Skull Session: C.J. Barnett's Life As a Cop, Urban Meyer Won't Coach Florida State or USC, and the Women's Hoops Team Dominates

By Kevin Harrish on November 4, 2019 at 4:59a

Rejoice, your weekend without Buckeye football is over and you won't have to suffer through another until the good guys are prepping for a College Football Playoff game in December.

ICYMI

Word of the Day: Misanthropic.

 OFFICER CJ BARNETT, AT YOUR SERVICE. Now that CJ Barnett's days patrolling the secondary in the 'Shoe are over, he's taken on a new, and much more serious patrol.

From Maria Durant of ABC6:

"Now that I've actually become a cop, the job is way better than I could have ever imagined," said former Buckeye CJ Barnett.

Barnett's been patrolling the streets of Columbus for a little more than a year. He says his football days have helped him handle the pressures of police work.

"This one is very serious, it's life or death. Where in football you don't have life or death, but when you're playing you kind of feel that way, " said Barnett. "If it's fourth and five, they're on the ten-yard line and going for a touchdown, you give that up, your season's over, right.... especially playing at Ohio State, fans don't really like that."

If you'd ever like an autograph, going a cool 20 miles per hour over the speed limit until you run across officer Barnett would probably do the trick.

 URBAN TO...? Florida State (finally) fired Willie Taggart this weekend and Clay Helton's job has been on life support since before the season even started.

Based on the damn near endless speculation, most folks would probably expect Urban Meyer to be in line to take one of those jobs. But it looks like most folks are going to be wrong.

From Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports:

The new Florida State coach is projecting to jump off a plank and hope it works out at a place that needs a DeLorean to catch up. To established coaches who preach alignment, stability and relationships, that’s a non-starter. Urban Meyer’s name shouldn’t be mentioned here, and that has nothing to do with Coburn’s clumsy “hit by a bus” comments that exposed his naïveté to the nature of coaching searches.

Meyer would be more likely to go back to the MAC than walk into the administrative mess at Florida State.

But sure, it's Florida State who doesn't want Urban Meyer.

Though, this doesn't really matter, because Meyer is absolutely about to become the next head coach at USC, right?

And also from Thamel of Yahoo! Sports:

USC failed to express serious interest in candidates with deep and direct ties to Meyer, like former Florida AD Jeremy Foley and Washington State AD Patrick Chun. If Folt really wanted Meyer, she’d have engineered the AD search to get him.

Bohn and Meyer have some surface ties, as Meyer’s son plays baseball at Cincinnati and provides the strongest link. But if USC leaders wanted someone with deep ties to Meyer, they passed on multiple candidates. Those with knowledge of the search say it’s a clear sign Folt wants a different direction.

“If they wanted to go and get Urban Meyer, they’d need to hire someone he has a strong relationship with,” said an industry source. “He needs to believe in his AD. He’s been very close with all the athletic directors he’s worked with.”

Well damn!

That's especially hilarious given early reports that USC hired Cincinnati athletic director Mike Bohn in part to pursue Meyer.

I guess that leaves Notre Dame, which is currently a top-15 team coming off of a College Football Playoff appearance, coached by a guy who's been its most successful coach since Lou Holtz.

I think we're going to get to enjoy Urban Meyer on our television sets for the foreseeable future.

 OH. The Ohio State women's hoops team brought in the No. 3 recruiting class in the country, featuring four five-star top-50 players (including one affectionately nicknamed "SheBron").

They're uh, already doing some stuff.

No, that is not a typo.

It's worth noting that this was an exhibition game, but in case you were wondering, the NCAA single-game scoring record is owned by Long Beach State, which dropped 149 points on San Jose State in 1987.

Ohio State's freshman dropped a combined 90 points, with Jacy Sheldon and Kierstan Bell leading the way with 25 points each and Kaelynn Satterfield adding 22 of her own.

For some context, the Buckeyes have done cruel things to this poor team in the past, but with a senior-laden team led by one of the most prolific scorers in women's basketball history.

This team will be playing together for four seasons, and lord help the Big Ten.

 COME HOME, GREG. It looks like Rutgers is going to replace a former Ohio State defensive coordinator with another former Ohio State defensive coordinator (and also the best head coach in Rutgers football history).

It seems Greg Schiano is coming home.

From James Kratch:

A meeting between Rutgers officials and Greg Schiano is imminent, several high-level donors told NJ Advance Media on Sunday night, and there is a belief that barring a snag in the process, the Scarlet Knights’ coaching search is trending toward a return for the former head coach.

Schiano’s hire could potentially come by Wednesday’s sesquicentennial date marking the first-ever college football game between Rutgers and Princeton. It is a reunion that would thrill many of the program’s former players and diehard fans while providing the athletic department with a much-needed change in narrative following a difficult week.

I honestly don't know if you could make a better hire if you're Rutgers. That isn't a ringing endorsement for Greg Schiano as a head coach or anything, I just really don't think anyone else of even somewhat similar caliber would even consider taking that job.

And honestly, Schiano's stint the first time around was damn good! He took them to bowl games more often than not, led them to an 11-win season and had them all the way up to No. 7 (!!!) in the country at one point.

He's going to have wild fan support, but also I'm curious to see what the actual expectations are. Because Schiano had Rutgers clicking in the Big East, Bill Belichick couldn't coach that program to consistent bowl games with Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State on the docket every season. That's like starting the season 0-4 every year.

 DOING A PRESSER RIGHT. I can't say I've watched a second of North Texas football this season, but maybe that's going to have to change because their quarterback has unmatched swagger.

Is this really that much more ridiculous than what Cam Newton regularly puts together for his postgame pressers?

 SKULL SESSION. TSA confiscate a gun-shaped toilet paper holder at a security checkpoint... Teen accused of seeking a hitman to "eliminate" a school staffer... 100 years later, the madness of daylight saving time endures... Things we were wrongly told about dinosaurs... Wildfire chasers are the new tornado chasers...