Welcome to the Skull Session.
The Basketbucks will be back soon!
Buckeye basketball coming soon #GoBucks | #FightToTheEnd pic.twitter.com/fK4EcwRWZp
— Ohio State Hoops (@OhioStateHoops) October 22, 2025
Have a good Thursday.
“I’D JUST CAUTION PEOPLE…” Remember what I said earlier this week: the national media does not respect Ohio State. Here’s another example from The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel:
Mailbag Question: Of the 44 first- and second-teamers currently at Ohio State, I only count eight seniors scattered among both levels. So, if they win the national championship again this year, would they also start the 2026 season as the favorite? — Charles C.
Yes, because Ohio State would be back-to-back national champions at that point, and no one would dare vote for anyone else, possibly for several years. But before we go ahead and fast-forward to August 2026, I’d like to take this opportunity to slow everybody’s roll about the 2025 Buckeyes.
Ohio State is the unquestioned No. 1 team right now, with good reason. Ryan Day’s team has been dominant. I’m not going to suggest it’s a fraud, or even that I’ve detected some vulnerability. But has anyone stopped to look at what’s become of its schedule?
The accolades began when the Buckeyes’ defense humiliated Texas and Arch Manning, but since then, everyone from UTEP to Florida to Kentucky has done the same. Illinois was their other Top 25 win, but the Illini have been overvalued by the pollsters all season. They are No. 31 in ESPN’s SP+ ratings and No. 38 in Austin Mock’s College Football Playoff odds while boasting the nation’s No. 79 defense in yards per play. Minnesota, which Ohio State beat 42-3 in Columbus, is closer to No. 50 than No. 25 in the power ratings. And Wisconsin might be the worst team in the Big Ten.
Ohio State’s most impressive performance remains its 24-6 win at Washington on Sept. 27 when the Buckeyes held a top-20 Huskies offense to 234 yards. That was the game when I said that defense is special. I still feel that way. But even that win got a bit devalued when Michigan also shut down Washington last week, a 24-7 win in Ann Arbor. And now, what we all assumed would be Ohio State’s second-biggest conference game, Nov. 1 versus Penn State, has been reduced to rubble as well. We won’t see the Buckeyes get tested again before The Game.
Now let’s compare those first seven games with those of the teams ranked Nos. 2-5. No. 2 Indiana won a top-10 game at Oregon, No. 3 Texas A&M beat current No. 12 Notre Dame on the road, No. 4 Alabama has beaten four straight Top 25 teams and No. 5 Georgia just beat a then-top-5 Ole Miss team. All of those teams have looked flawed at times as well — IU escaped at Iowa, Bama lost at 3-4 Florida State, A&M gave up 42 points to Arkansas and Georgia’s defense is brutal — but that’s more likely to happen when you’re playing a tougher schedule.
I’ve seen some people say this week that Alabama and Ohio State are on a collision course for the national championship game, which seems waaaay premature. The Tide are hot, but we already know they’re vulnerable. And though the Buckeyes have not been touched, I’d just caution people to look back at some past Ohio State teams — 2006, 2013 and 2022 come to mind — that went undefeated for the first 11-12 games only for us to find out that, like most college football teams, they weren’t unbeatable after all.
Ohio State has the best offensive player and defensive player in college football (Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs), at least nine more players capable of earning All-American honors (Julian Sayin, Carnell Tate, Max Klare, Caden Curry, Kayden McDonald, Sonny Styles, Arvell Reese, Davison Igbinosun and Jermaine Mathews Jr.), a top 25 offense and the nation’s No. 1 defense, but are we sureeeeee the Buckeyes are good?
I mean, come on.
I’m tired of this narrative!
Ohio State is good — no matter what Mandel or the national media thinks!
“IT’S THE WAY OF THE WORLD.” A college football legend believes NIL has contributed to a wave of high-profile firings across the sport, with six head coaches from Power Four programs dismissed since the start of the 2025 season.
“You know I’m not (surprised) because everybody’s raising money to pay players,” Saban told ESPN’s Mark Schlabach this week. “So, the people that are giving the money think they have a voice and they’re just like a bunch of fans. When they get frustrated and disappointed, they put pressure on (athletic directors) to take action, and it’s the way of the world.”
Penn State fired James Franklin following a 3–3 start. Franklin led the Nittany Lions to the 2024 College Football Playoff semifinals and finished his 11-plus seasons in State College with a 104–45 record.
“It’s unfair as hell,” Saban told Franklin during his appearance on College GameDay last weekend. “For you to go to the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, get to the final four, come out being ranked (No. 2) this year — an expectation that you created by what you accomplished at Penn State — and for those people not to show enough appreciation for that and gratitude for all the hard work that you did, I’m saying it’s unfair.”
Joining Franklin in the Fired Football Coaches Association are Arkansas’ Sam Pittman, Florida’s Billy Napier, Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, UCLA’s Deshaun Foster and Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry.
On the “Nonstop” podcast with Kirk Herbstreit and Joey Galloway, Ryan Day discussed the recent coaching carousel. While not as direct as Saban, Day agreed that NIL has accelerated impatience among athletic departments and boosters when programs fail to meet expectations.
“Anytime you make a change, there are a lot of things that have to go into play, and it takes time,” Day said. “The first thing is that you have to hit right with your staff, and then you have to hit it right with your recruits, and then you have to bring in recruits that can put your culture together. Even if you put all those things in, you still may have injuries, you still may have mistakes along the way. That takes time, which nobody wants to hear.
“I get it, guys are gonna make their decisions, and there’s a lot of pressure on administrators and athletic directors to get it right, and when you fire somebody, you got to go figure out if you’re gonna hire somebody that’s better than the one you got. That’s not easy to do. I get it more than anybody — we’re at a place where you got to win every game. But sometimes working through those difficult times and hanging in there even though there’s a lot of pressure from the outside is the best thing to do.”
To combat the growing instability, Day said coaches must communicate clearly with their athletic departments and present actionable plans to fix what’s wrong when programs trend in the wrong direction.
"I think it’s our job as coaches to make sure we explain what the plan is moving forward to correct the issues, so that everybody within the administration is on the same page,” Day said. “I think it’s the job of the administration to support the coach and to let them know that we have your back, even though we expect to win X number of games and this is our expectation. But I do think it’s our job to make sure we’re finding what the problems are, getting them addressed and then putting a plan moving forward for how we’re gonna get them addressed.
“But all that to be said, yeah, we’re in a day and age where — you look at the NFL, I mean, it seems like every year or two a lot of these organizations are flipping coaches over. I guess some of them work out, but many of them are more unstable than they’ve ever been, so I think there’s no science to it all and we’re all still working to do everything we can to figure out what’s next and what the answers are.”
“A DIFFERENT KIND OF PISSED OFF.” Following Texas Tech’s 26-22 loss to Arizona State on Saturday, Red Raiders head coach Joey McGuire had a Tuesday press conference in which a reporter asked him how his team would respond to the defeat.
McGuire’s hope?
That Texas Tech responds like Ohio State did in last season’s College Football Playoff.
Texas Tech Head Coach @JoeyMcGuireTTU gave an interesting response yesterday as his team is fresh off their first loss.
— Justin Margolius (@JustinMargolius) October 21, 2025
Texas Tech interviewed a member of last year's Ohio State staff for an open trainer position.
Coach McGuire asked this trainer how the Buckeyes responded pic.twitter.com/INsBh41O0I
“We interviewed a young lady for our fifth trainers job, and she was at Ohio State last year, and they beat Oregon, and I asked, ‘What changed from y’all getting beat by Michigan at the end of the year to just destroying what I thought was the best team in the country (Oregon)?’ And she said, ‘Everybody in that building was pissed off.’ And (it was) a different pissed off,” McGuire said. “I’m not mad at my players or my coaches or anything, I’m pissed off at myself. I take ownership for that loss, and I’m asking everybody else in this building to do the same thing and be pissed off this week and from here on out and see if we can’t really have an edge that shows up on Saturday.”
I hope McGuire’s motivational speeches with Texas Tech’s players land better than when Jim Knowles tried them with Penn State’s because… woof.
RED BULL GIVES YOU WIIINGS. Red Bull cans featuring Jeremiah Smith are coming to Ohio stores soon.
This week, Red Bull posted a video starring Smith and Chad Johnson, where the former NFL All-Pro wide receiver surprised Smith with a limited-edition can hidden inside a football-themed Matryoshka.
The limited-edition cans will be sold exclusively in Ohio through December or until supplies last. The cans have several unique features, including Smith's No. 4, a route line from his 56-yard "Third-and-Jeremiah" catch against Notre Dame and a portrait from his 2024 signing as Red Bull’s first college football athlete.
“It’s truly a blessing for me to be the first collegiate athlete to grace a can of Red Bull,” Smith said in a press release. “I can’t thank them enough for all the thought that went into the can.”
A fun fact I love to share about Red Bull — and I learned this during a Media Law & Ethics course at Ohio State — is that the company was once sued for false advertising over its famous slogan, “Red Bull gives you wings.” The case wasn’t about people literally expecting to sprout feathers but rather about whether Red Bull’s marketing exaggerated the drink’s performance benefits. The plaintiffs argued that the company misled consumers into believing Red Bull provided superior energy and focus compared to an average cup of coffee, despite lacking scientific evidence to support those claims.
In 2014, Red Bull settled the class-action lawsuit for about $13 million, offering U.S. consumers who purchased the drink between 2002 and 2014 either $10 in cash or $15 worth of Red Bull products. The company denied any wrongdoing but chose to settle to avoid the cost of ongoing litigation. The case has since become a staple example in advertising law, showing how even playful slogans can land a company in legal trouble if their marketing implies measurable benefits they can’t prove.
The more you know!
SONG OF THE DAY. "That's the Way of the World" - Earth, Wind & Fire.
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