Thanksgiving Skull Session

By D.J. Byrnes on November 27, 2014 at 6:00 am
Happy Thanksgiving, Buckeye fans!
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This year, I'm thankful for The Ohio State Buckeyes. My take? It's a good school with a good football team.

THE GAME IN ACADEMICS. On the eve of the 2009 sacking of Ann Arbor, Michigan fans had two common retorts to any trash talk. 1) "Insult" me by saying that I, a man, enjoyed doing sex with other men. 2) "Michigan has a better school team."

Well, the times are a'changing. Ohio State is on the rise. Its freshman class averaged a 29 on the ACT this year, up from 23 in 1995. (Michigan's average? 30.)

The Toledo Blade's David Briggs had a fascinating look in yesterday's edition about how Ohio State's increased academic efforts are changing a dynamic within The Game:

"You would hear the jokes [in high school],” said OSU cornerback Nik Sarac, a senior walk-on from Cleveland who plans to attend medical school. “But I remember sitting down with my parents and my college counselor at St. Ignatius. There were three columns. There were reach schools, there were safety schools, and there were ones on the bubble where it could go either way. My counselor actually listed Michigan on the safety school side and put Ohio State in the middle.”

[...]

“I used to always be asked, ‘Do I want to aspire to be like the University of Michigan?’” Gee said in a phone interview this month. “The answer was no. I always joked that that's too low of an aspiration. We need to be the best Ohio State we can be. ... Michigan is one of the nation’s great academic institutions. But I’m very proud that Ohio State can go toe to toe with them on the academic field of play as well as on the athletic field of play. I’m very proud of that.”

[...]

So is football coach Urban Meyer, who, as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in 1986 and 1987, remembers the chasm in the rivals’ academic status sometimes being used against OSU in recruiting. “You never hear that anymore,” he said.

Going forward, it's going to be interesting to watch Ohio State balance its worldwide ambitions with its land grant mission. And while Ohio State, like all others, relaxes its standards for athletes, the improved standards will still be an asset in any recruiting battle.

 THANK YOU BASED MCDONALD'S CASHIER. Buried in this re-telling of the J.T. Barrett-wanted-to-be-a-Longhorn story is a delightful anecdote about how Ohio State landed the Texan prep star after he was spurned by the Longhorns in favor of Tyrone Swoopes. 

From Bill Bender of The Sporting News:

Barrett and his father, Joe, took a recruiting visit to Ohio State in March 2011. They stayed at a nearby Red Roof Inn, a short stroll from McDonalds. Barrett heard the cashiers talking while he waited for his breakfast and couldn’t help but eavesdrop.

"The lady said ‘we,’ " Barrett said. "I’m thinking about this lady cashier at McDonalds said ‘we’ like she was part of Ohio State. I’m thinking that doesn’t get much closer than family right there." 

Then Barrett met Meyer and offensive coordinator Tom Herman, and the family connection stuck. Barrett suffered a knee injury five games into his senior season. The Buckeyes still made an offer. Texas chose Swoopes. Texas Tech was still in play, but it was something Meyer said to Barrett echoed in his head.

I assume Barrett and his father were staying at the Red Roof Inn Plus+ on Ackerman, given the proximity to both Ohio State and a McDonald's. Regardless, though: #Shoutout to that 2011 McDonald's cashier.

Obviously it wasn't a truly deciding factor, but I do think it's noteworthy Barrett is re-telling the story almost three years later. 

WHAT WENT WRONG IN 2013? The Game was an instaclassic in 2013, but it never should've been that close. Michigan's offense was anemic throughout the 2013 campaign, but it exploded against Ohio State for 41 points and 451 passing yards. 

What went wrong? From Ari Wasserman of the Northeast Ohio Media Group:

"It was just really annoying," [defensive lineman Mike] Bennett said. "It felt like every play that they got was a trick play or a screen or something like that. It was annoying that we couldn't feel it, it was annoying that we couldn't redirect and get it and it was annoying that they kept doing those plays instead of just trying to run it down our throats. Then we would have stopped them."

[...]

"They schemed us up very well," linebacker Curtis Grant said. "From the time we got on the field, they were throwing out different personnels and then they had a play to counter off whatever we were doing, especially if they got backed up.

"We're an aggressive team, so we came to blitz. They go back to backside, especially when we're sending a lot of people and there's only a few DBs left because everybody's rushed up the field. It's nothing for a screen to break."

As Wasserman notes, this will be a good wind gauge of the defense's improvement. While there is no doubt the defense has improved since last year, it will again face a Michigan team with nothing to lose but a trip to some shitty, insignificant December Bowl. 

Michigan will come into The Game with the country's "85th best" offense in the F/+ rankings. Even though Al Borges, the former Wolverine offensive coordinator has since been replaced by a man who was replaced by Lane Kiffin, I have a hankering Michigan's offense will again be throwing the kitchen sink at Ohio State. I also assume the Wolverines' offense will again try to use the Buckeye defense's aggressiveness against it.

TL;DR: Michigan defense doesn't have the horses to run with Ohio State's offense. If the Buckeye defense shows up like it did in East Lansing... well, The Game won't be close.

MICHIGAN HYPE VIDEO FT. TBDBITL. Good thing I didn't see this hype video (via GoBucks10) while sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table, because I would've ripped my shirt off, flipped the table over, and immediately started chugging beer like an euphoric Stone Cold Steve Austin.

(Have I shoe-horned a Stone Cold Steve Austin joke into every Skull Session this week? If so, that'd be my greatest work during my 11W tenure.)

HEUERMAN'S ODYSSEY TO OSU. Jeff Heuerman is an Ohio State captain entering his final home game this weekend. But I was unfamiliar with Heuerman's origin story, and how unlikely it was that he ended up here in the first place.

From Jim Naveau of The Lima News:

He’d skated since he was 2 years old, but it was time for a new sport. Heuerman, who is expected to have an NFL future, never played football until he was a freshman in high school.

“I didn’t even want to play football. I just wanted to hunt and fish. But my dad told me I either had to play football or get a job. I didn’t want to get a job and so I tried out for the football team,” he said earlier this year. “He wasn’t going to let me just sit around. So I gave it a shot and it all worked out.”

[...]

“Four years ago I showed up here and it’s just crazy how quick it goes. It’s been awesome, though. I have no regrets,” Heuerman said on Monday. “I just don’t want it to end. I love college. I love Ohio State. I honestly don’t want it to end. But all good things come to an end and you move on to the next chapter.”

No, I don't doubt Jeff Heuerman has any regrets about his college experience.

Considering Heuerman could be the first tight end taken in the 2015 draft, I'd say that decision worked out for him. (His high draft status should also help kill the negative recruiting against Ohio State with tight end prospects.) 

NO ORACLES IN MICHIGAN. The Lord of Whispers shared this with me yesterday, and it's too rich not to pass along.

u mad michigan?

Wow, that Faygo must've been spiked to Hell in 2012.

THOSE WMDs. The legend of Jack Trice, a football martyr... Kirk Heinrich is not a defensive guru.. The Gaming Industry's Greatest Adversary is Just Getting Started... How English describes color vs. how Chinese describes color... On Sundays, This Chimney Sweep is a Wrestler.

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