Tuesday Skull Session

By D.J. Byrnes on July 1, 2014 at 6:00 am
Ohio State Class of 1878, via The Ohio State Archives
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There's an immediate, visceral fear to suddenly awakening after a night of pouring cheap liquor and spirits down your maw. Did I actually do that or was that just some wretched nightmare? Oh, you did it. You did it real hard, pal.

That's how I'd like to think Jim Delany felt the day after he invited an east coast degenerate like Rutgers into the conference, but I'm not naive enough to think Jim Delany has felt any sort of human emotion since the mid-eighties. 

But that's what makes him a baller-ass commissioner. I don't like the Rutgers/Maryland move, because I don't carry any of the responsibility Jim Delany has beared since assuming the B1G mantle in 1989. (I doubt I even possessed the mental capacity to control my bowels in 1989.)

I do, however, understand TV networks are the rainmakers of college sports, and as Eddie George recently put it, "If you're not expanding you're contracting." 

So, whatever. Welcome to our shitty little football club, Rutgers and Maryland. We do other stuff good, but mediocre football is what is truly synonymous with our brand.

Judging from the scraggly looks of you two, y'all will fit right in. The nacho cheese keg and insulin needles are in the back. Please party responsibly. 

JASHON CORNELL AND JUSTIN HILLIARD HAVE BIG PLANS. The two five-star prospects are committing tomorrow, and the Lord of Whispers has prophesied a Buckeye back-to-backer.

It sure sounds like they're a package, too. Here's Cornell, via Ari Wasserman of The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

"We have had the idea of having two great athletes – two elite players on defense – playing on the same team, and it'll be like the Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs combo," said Cornell, a senior at St. Paul (Minn.) Cretin-Derham Hall. "We have been thinking about that since my sophomore year.

"I think we'd have a big impact on a defense. If we're playing on the same side, it would be a lock down – nobody would run to our side. There's no offense that would be able to play against us because we think we're beasts." 

Now that's the kind of swagger that's been missing from the Ohio State defense for the last couple of years.

LET'S GET IT USMNT. I picked Belgium to win the World Cup, but despite being 3-0, they haven't looked right without ASTON VILLA WARLORD CHRISTIAN BENTEKE. (Little surprise.) They're the deserved favorites, but they're beatable.

The game kicks off at four o'clock on ESPN. I have a feeling Belgium is going to catch this work, and it's going to be in the form of two Waffle House waffles with extra peanut butter chips, with a side of regular hashbrowns and freedom.

Flood the midfield and try to catch these bums on the counter, Jürgen!

HOW A RIVALRY GETS BUILT. Business just picked up in the budding Randy Edsall-James Franklin beef!!111

From Alex Prewitt of The Washington Post:

Months from now, when the Maryland football team begins its inaugural Big Ten season, Ryan Bowles envisions a tipping point for the fan base, when 61 years of tradition get shoved aside in favor of blinding, instant passion.

“All it takes is that first time you go to the Big House and you get a call against you and you start hating Michigan,” said the associate athletics director, who helped manage the athletic department’s transition into the new league.

[...]

In the Big Ten, Maryland will join a conference that loves tradition — and trophies. Twelve football matchups award hardware, such as the Old Oaken Bucket (Indiana-Purdue), Paul Bunyan’s Axe (Minnesota-Wisconsin) and a wooden turtle called the Illibuck (Illinois-Ohio State). The Terps have already entered conversations with Rutgers and Penn State to create new trophies, several athletic department officials said.

Yes, it's true, we in the B1G love trophies — as long as they don't represent anything of actual worth.

THE RISE OF THE MICHIGAN RB. Who had the better 2013, Kwame Kilpatrick or Michigan running backs? It's tough to say, but it looks like Michigan is on the verge of getting the kinks out of their run game:

From Nick Baumgardner of MLive.com:

"They know we can run the ball," [Derrick] Green said last week during a summer episode of "Inside Michigan Football." 

Uh, I'm not so sure they do, Derrick.

"But you've got to be able to block first, and run second. Protecting the quarterback is the main thing for us.

"Running the ball is secondary, pass protection is first."

Sounds like the offensive line is really coming together up there in Ann Arbor.

UH OH UNC. Hmm... 

Oh, you mean over stuff like Rashad McCants saying he took "sham" classes at UNC? Is there anybody who thinks anything will come of this? Because UNC assistant coach C.B. McGrath isn't one of them:

lolK

THOSE WMDs. Food Deuce... "Stash Pad," how foreigners are turning NYC real estate into the new Swiss bank account... Eight things that will get you banned from Six Flags... Florida's new money" fans .. Lantern editorial about reduced print schedule... Five hedgehogs being tickled... Potentially habitable super-Earth found 16 million light-years away... How a 37 year-old pharmacist became the country's most feared ultra-marathoner... 

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