Welcome to the Skull Session.
What the heck?!
Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti reportedly wrote a letter to the NCAA Committee on Infractions recommending no new penalties for Michigan's sign-stealing scandal. https://t.co/AT9MUyPoSa
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) July 21, 2025
That will certainly make Big Ten Media Days interesting.
Have a good Tuesday.
“LET’S LET LOOSE.” In an interview with The Columbus Dispatch’s Bill Rabinowitz and Joey Kaufman, Ross Bjork reflected on Ohio State’s national championship season in 2024 — including his decision to back Ryan Day following the Buckeyes’ loss to That Team Up North — and forecasted where the program will evolve with Day at the helm.
On Ohio State’s national championship in 2024
Obviously we knew it was a 12-team playoff. Especially with a tough schedule, if you stub your toe, you’re still alive. You should never count yourself out throughout a season. Of course you want to win every game, but I think we learned a lot after the Oregon game in terms of our makeup. The ability to make adjustments on both sides of the ball was a learning lesson. Coach Day, in terms of culture and the leadership of the team, was really able to rely on the players to overcome the adversity.
We could have easily made a different choice in terms of how we responded to losing (against Michigan), but we didn't, and that speaks to the culture. In this new era, the regular-season games are going to be magnified. They always will be. That rivalry game will be magnified. But never count yourself out. That's a great lesson learned in today's world of college football. This should be a long-term (perspective). This should not be a quick fix, like, ‘Oh my god, we lost that game. Shut it down.’ You’re always in it, especially at Ohio State.
You learned a lot about how to have the player durability, whether it's depth or backing off in practice or in certain situations. We need to maybe play more guys on special teams than we would have otherwise. We learned a lot about the playability of the games knowing that you could play 16 or 17 games. There are a lot of perspectives we garnered.
On backing Ryan Day following Ohio State’s fourth straight loss to Michigan
It goes back to just getting to know him. As I was being hired, he and I sat down for about an hour, and I walked away going, ‘OK, this guy knows what he's doing. He's got a plan. He's going to overcome whatever the issues were from the 2023 season.’ I thought he was very thoughtful, very intentional, and he was excited about the continuity and adding some key pieces.
So coming out of that game, I believed in what I said. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have said it. And I thought the players could not walk into the building on Monday morning with any doubt about the status of the program. Period. We had a bad day, but we were still alive. I knew based on that loss, we would be hosting a playoff game. We would not get a bye. So we also needed our fans to show up. All of those factors said we need to come out strong and say this is our coach, he’s a great leader, we have a great team, we have tons of talent. We just wanted to be factual in our support to say this is the clarity that our program needs to have right now. It really was about the players and the fact we were in the playoff and everybody in Buckeye Nation, especially the players, needed to have clarity in purpose.
Every talking head could have their opinion about why we lost that game. That’s fine. But nobody could say, ‘Hey, what are they going to do with Ryan Day?’ If this mantra was to leave no doubt during the season, the mantra on Sunday and Monday and throughout the week was to leave no doubt about the status of the program, especially coach Day.
On whether winning a national championship has changed Ryan Day
One of the things I talked to him about when I first met him back in January 2024 and he asked me my thoughts, I said, ‘Hey coach, just from a neutral observer in this whole thing, you need to have more fun.’ We know the pressures of the job. We get it. We signed up for it. But part of this is we're pouring into young people. We are playing games. There should be a fun element to it.
Now that he has a national championship, and we have a national championship under his leadership, the program can kind of lift the lid off. There’s a big boiling pot of water here at Ohio State every day. There’s a lot of pressure. Let’s lift the lid off that. Coach feels that. Now we can go. Let’s have fun. Let’s smile. Let’s do all the right things on and off the field. We have an amazing graduation rate. We have a 1,000 APR score. We’ve got amazing metrics in all kinds of different categories, and now we have that one metric that means everything. Everyone has seen a pep in his step. There’s a renewed sense of focus. We can let loose.
We’ve arrived at this level under his leadership. It's happened before under numerous other coaches. But now under his leadership, I think he feels a sense of, not relief, because no coach ever feels like they've accomplished everything they want to accomplish, but it’s like, 'Let’s go.' There has been a renewed sense of confidence, or energy, or relief of pressure. You could describe it a ton of different ways. But I think we have sensed we have a leader who is established at the highest level and been here a long time now. Let’s let loose and take the program to an even higher point.
I think Bjork wants Day and the Buckeyes to let loose this season. And you know what? Me too! Coming off a national championship, I want to see Ohio State leverage their “renewed sense of confidence, or energy, or relief of pressure” and go win another one!
SHOW ME THE MONEY! This week, The Athletic’s Matt Baker asked the question: How much would it take to purchase your favorite college football program? For the Eleven Warriors audience, I will tweak that question to this: How much would it take to purchase the Ohio State football team?
The answer: $1.9 billion.
Here’s how Baker calculated that number (and the number for several other top programs from across the nation):
We approached the hypothetical question with a methodology that was part art, part science. We used real-life pro transactions to gauge purchase prices relative to a team’s revenue over the past three available years of data. NFL and NBA sales guided our ratios in the SEC and Big Ten, while the MLB and NHL were our rough benchmarks in the ACC and Big 12. For each school in a Power 4 conference (plus Notre Dame), we factored in everything from prestige and championships to facility renovations, population trends and realignment scenarios. That means treating Notre Dame more like the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston College more like the Kansas City Royals.
Because athletic departments isolate and report football revenue differently, our numbers are squishy. Actual transactions are much more complicated than what we did with a spreadsheet or what you see on “Shark Tank.” But the process is imperfect in the real world, too. What a team sells for (our objective with this story) is not the same as a team’s actual value (a story for another day). Buyers routinely pay a premium because there are only so many opportunities to own a sports team.
That sentiment would be even stronger in college football, where pre-established allegiances and irrational decisions already run deeper. Though Texas A&M just missed our $1 billion club, it’s easy to envision a few Aggies boosters artificially boosting the price to brag about spending 10 figures on their team. Or some Michigan fan paying extra to make sure the Wolverines out-priced Ohio State.
Do not take our numbers to the bank, literally or metaphorically. Instead, consider this a fun attempt at blending back-of-the-envelope math with common sense to price college programs like their professional peers — an exercise that’s theoretical for now … but might not be much longer.
- Texas: $2.38 billion
- Georgia: $1.92 billion
- Ohio State: $1.9 billion
- Notre Dame: $1.85 billion
- Michigan: $1.83 billion
- Alabama: $1.74 billion
- Oklahoma: $1.49 billion
- USC: $1.4 billion
- Tennessee: $1.37 billion
- LSU: $1.23 billion
You know, as much as college football has drifted toward professionalization (see: name, image, and likeness and revenue sharing), at least one key difference remains: NCAA teams are not for sale. (Well, not yet… shoutout to Boise State and Florida State exploring private equity options.) Still, it’s fascinating to see just how valuable the Ohio State brand is — through an exercise that’s part imagination, part math, and all about perspective.
THE BEST IN THE B1G. Paul Myerberg knows ball.
This week, the USA TODAY columnist ranked all 18 Big Ten football stadiums.
He ranked Ohio Stadium No. 1.
- Ohio Stadium (Ohio State)
- Beaver Stadium (Penn State)
- Autzen Stadium (Oregon)
- Michigan Stadium (Michigan)
- Husky Stadium (Washington)
- Kinnick Stadium (Iowa)
- Camp Randall Stadium (Wisconsin)
- Memorial Stadium (Nebraska)
- L.A. Memorial Coliseum (USC)
- Spartan Stadium (Michigan State)
- Huntington Bank Stadium (Minnesota)
- Memorial Stadium (Illinois)
- Ross-Ade Stadium (Purdue)
- Memorial Stadium (Indiana)
- SECU Stadium (Maryland)
- SHI Stadium (Rutgers)
- Rose Bowl (UCLA)
- Ryan Field (Northwestern)
It’s Ohio Stadium, the Shoe, the House That Harley Built, the 100,000-seat fortress on the banks of the Olentangy River in Columbus, Ohio — of course it’s the best stadium in the Big Ten!
OLYMPIC VILLAGE. Sammy Sasso is proof that good can come from Nazareth… Pennsylvania. Soon, he’ll return to the Keystone State to continue his wrestling career, not as an athlete, but as a coach.
Earlier this month, Lehigh head coach Pat Santoro announced that Sasso would join his staff in Bethlehem, nine miles from Sasso’s hometown of Nazareth.
“We’re thrilled to officially welcome Sammy to the Lehigh Wrestling family,” Santoro said in a statement. “We’ve known him for a long time, and I’ve always been a big fan of his. Our program has a lot of momentum right now, and bringing Sammy on board only adds to that excitement.”
!
— Lehigh Mens Wrestling (@LehighMWREST) June 30, 2025
Four-time All-American and Nazareth native Sammy Sasso has joined the Lehigh coaching staff.https://t.co/tQ4ZN11zG7 pic.twitter.com/2qxVEtqdX3
Sasso was a four-time All-American and two-time Big Ten champion in his first five seasons at Ohio State. He would have added to those accolades as a sixth-year senior in 2023-24; however, Sasso was the victim of a shooting near Ohio State’s campus in fall 2023, forcing him to spend one month at the Wexner Medical Center and many more recovering and rehabilitating.
Miraculously, Sasso returned to the mats for Ohio State in 2024-25 and recorded 12 regular-season wins. He announced in late February that he would retire from wrestling before the Buckeyes competed in the Big Ten Championships and NCAA Championships.
“I worked harder than ever before just to get where I’m at, but nonetheless, my leg cannot move the way it used to,” Sasso said in his retirement announcement. “Although this situation has been tough, I know this entire process has made me a better person.”
I have complete confidence that Sasso will be an excellent addition to Santoro’s staff, as his resilience, work ethic and perspective will be a priceless asset to Lehigh’s wrestlers.
Best of luck back home, Savage.
SONG OF THE DAY. “Back In Black” - AC/DC.
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