow bend as possible. Pay attention to your body type, and be honest. Are you really an I or you more of an O?

Creativity can make your O-H-I-O stand out from all the others. Using a landmark as a letter is a good idea if you pull of the execution correctly, and it’s essential when you have less than four people. Standing next to the Washington Monument and using it as the I is only acceptable when accounting for viewer perspective. Your I shouldn’t tower a hundred feet over the other letters, after all. Also, using the Washington Monument is pretty cliché at this point. You can do better.

Let’s look at some examples:

The changing colors of leaves is how most in the Midwest judge the evolution from summer to fall. Red hues turn to orange and the air becomes more crisp. But in Piqua all one needs to do is look at a resident’s driveway. If there’s an Indian head painted on, it’s football season.

That doesn’t mean locals aren’t pondering the glory of football the other eight months of the year. The town of roughly 21,000, located some 30 miles north of Dayton, is distinctly Ohio. There are fields where farmers put in a hard day’s work, downtown businesses, working class neighborhoods and football.

“When you talk about Piqua football, it’s definitely a year-round situation,” said head coach Bill Nees. “You can pick up the newspaper in January or February and find articles. It’s almost like a year-round process, even with the media giving everyone updates with what’s going on.”

They’ve been playing high school football in Piqua for more than a century. Five times the Indians have finished undefeated. The lone state championship came following the 2006 season, when Piqua, led by Brandon Saine, capped a 13-2 year with a victory over Pickerington Central.

“It is one of those places where everyone knows everyone,” said Piqua native and former Ohio State defensive end Matt Finkes. “When you’re in high school and you play football everyone knows who you are. Football is a big part of the culture. It’s a great atmosphere.”

Good morning and welcome to your Friday Skull Session. 

It's not every day that Ohio State picks up a transfer from another big school that is willing to pay his own way, but that's exactly what happened yesterday when Jeff Greene, Georgia Tech's leading receiver, agreed to walk on at Ohio State.

Earning comparisons to former Yellow Jacket and current New York Jet Stephen Hill, Greene is a physically impressive wideout (6-4/210) and two seasons of Big Five conference football under his belt.

Greene had grown frustrated with life as a receiver in Paul Johnson's flexbone option and his coaches were equally frustrated with his attitude. It wasn't that Greene didn't know what he was signing up for – the Yellow Jackets under Johnson regularly lead the nation in rushing attempts – but Tech's campus in Atlanta is just 24 miles from Greene's hometown of Fayetteville and on National Signing Day 2011, it seemed like the right choice.

Shortly after leaving Georgia Tech in December, Greene briefly considered Arkansas and Cincinnati as potential destinations. Ohio State entered the race because his father currently lives in Columbus. Following a trip to visit the school and coaches this week, Greene agreed to walk on for the Buckeyes Wednesday. He'll enroll for the summer term, which begins June 10, and take part in team activities.

Per NCAA transfer rules, Greene must sit out the 2013 season. He'll be eligible to play for Ohio State in 2014 and has two years of eligibility remaining.

Setting the Scene

The year was 1996 and excitement was brewing in Columbus. The Buckeyes were returning a veteran football team that had gone undefeated in 1995 until it all came crashing down at the end of the season with back-to-back losses to Michigan and Tennessee. Still an 11-2 season was nothing to scoff at.

The Scarlet and Gray were charged with replacing a number of key offensive pieces including Eddie George, Bobby Hoying, and Terry Glenn. However, the team had a veteran defense to lean on including CB Shawn Springs, DE Matt Finkes, DT Mike Vrabel, LB Greg Bellisari  and NG Luke Fickell.

The Buckeyes got out to an amazing start winning their first two games against Rice and Pitt by a combined score of 142-7. 

It seemed even with the loss of their offensive nucleus, the Bucks remembered how to put up points in bunches. Credit can be given to players who stepped in immediately like RB Pepe Pearson, freshman WR, David Boston, freshman RB Michael Wiley and the emergence of a successful two QB system in Joe Germaine and Stanley Jackson (though I could have played QB successfully behind the wall that was Orlando Pace).

Photo via @jgreen81

Former Georgia Tech receiver Jeff Greene will walk on to the Ohio State Football team, Eleven Warriors has learned.

Greene, a 6-foot-4, 210-pound wide receiver, played two years for Georgia Tech, seeing action in 12 games as a true freshman before emerging as the Yellow Jackets' top receiver during the 2012 season. He caught 18 passes for 284 yards (15.8 per reception) and two touchdowns for Paul Johnson's flexbone option attack, which prioritizes the running game.

In December, Greene and Georgia Tech parted ways. At the time, his high school coach, Chad Phillips of Starr's Mill, mentioned the Tech coaches had grown frustrated with Greene's effort and attitude and that he was "trying to help him get re-directed and get off the mat, find a place for him to go and proceed."

At Ohio State, he'll have that fresh start. Greene was in Columbus this week and met with the staff yesterday where he finalized plans to join the Buckeyes.

As a transfer, he must sit out the 2013 season and with NCAA scholarship limits still looming, he must also pay his own way, but he will be eligible to compete for a scholarship in 2014. He will then have two seasons of eligibility as a Buckeye.

With spring practice complete, it is time to turn back to outlining Urban Meyer's base Ohio State offense.

In my last such post, I examined Meyer's passing game philosophy and began diagramming the base pass plays that Meyer brought with him from Florida. I now want to continue this examination of Meyer's pass plays by looking at the follow-pivot, four verts and "Houston."

Note how in each play the ultimate goal is to use route combinations to create an area where the offense has two receivers against one defender. In so doing the offense can make that defender wrong every time. The offense does so either through a vertical stretch where two receivers are at different yard lines with one defender responsible for both, or a horizontal stretch where two receivers are across the field's width. 

It's good to be back. After football season ended in 2012, I went into an unofficial "retirement" from writing, due to an exhausted muse (or something like that). But as I am turning 49 today, it seems like a good time to get back into the ring, so to speak. And what better subject could there be than the 2013 season?

Sophisticated methods require much contemplation.

Over at ESPN, Brian Fremeau has a post where he uses his mysterious FEI to project the standings for the two Big Ten divisions in 2013. Since his analysis is behind the pay curtain, I thought maybe I could come up with my own fantastic formula that would reveal the blueprint for the next B1G season.

One of the factors that fearless prognosticators frequently use to predict success on the football field for an upcoming season is the number of starters returning. Now, this carries some inherent inaccuracy, as Adam Rittenberg points out. After all, the logic goes, if the team stunk last season, how much of a benefit is it that all the starters return?

To deal with this, I've added a success factor by multiplying the number of returning starters by the number of wins the team accumulated in the previous season. A returning starter from Ohio State's 12-0 team carries more value than one from a 2-10 Illinois team, I humbly suggest.

Then there is the potential impact of incoming recruits. To account for this, I have added in a factor for the total number of stars given to the school's class of 2013. I used Rivals for this analysis but you could pick one of the others if you wanted to try this at home.

The result of all this head scratching, soul searching, and naval gazing, is after the jump. Feel free to add your thoughts and criticisms in the comments. Don't worry, my feelings won't be hurt. Much.

Ever since Rutgers and Princeton got together on a muddy field in New Jersey in the fall of 1869, college football games have been won in the trenches. The cliché was born on that November day in Brunswick. And for the past 143 years, arguably no offensive lineman has performed better than Orlando Pace.

For that, he was chosen for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2013. Pace is the 24th former Buckeye to be selected for the Hall and the first lineman in more than a decade.

Before Pace even enrolled at Ohio State, the Sandusky native was inundated with lofty expectations. But he had little problem living up to them, even though he only stayed in school three years.

Pace remains the only two-time Lombardi Award winner. He was also a two-time consensus All-American, the winner of the Outland Trophy and fourth-place finisher in the Heisman Trophy balloting. That doesn’t include Big Ten freshman of the year honors and the Silver Football in 1996.

“Orlando Pace is not only the best offensive lineman I have ever coached, but he is the best I have ever seen,” said former Ohio State head coach John Cooper. “I don’t know how you could play the position any better than he did. He was just a fantastic football player. He was the best.”