Some quick hits before we continue the week that broke Old Man's Winter's back in Ohio and sidelined that bastard until October:
- It's Owens vs. the Wright Brothers in the finals of 11W's Heart of It All Classic. As of this writing, only four votes separate the two. I voted for Owens. I like flying when I'm not heaving into an air sickness baggy, but it's about time somebody called The Wright Brothers on being two people. Two Jesse Owenses could have seized Berlin, executed Hitler and knocked Germany out of World War II in 1936.
- I would like to apologize to #BigBlueNation for it was me — not comical free-throw shooting — that cost you the championship last night. In yesterday's Hound/Arya/Game of Thrones analogy, I called Aaron Harrison "Andrew." That'd be his twin brother. This continues my long tradition of being unable to tell twins apart. (I played basketball with a pair of twins for a year in seventh grade and only called either by their last name.) Whatever. At least I wasn't Derek the RA (or this guy or this guy) last night.
OHIO STATE THROWING CAKE. There's a reason why so many smaller schools are willing to sacrifice their band of amateur student-athletes to a band of far superior amateur student-athletes in front of a crowd north of 100,000. It's because the payment for the (likely) beating is luxurious.
From Rusty Miller of the Associated Press:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio State will pay more than $2 million in total guarantees to bring Virginia Tech, Kent State and Cincinnati to Ohio Stadium to play the Buckeyes in football this fall.
[...]
Cincinnati, located a couple of hours away, will receive the most money — $888,246 — to come play the Buckeyes on Sept. 27. Kent State, also located about 2 hours away, gets $850,000 to appear in Columbus on Sept. 13. Virginia Tech, which comes to Ohio Stadium on Sept. 20 as the first of a home-and-home series with the Buckeyes, will receive a $350,000 guarantee.
The Buckeyes get an $850,000 guarantee to open against Navy on Aug. 30 at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium.
Not a bad bit of business for everyone involved. Each party gets paid and OSU recoups nearly half the fee for three opponents in one game with Navy (plus revenue from the home games).
I also like how almost a million dollars of OSU's is staying in Ohio. That's paying it forward.
WELP. Speaking of Ohio, allow me to combine two of people's favorite topics — politics and college athlete unionization — into the feel good story of the year. From Cleveland.com:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — College athletes in Ohio would not be considered employees under state law, under changes to the state’s budget review made by a legislative committee on Monday.
The proposal, which still faces a number of legislative hurdles before passage, comes after a recent National Labor Relations Board regional director's ruling that Northwestern University football players are employees and can unionize.
[...]
“I think this is a statement of what we all thought was obvious, and that is athletes are not employees of their university," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ron Amstutz, a Wooster Republican.
This is not a political post; I'm merely relaying this because it's directly relevant to OSU athletics.
OSU ADMINS STRUGGLE WITH BALANCE. Here's one thing on which most of us can agree: The Morril Land-Grant Acts were good.
Ohio State is a land-grant university, and as such, it has a specific responsibility to the local populace. But Ohio State has grown far beyond central Ohio.
Yesterday, The Lantern had a swell read about the struggle:
With global gateways in Shanghai and Mumbai, India, and plans to open another in Brazil this year, Ohio’s flagship institution is far from where it was in 1878 when it graduated its first class of six men.
Forming a union between OSU’s land grant mission — securing access for Ohio residents — and global aspirations — wanting to find the best and brightest students wherever they might be — can be a challenging feat, said Provost and Executive Vice President Joseph Steinmetz.
“There is a reason for going outside and recruiting students from outside of the country as well as other states, and that is to make Ohio better by bringing those people into Ohio and having them stay here,” he said in a Tuesday interview with The Lantern. “So I think what you do is you make sure that you, in my opinion, you keep the balance towards the state and not towards the outside. I know of institutions in this country that have more than half of their student body come from out of state. I think that would not be acceptable here at Ohio State because I think we will have abandoned a good part of the land grant initiative.”
I think it's great Ohio State has flags in the far-reaches of the globe, and I agree: If we can start convincing some international graduates to hang around this great state of ours, that's a positive.
My questions are thus: How long is this growth sustainable and what's their plan if the current higher education model turns sour? It'd be awful to watch Ohio State collapse under its own weight.
CAL TO L.A. Here's a tweet that set sports Twitter on fire before last night's title game. From former Kentucky star Rex Champman:
Was messin' 'round on Sat nite re: Cal. But word is - win or lose 2nite - it's a #DoneDeal ...Cal 2 La-La-Land 2 coach Mamba's Lakers. #NoBS
— Rex Chapman (@rexchapman) April 7, 2014
Chapman also had a venerable career as a player in the NBA and served numerous franchises in various front office positions, so it's possible he's heard some things.
Calipari — who denied the report after his team's loss — has always been a hired gun; he's never made any bones about it. The Lakers could throw a lot more money at him than Kentucky, and most people would rather live in Los Angeles than Lexington.
Not sure how I'd feel about it as a Lakers fan, but the collective Kentucky meltdown, especially after a title game loss, would make for great theater.
DAMNIT DORIAL. (NSFW in that last link depending on your work's policy on Peyton Manning cursing.) Looks like college football could be without one of the most talented wideouts in 2014:
Missouri WR Dorial Green-Beckham has been suspended indefinitely for violation of team policies.
— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) April 7, 2014
Green-Beckham has had some scrapes with the law in the past, so this incident could be the end of the road for Green-Beckham in Columbia. Even worse for the former five-star recruit, local police "can't confirm" there's an ongoing investigation into Green-Beckham.
THOSE WMDs. Soon silkworms and spiders could mend our broken bones... Boss cat survives 60 mile trip on top of trailer... #ThisCouldBeUsButYouPlayin... Cool photo of a nesting Falcon... Do you live in one of the fattest US cities?... So that's why Samuel Et'o is still so fast... Zidane was a beast... Undertaker's WrestleMania loss brought out some great Faces of Shock... How Trader Joe's doubled their sales... No no no no no no no... You may not have heard of the Towson Tigers...
