If you're jonesing for Buckeye football today, a slew of signees and targets play in the U.S. Army Bowl at 1 p.m. ET on NBC.
Your primer is over here. Be sure to follow our recruiting director, Andrew Lind, on Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates from San Antonio.
North Dakota State and James Madison play in in Frisco, Texas, (not San Francisco, as I stated earlier) for the FCS championship at noon on ESPN2. As always, go Montana Grrrrrizzlies.
ICYMI:
- Tate Martell's development means he'll challenge for the starting spot in 2018.
- Despite leading the team in solo tackles, Ohio State needs more from Jordan Fuller in 2018.
- Reserve your (or your business' spot) next to the life-size statue of Woody Hayes coming to Newcomerstown!
Word of the Day: Fugue.
GIVE IT TO HYDE. Urban Meyer strives for balance on offense, which is a noble cause. But sometimes, your team is better at one phase of the ball than the other.
This year, evidence continues to mount showing Meyer and Kevin Wilson relied too much on the unreliable arm of J.T. Barrett.
From mydaytondailynews.com:
Barrett and Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts posted very strong passer ratings and similar completion percentages. (Barrett finished ninth in the nation in pass efficiency while Hurts was 11th.)
I don’t know how many of Hurts’ completion were screens of various type, but I doubt it was much (if any) more than Barrett, who averaged slightly more yards per attempt while leading an attack that was frequently assailed for not pushing the ball down the field enough.
Here’s the thing, though: Barrett threw 125 more passes (in one more game so far).
He also ran more times than Hurts despite averaging fewer yards per carry (not to mention being hurt in the last two games).
You know things are dire when I'm taking offensive inspiration from Georgia, but here we are. Will this change going forward? Probably not. It's Tresselball played with blue-chip recruits from here on out.
Our best hope is Haskins proves to be the elite passer he looked like in 2017. But then Meyer may still run him way too much in a self-inflicting search for balance.
YEAH, THAT WAS PERPLEXING. The Playoff Committee didn't let Ohio State into the club. Like everyone else, they were mystified by the Buckeyes' performance in Iowa City and wondering why they even tried to get that festering bag of wet garbage through security.
From sportingnews.com:
Hancock touched on that and a multitude of other topics as the fourth year of the College Football Playoff cycle gets set to conclude with Alabama vs. Georgia. Hancock hit the Alabama-Ohio State debate again and maintained that the bowl season – in which the Big Ten finished 7-1 – did not lead to any second-guessing of that decision. One factor that resonated with the committee was the Buckeyes' 55-24 loss at Iowa on Nov. 4.
"The Iowa game was puzzling to the committee," he said. "It was hard for everyone to figure out."
Good to know that game was as puzzling to me as it was to people paid hundreds and thousands of dollars to pick the best football teams every year.
Oh, and for those that want an expanded playoffs:
"It would take a unanimous vote from all the conferences for that kind of movement to start," Hancock told a group or reporters at the Atlanta Sheraton Hotel on Friday. "Right now, that's not in the cards."
This, of course, can change in one offseason. For proof of this, remember Hancock used to be the guy that claimed a playoff would ruin the sport (this was a real thing people used to say and think).
HELLO, MR. GRINCH. Perhaps, like me, you watched Michigan State roll over Washing State and thought, "Ohio State is hiring the guy in charge of this debacle? That's bold."
But one game doesn't define a coach's career unless it's Hue Jackson and that one game is the only win in his two-year tenure.
Grinch, however, shows more promise than Jackson.
From espn.com:
Under Grinch's guidance, Washington State finished 74th or better nationally in scoring defense all three seasons. The Cougars were 56th this season. In the three seasons prior to his arrival, Washington State never finished better than 97th nationally and was 117th in scoring defense the year before he came.
The Cougars also ranked fourth nationally in third-down defense this season and have forced 75 turnovers during the past three seasons compared to 59 over the three seasons before Grinch joined Mike Leach in Pullman.
A two-time Broyles Award nominee as the top assistant coach in college football, Grinch was the safeties coach at Missouri for three seasons prior to joining the staff at Washington State.
What I like most about this move is it allows Grinch to learn under Greg Schiano for a year before taking the reins when a school with a mentally stable fanbase sensibly lures him away next year.
3RD PLACE TICKETS PRICEY. Georgia is playing for a national title in its state capital. Alabama is right next door. That means demand and prices are through the roof.
From yahoo.com:
With Georgia playing for the national title for the first time in a generation, a confluence of geography and circumstance have made tickets to Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship in Atlanta perhaps the hottest and most expensive in college football history. The chance to see No. 3 Georgia play No. 4 Alabama at Mercedes-Benz Stadium has driven the ticket market to unprecedented levels for a college football championship game.
According to data from StubHub, the average price of tickets sold is $2,454, the most for a collegiate championship since the site opened in 2000. Monday’s game is nearly $1,000 per ticket on average higher than the second-highest mark for a college football championship: Notre Dame’s title-game appearance against Alabama in January 2013. (For comparison, this year’s game is about $1,000 below last year’s Super Bowl average).
Oh, man, I forgot about those affluent Irish fans that spent tens of thousands of dollars to watch their team get broke like a Kit Kat Bar in front of their eyes.
Money well spent for them, though. That was the closest their team will get to the title for the rest of their lives (feel free to fave this tweet).
THOSE WMDs. Mya Fourstar has a dream of playing D-1 college basketballl... He went to prison for a crime he didn't commit, then met the man who put him there... The coming software apocalypse.... New biggest prime number discovered: (2 to the power 77, 232, 917) - 1... Two dying memoirists wrote bestsellers about their final days, and then their spouses fell in love.
