Skull Session: World's Best Buckeye Memorabilia Collector, Greg Oden's Redemption, and Shawn Springs' Quest For Safer Football

By Kevin Harrish on April 5, 2019 at 4:59 am
Justin Fields is ready to take over in today's Skull Session.
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If only I lived every day like an Ohio State specialist doing strange shit in the Woody. I would truly be living my best life.

Happy Friday, y'all.

ICYMI

Word of the Day: Enervate.

 BUCKEYE SMITHSONIAN. I would not be doing my duty if I didn't take some time to honor a true Patriot, Brian Fogle, for his incomparable collection of Buckeye memorabilia.

From Nicholas Jackson of HowFirmThyFriendship.com:

Brian has some of the oldest and rarest pieces in Buckeye history. “I have a book from 1909. It's an Ohio State magazine. Then I have pictures of the Michigan/Ohio State game from 1910. I have programs and scrapbooks from 1917 when Chic Harley played, and some of those are very rare. I also have a couple of players' cleats from the late 60’s and 70’s.”

The crown jewel of Brian’s collection is a jacket with over 325 signatures from Buckeye greats dating all the way back to the late 30’s and including all the starters from the 2002 national championship team and the 2014 championship team.

“My jacket was always the greatest because when I would meet the person, I would always have them tell me a story, especially if it was someone who played for Woody. I’ve met so many great players that have told me stories and I love it.”

...

This is not something Brian takes for granted. “It’s unbelievable. I’m just a kid that started collecting and had a love and passion for Ohio State football and it turned into something great. I’ve been very blessed to find things and meet people. I just like the history and have put together a pretty good collection.”

Sure, "a pretty good collection" in the same way the Dayton Air Force Museum is just "a pretty good collection" of  historic aircrafts. With all due respect, sir, you have far exceeded what I would call a mere "collection." You have the Smithsonian of Buckeye football.

Here are are a couple of photos from his lot. You should absolutely follow the link for the rest of them.

Hell of a jacket.
What a legend.

What an absolute legend. If I had any sort of power or authority to do so, I'd have him knighted immediately.

 SHAWN SPRINGS CHANGING THE GAME. Shawn Springs is a consensus All-American, a Pro Bowler and a 13-year NFL veteran, but his biggest contributions to the game of football might be coming well after his retirement.

I fear football has grim future if we don't find a way to make the game safer. Kudos to Mr. Springs for doing his part. My unborn All-American son thanks him well in advance.

 ODEN'S REDEMPTION. Basketball has been remarkably generous yet also terribly cruel to Greg Oden. The game truly has giveth and it's taketh away in the most drastic of ways. But through it all, Oden came out the other side and found a way to impact some youths along the way.

Not to make light of Oden's very real pain, but "a lot of watching old YouTube clips and crying by myself," sounds a hell of a lot like how I imagine Michigan football fandom, though I'm not sure their glory days were recent enough for highlight clips to even exist on YouTube.

I'm stoked for Oden. Life didn't go how he expected, but he's making the absolute most of the turn it took. He's the definition of a role model.

 FYRE FOOTBALL LEAGUE. Just a few months ago I was hailing the AAF as the best football league in America and getting ready to break bank on a Tracy Sprinkle Atlanta Legends jersey.

It did a hard switch. The AAF is very, very bad, actually.

What an absolute disaster. If I knew Ja Rule and Billy McFarland were running this football league, I never would have been so optimistic. But we live and we learn.

From the sound of it, the AAF owes a lot of people a lot of money, which typically leads to a lot of suing. We'll see how this all plays out.

 RICH GET RICHER. The already loaded Ohio State women's hoops recruiting class got even better as Kevin McGuff went overseas to land Rebeka Mikulasikova, a 6-3 center from Slovakia.

Before Mikulasikova's pledge, the Buckeyes already had the nation's No. 4 recruiting class, featuring four five-star prospects and a top-15 international prospect, making for an absolutely absurd recruiting haul.

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