A happy Steelemas to you! In these limp days of June, what better way to brighten up your day than Phil Steele's preview of Ohio State?
Because it's never too early for bullet points or listicles, here are three interesting tidbits from Steele's preview:
- Last year's least attended road game and Big Ten home game were at Indiana, with 48,880, and Purdue, with 105,290 attending. For shame, Hoosier State.
- OSU has been much better at beating the spread versus Big Ten opponents (50-28-2 since 2003) than non-conference opponents (25-20).
- Steele predicts that this year's linebacker corps will have similar production to last year. With all due respect to departees Zach Boren and Etienne Sabino – none to Storm Klein – Boren's inexperience, Klein's rust/plodding play and Sabino's journeyman career contributed to last year's underwhelming results.
Complaints about the thoroughness of Steele's preview and how much ink he uses to tout how accurate he is are absolutely valid. But a couple of things excuse those peccadilloes.
For one, he's previewing every single team by himself, an enormous task. He goes much deeper than the other national preview magazines in their omnibus previews, and does have a track record of reasonable accuracy.
Mostly, though, it's the tradition of looking forward to Steele's magazine that everyone enjoys. Steele's preview is a relic of a time when information on schools outside one's own was much harder to come by, and there was far less football content to consume in the summers. The Eleven Warriors team can and does provide more in-depth coverage, but as longevity and nostalgia go Steele has us beat.
Speaking of football content in the summer, the free NCAA 14 demo will be available for download today and Ohio State-Michigan is one of the available matchups. I have a hunch that highly elusive Braxton Miller "QB #5" will be outrunning Desmond Morgan "LB #48" et al on speed options in a few hours: even if the EA series is stagnant, it'd be hard to pass up this demo.
RECRUITING RANKING SHIFTS. Recruiting rankings shift several times a year for the major recruiting services, and though it's never worth freaking out about there are sometimes interesting trends. ESPN has a new top 300 and surprisingly has a new #1 overall player in Leonard Fournette. Damon Webb is the highest Buckeye commit on the list at #57, joined by Dante Booker at #156 and Kyle Berger at #299. That seems like a bit of underrepresentation but ehh, what do I know.
As for actual, tangible recruiting news, it sounds as though Quincy Wilson's visit to Columbus went well and as always there will be more visitors soon. The beat goes on.
THIS IS WHY NOBODY LIKES YOU, NCAA. Scott Dochterman of The Gazette revealed several minor violations that the University of Iowa's compliance department had compiled in 2012-2013. They included the following:
- Impermissible contact by texting "who is this?" to an unknown caller that happened to be a prospect.
- Paying for a former coach's girlfriend's dinner at a recruiting dinner
- Arranging for two recruits to eat breakfast at the student union while it was closed
- Including a URL on recruiting envelopes, which constitutes an logo by NCAA standards
Thank goodness those reckless cheaters at Iowa have been brought to justice; otherwise there would be nothing to put in compliance's TPS reports. For a more widespread example of the NCAA malaise, former compliance director John Infante's critique of a proposed athletic directors' council highlights the redundancy, centralization of power, and strained relationships that have defined the NCAA for the last few years.
YOU RAISE ME UP, PARDNER. THE RICH AND THE DEAD. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to put Rich Rodriguez and the rest of the Arizona football staff into a Western video, and yes, yes it was.
The former Michigan coach, who was fired either because of three subpar seasons or his Groban swan song, had much more success in his first season at Arizona and has gone for a harder image since. Hopefully he won't continue his cigar-chomping on the sidelines, or some stickler might get him in NCAA trouble.
Nothing much happens in the video and there's not much reason for this item other than to remind Michigan fans that their school hired this guy and that the fans expected Rodriguez to win multiple national championships. Maybe being himself in Tucson will let him relive the successes he had at West Virginia.
THE FIGHTING ILLUNTI. Former Oklahoma State quarterback Wes Lunt, he of the ridiculous transfer restrictions, has decided to transfer to Illinois. His being a life-long Illini fan surely helped Illinois in recruiting him, as he chose them over Louisville to continue his career.
His choice is a boon for Illinois, which struggled through a miserable 2-10 season in 2012. Lunt will have three years of eligibility after redshirting in 2013, and presumably compete with Reilly O'Toole for the job after Nathan Scheelhaase departs this year.
The hope is that a quality quarterback like Lunt would help Illinois to compete for bowl eligibility. Tim Beckman gets about as much respect as Waspinator these days, so good for him finally having something go his way.
ON STEVE GLEASON. Would you like to work at Atlanta's 790 The Zone? Answer this two question test to find out if you're qualified.
- Do you think impersonating a mute, paralyzed player with a degenerative nerve disease is funny if he played for a rival team?
- Is having said player tell knock knock jokes about how much he wants to die hi-larious?
If you answered yes to both questions, you might just be talk radio material! Unfortunately, you might also be an unfunny sociopath who'd destroy your career in three minutes like the now-fired radio hosts involved in the sketch.
Cynicism holds that HOT SPORTS TAKES are what consumers crave. Because of this some shameless media members at both the national level and local level make intentionally stupid conversation or use repetitive slogans as a crutch, both of which are grating if tolerable. The hatefulness in this case is a step beyond that.
If there's a moral to this story, it's that you shouldn't be an asshole. Beyond that, it's a warning to local media outlets to hold blowhards accountable before they disgrace more than just themselves.
LINKS. BTN's Tom Dienhart ranks Ohio Stadium as the best in the Big Ten... College football's reckoning with blows to the head... The shameful origin of the "student-athlete"... will there be a bowl game at a HBCU?... international athletics is corrupt, Exhibit 4374... Northwestern professor quits because of its trashiness (!!!)... Gregg Popovich is terse, and Tim Duncan cures baldness... "The academic part, it's like you have to try to fail"... You won the Vezina but you're still off the case, Bobrovsky!... What the Young Man Should Know, Harper's 1933... and the Seinfeld theme slowed down is kinda creepy.
