Friday Skull Session

By Nicholas Jervey on April 12, 2013 at 6:00 am
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Hello, and welcome to the Skull Session.

For all you football addicts out there, you're about to get your last big fix for a while; the spring game on Saturday will be at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati. It looks fun!

It'll be a bit shorter than usual, as quarters will only be 10 minutes long. As long as they play at a vigorous pace and look solid on offense and defense, I could live with even two-minute quarters.

The flashiest position battles are always the "skill positions", but this year it seems like there's more certainty in the backfield than last year. The starting running backs are pretty set, with Carlos Hyde and Rod Smith holding the top two spots and Bri'onte Dunn and Warren Ball competing for the third spot. This Braxton guy seems to have a pretty tight hold of the quarterback position, too, giving some spotlight to Kenny G and Cardale Jones for a change.

A more potent position matchup appears at wide receiver, where Urban Meyer has said that he only has "five or six" consistent receivers when he wants 10. No matter what happens on Saturday, don't get too optimistic about another option having a breakthrough performance. It's been done.

Other matchups, like starting right tackle, and defensive line will be the most competitive; if you can pull yourself away from watching the ball on plays, keep those lesser positions in mind. Spring performances mean a lot more for these guys than the ball-carriers, so pay attention.

 IT'S A RING THING. Oh, Mark May. You don't improve our lives, but you sure make them more entertaining.

Following the awarding of rings to a team that went 12-0 and won the Leaders Division of the Big Ten, everyone's favorite punching bag had some HOT opinions that had to be shared:

Now, some might believe that an analyst with a history of antagonism — going out of his way take shots at fans, even — ought not to offer analysis under the veneer of objectivity. But this isn't a surprise. His feelings have been known since he was vociferously booed at the 2011 Sugar Bowl* and possibly dating back to Ohio State's 1996 humiliation of Pitt.

Maybe a Buckeye would have a valuable perspective. Jake Stoneburner, for instance.

This is pretty obnoxious behavior, but there might be a point to all this, one that makes the media attention given to outbursts counterproductive. Is this an attempt to forge a permanent hate-bond between himself and Ohio State fans? One can learn from Skip Bayless's career to see that ESPN rewards people who A) say very dumb things B) in a way that attracts audiences.

If May can draw a permanent crowd of Buckeyes to chastise dumb opinions, he'll always have some kind of reaction to work with. And quantity of reaction is what matters most at ESPN, right?

Here's what might be the best theory, though: Twitter drives people insane, and Mark May got hit harder than most. Much, much harder than most.

 REMEMBERING TATGATE. The Lantern published a two-year anniversary reflection on the improper benefits scandal which brought down Jim Tressel. Our coverage yesterday is, I would think, a fairly accurate version of what mainstream Ohio State fans and alumni think of the fiasco and of Tressel.

To actually get two of the parties involved (Jim Tressel and Jordan Whiting, who is now attending Ohio State as a non-athlete) is fortunate, but Tressel's stance on any regrets he felt is supremely disappointing:

"If my fault is on the loyalty side, I'll take it," Tressel said. Tressel said OSU's violations were a result of "personal decisions" made by his players.

"Sometimes they're the right decisions, and sometimes they're the wrong," Tressel said.


Most Ohio State fans would forgive Jim Tressel for his failures in this case. In spite of the damage his handling of the crisis caused, his legacy is leaving the program better than he found it. But his lack of reflection on his role in the scandal makes it much harder to redeem him.

Jim Tressel looked the other way without consulting compliance or OSU's legal staff; if he had talked to a lawyer about his concerns and been advised to keep quiet, at least he wouldn't have gone down alone. Instead, the justifications he's given have been self-serving and as a result seem hollow. Tressel was and is seen as a moral figure; if he continues to use cop-out faults on the order of "my biggest fault is that I just care too much", it will be harder to reconcile the author of The Winners Manual with the public persona seen for the last 30 months.

There's no need for rationalization anymore.

 SCHOLARSHIP PROCESS. Urban Meyer had a spring teleconference with reporters on Wednesday to talk about all different aspects of spring football. You can (and should) listen to the whole interview, which is full of practice information and player progression updates.

Outside of the typical questions was a segment where a reporter asked first whether Ohio State always offered multi-year scholarships or offered them case by case, and second whether the scholarships were guaranteed multi-year scholarships now. Meyer's responses:

I think that's all semantics, I mean, that's all, we've always... you have a scholarship, we don't cut people, you're not allowed to do that. The young man's allowed to have a hearing, and so the only way you can lose a scholarship is a disciplinary issue or failing out of school. You can't say you're not good enough to play here, so we've always given out four-year scholarships. Now you have hard, honest conversations and say you know, you can't play or the player sees that there's three guys ahead of one of them on the depth chart and someone might make a decision to leave, but we've always had just, you know, you're going to have a scholarship.

Yes, I believe we do, I think we even... I'd have to find that out for you, on signing day I'm not sure what we send out, because I think you have a choice, but we make it clear that when we recruit a young man that we're, unless something shows up, not just depth chart or how you perform, but you were... that you have a scholarship.

In light of the mess Bob Stoops stepped into on Wednesday, what universities owe players in the current system is of extreme importance. If athletes are to be treated like other students, as they are said to be, then forcing them into 40-hour a week jobs only to strip their means of attending university without wrongdoing or their consent is heinous.

There are still concerns about means of "persuading" a player to leave — say, by recruiting five players at their position and sticking them all ahead of a player on the depth chart. But this is a lot more constructive than some of the more callous approaches out there. Failing that, reasonable payment methods are out there.

 BAGEL POWER DEVOLUTION. Braveheart was a fun movie. Maybe not the most historically accurate movie, but the way William Wallace rallied his troops was inspiring. "They can take our lives, but they can never take our bagel toppings!"

After years of mockery the NCAA is finally going to bow to common sense and allow local interpretations of the statute about fruits, nuts, and bagels:

As part of the working group's initial review, it supported a position that the national office not issue interpretations related to the application of the fruit, nuts, and bagels legislation. Such legislation more appropriately at the local level, either with conferences or individual institutions.

Non-joke: it's refreshing to see a devolution of power in the NCAA structure for a change. Joke: Tell them that Spreadland is free.

 P-LINK-O. OSU women's basketball misses out on Louisville's Jeff Walz, supposedly the fourth or fifth choice... Rutgers is allowing kids affected by Hurricane Sandy to play in the scrimmage... UConn's new logo is great, the old logo's sad... Rooting for the Columbus Crew is like being a Glee fan?... Nice moves, Mr. Groundskeeper... Pimento cheese sandwiches and The Masters... The Internet is full of memes... The best way to catch a baseball.

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