Skull Session: ESPN's FPI is a Mess Again, Ohio State Ranks No. 2 in Basketball and Football Combined, and Freshmen Lose Black Stripes Like Never Before

By Kevin Harrish on April 14, 2021 at 6:23 am
Ryan Day gives the Bosa shrug in today's skull session.
128 Comments

Some morning inspiration for all of you: no matter how terribly your life is, at least you didn't get bitten by a venomous African viper that looks like a damn dragon and has no known antivenom!

Word of the Day: Madcap.

 MATT CAMPBELL'S REVENGE! It seems like ESPN's preseason FPI index is never terribly kind to the Buckeyes, and folks, the computer is at it again, ranking Iowa State(!!!) ahead of Ohio State ahead of the season.

I knew the Buckeyes should have hired Matt Campbell instead of Ryan Day!!!

Really though, I'm praying this is at least somewhat accurate because it gives Michigan a 71 percent chance of getting to six wins, a 2 percent chance of winning the Big Ten East and a 0.7 percent chance of winning the Big Ten with a projected record of 6.4-5.7.

That's... Hilarious.

 BEST OF BOTH WORLD'S. There ain't many schools who can boast the kind of success that Ohio State has had on both the hardwood and the gridiron.

In fact, according to a magic ranking algorithm from CollegeFootballNews.com, Ohio State has the No. 2 combined football and basketball ranking in all the land, behind only Alabama.

2 Ohio State

2020:2019:2018: 3
Football: 7-1 overall, 5-0 in conference, 1st in Big Ten East*
Basketball: 21-10 overall, 12-8 in conference, 5th in Big Ten

An argument could be made that Ohio State deserves to be a whole lot lower after the embarrassment of losing to a 15-seed in the NCAA Tournament, but football overtakes that. Winning the Big Ten title and exorcising the Clemson demon after the rough loss the year before made up for the hoops gaffe.

For most of the season, Ohio State probably would have been No. 1 on this list, but I understand that you forfeit certain things when you get dumped by a No. 15 seed in the first round. That seems fair to me.

 STRIPES ARE FLYING OFF. If it's felt like players were losing their black stripes at an insane rate this spring, you definitely ain't wrong. My good pal Dan Hope ran the numbers and it looks like we've got ourselves an unprecedented situation.

Basically, either this year's freshmen are better than ever, or Ryan Day's made it quite a bit easier to lose your black stripe. Since I'm a noted blind optimist and Buckeye shill, I will choose to believe it's the former.

Also, it's 2021 and I'm still pretending that losing a black stripe 

 BLAME BASEBALL. Today, in bad #takes...

Ah yes, because playing baseball was such a problem for guys like Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Joe Bauserman, Russell Wilson, Dan Marino, and John Elway.

This should go without saying, but this is one of the laziest things I've heard someone say on television this year, and that bar is so damn low.

 SONG OF THE DAY. "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen.

 NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. Brazil is building a new gigantic Jesus statue that will be bigger than the one in Rio... Two confess to killing a man after cops tell them the ‘crime was caught on NASA cameras’... Prisoners in Mexico started an OnlyFans account... This real-life ‘Marijuana Conspiracy’ is stranger than fiction... Is it bad to change jobs a lot?...

128 Comments
View 128 Comments