It's Friday, and you're damn right I'm blowing this popsicle stand at noon and heading to Boone, North Carolina. (Thank you @osu07asu10 for the Daniel Boonesque hustle routes into the Heart of High Country, and go Mountaineers!)
And yes, the Halloween Skull Session is still popping at 4:59 a.m. tomorrow morning. The bye week ain't going to dump itself.
This week's NSFW ANTI-WORK #BANGERS:
- Ol' Dude's two-story beer pong dunk attempt ends poorly.
- Never taunt a bull.
- Man burns down house while live streaming.
URBAN ON CHANGE, PAST MISTAKES, AND OSU'S LEADERSHIP. Give credit to Urban Meyer: The man even does media blitzes with intensity.
From NewYorkTimes.com's interview with the Ohio State's fourth-year jefe (who you might not know is selling a book):
Q. There are many military metaphors in your book. You describe your team’s goal as being “Nine Units Strong”; before one game, you tell your players to “hold your point.” Why do you think football lends itself to military metaphors?
A. You have to be extremely careful, which I am, every time you talk about it, because what we do is a game, and what they do is real. But there are so many similarities — and this is not coming from me, but I have great friends who are in the military.
I think one of the great story lines — and I show this video clip quite often to our team — is the one in “Black Hawk Down.” They ask: “Why do you do it? Are you some kind of war junkie?” And he says: “No, you don’t get it, do you? You do it ’cause of the man next to you.” That’s the same thing with football. Why do you really do it? Do you really do it for Ohio State? That sounds admirable, but it’s not real. You realize you do it because of all the work you do, the blood, sweat and tears, with your brother. You can’t let your brother down. If it’s because of that, you have a good team. If it’s because of something else, it’s not a good team.
Here's the scene Meyer's referencing:
Meyer admitted that he didn't really know who J.T. Barrett was when he'd pass him in the WHAC, but it turns out ol' Tom Herman wasn't lying when he played up Barrett's leadership qualities.
Q. What distinguishes him?
A. He has one of the qualities in the sport of football that a leader has to have — he’s incredibly tough. He’s as tough a guy as there is. The Penn State game last year, double-overtime, when he had a second-degree [medial collateral ligament] sprain, and the doctor said, “I’m not sure if he can go,” and [J.T.] looked right at me and said, “There’s no discussion on this, I am playing, I’m not letting my team down.” Me and my strength coach looked at each other — you know, you have to shoot him to keep him out.
We knew J.T. Barrett was injured in that double-overtime classic at Penn State (a key moment in the 2014 campaign), but a second-degree MCL sprain? That sounds painful.
Yet J.T Barrett did this:
I intentionally started that clip with the celebrating Penn State fans because 1) a Nittany Lion fan filled with false hope is a beautiful thing in of itself 2) To show the environment of the cantina into which J.T. Barrett sauntered with his spurs janglin' and an unfiltered cigarette danglin' from his lips.
FROM GHANA TO COLUMBUS. Crazy to think that a future Buckeye cornerback could be as far away as Liberia, Nigeria, England, or Scotland.
Before you call it nonsense, consider the case of Eli Apple, who lived in Ghana as a child.
From BuckeyeSports.com:
But a more accurate representation of Apple’s history would require a much more thorough biography. It would mention the fact he lived in Ghana when he was younger, and it might include that his mother, Annie, was born in the West African country and also lived in such places as Liberia, Nigeria, England and Scotland.
Since moving to the United States at the age of 10, Annie has built a life for her family, one that includes Eli becoming a first-generation American, a college athlete and a national champion.
“It’s so fun for me because I love America. I absolutely love this country,” Annie told BSB. “I love it because America gives you the two things you need to be successful and to achieve anything in life – the freedom to serve God and the freedom of education. What else do you need to do anything in life?
“I believe in the inherent goodness of this country.”
Annie Apple sounds like me when asked about the differences between Columbus and Marion.
BLAME SABAN. J.T. Barrett ditched the coachspeak and kept it 100 when asked about the perception of his arm strength. Where did that perception start? Where all of America's problems start: with Alabama coach Nick Saban.
From Cleveland.com:
The Crimson Tide coach started it. Saban, after losing to the Buckeyes, espoused the idea that Jones' arm strength and deep ball ability was better than Barrett's and provided something new to the Ohio State offense.
"The one thing that the new quarterback does is he has a tremendous arm. And they have some very talented receivers. And the two things that were very apparent is those things became very apparent in the last two games because of the quarterback," Saban said then.
"Now, they were a little different and the quarterback was a great runner, when (Barrett) was playing, and he was a good passer. But it wasn't so obvious when you watched the film all season long that they had these great skill players that could really make plays down the field."
Was Saban wrong? Not then, not now:
Let's settle this J.T. Barrett/Cardale Jones deep ball debate... pic.twitter.com/Fpu7IJuFBU
— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) October 28, 2015
Perhaps it took the weaponization of Cardale Jones for Ohio State to hit its final form last season, but that switched this year.
OSU'S 50-YEAR PLAN. Ohio State wants to lease its parking garages for the next five(!) decades.
From Bloomberg.com:
The board of trustees for the third-largest U.S. campus by enrollment voted unanimously today to accept $483 million in return for giving up parking revenue and management during the lease. Ohio State, with about 57,000 students, says the venture would be a first among public colleges. Schools including Indiana University are interested.
State money fell to 7 percent of the school budget this year from about 15 percent in 2002 as Ohio cut expenditures. U.S. universities facing similar challenges may mimic the deal, said Peter McPherson, president of the Washington-based Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. The combination of interest rates close to record lows and predictable returns makes the arrangement attractive, he said.
“An idea like this, maybe 10 years ago, people would have thought was too much out of the box,” McPherson, a former banker and Michigan State University president, said by telephone. “These kinds of transactions, given the needs of universities, are going to be thought more and more practical.”
I understand the bottom line is the bottom line, but shit, 50 years? Seems like quite the leap to make. Think about how different the world was from 1965 to 2015. It's wild to me suits can project these deals to a point where folks feel comfortable tossing $483,000,000 at concrete structures.
But there's zero no doubt QIC Global Infastructure (sounds like a shell company used by a villain in a Bond movie) will get its money back plus more.
Students and faculty better start saving up too, because the price on a brick just went up.
BERT LOVES ALL BEER. I won't drink all beer, but I'm not about to hate on a man's booze choices as long as he's not trying to get me to bong nail polish remover.
Looks like Bert doesn't discriminate either when it comes to his suds:
Solid subtle fav, @BretBielema. pic.twitter.com/tVzur1cyrx
— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) October 29, 2015
Guess we know Bert takes solace in Bud Light after inexplicable losses. Take note, photo shop wizards of the universe.
But if I gave you a blind item of "an active Power 5 coach favorited a pro-Bud Light tweet," it'd be a dead give away it was Bert, right?
THOSE WMDs. The funky football phone that sold a million magazines... A fully playable game of Tetris inside a carved pumpkin... Carson Palmer loves the orange seats of Browns Stadium... Photo of iceberg that sunk the Titanic sells for $32,000... The science of human decay... Feeling like an expert can make you closed-minded... Gratis Township, stand up.
