Welcome to the Skull Session.
Maurice Clarett is the Grinch who wants to steal Miami's Cotton Bowl hopes!
Im here to steal @miamihurricanes Christmas and hopes of a National Championship again!!! pic.twitter.com/IVer96zGot
— Maurice Clarett (@ReeseClarett13) December 22, 2025
Have a good Tuesday.
THE RAREST OF AIR. Delegating play-calling duties isn’t just a stylistic choice for a head coach chasing championships — it’s almost a prerequisite. History suggests that even the best offensive minds face a steeper climb when they’re responsible for everything on game day.
The last head coach to win a national championship while calling plays?
Jimbo Fisher at Florida State in 2013.
Before that?
Steve Spurrier at Florida in 1996.
It’s hard to win a national championship. It’s even harder when your eyes are locked on a call sheet and not on the field.
“When you’re not calling (the plays) and your eyes aren’t down on the call sheet, you just have more — your eyes are up. You’re with the defense. You’re watching the offense. You’re watching the other side,” Ryan Day said on Monday. “You’re watching what’s going on as opposed to being down on your call sheet.”
Despite the challenge, Day is confident in the coaches around him – including Brian Hartline, the coach he’s seizing play-calling duties from – and their ability to help him accomplish the feat few coaches have done before him.
“That’s where we’ve got to be good upstairs. That’s where I really need Keenan (Bailey) and Billy (Fessler) and Tyler (Bowen) and Hart to be on their stuff so that we can move quickly,” Day said. “Billy will get the call into the quarterback because to have your eyes down the whole time as a head coach is not, to me, the right fit. It just allows you overall to have a better handle on your team and what’s going on. So that’s been the best."
Like Day and his coaches, I am confident that the national champion head coach will win another. That’s because he’s had his eyes fixed on another difficult task: becoming the first Ohio State team to win back-to-back titles. Therefore, his fingerprints have been all over the Buckeyes’ offense this season, even though he wasn’t the team’s lead play caller.
“There’s not a game that’s gone by where I’m not involved with every single call and listening to every call and making sure it’s what we’ve agreed upon going in. It’s similar to the way it was before,” Day said. “So again, it won’t just be me. It’ll be everybody involved with it, and we need everybody to be on their game.”
Operating as an offensive overseer in 2024 and 2025, Day now steps back into a role few national champions have successfully navigated. Ohio State’s pursuit of another title hinges on whether his involvement can remain surgical, not consuming, with his eyes still fixed on the bigger picture.
I already consider Day the best coach in college football, but a national title under these circumstances should make that status undisputed. The first national title as a play caller since Jimbo Fisher. The first Ohio State coach with multiple championships since Woody Hayes. The first Buckeye coach to win back-to-back titles.
Yeah, that oughta do the trick!
“THAT WAS SOMETHING SERIOUS.” Before Ohio State faced UCLA, Jeremiah Smith appeared on the Buckeyes’ status report with a 12-letter word we had never seen next to his name: QUESTIONABLE. Smith was injured, but we didn’t know exactly what it was or how serious it might be. He started for Ohio State against the Bruins but logged just 22 snaps before exiting in the first half.
“Something I never really had to deal with,” Smith said Monday of the injury. “I don’t really be hurt or nothing like that. Nothing really bothers me. But that was something serious I had to deal with.”
Smith later revealed he suffered a quad strain in practice, specifically to his rectus femoris — the prominent, straight muscle at the front of the thigh. According to WebMD, the website we all consult when a minor ache convinces us we’re near death, the rectus femoris is unique among the quad muscles because it crosses both the hip and knee. Often called the body’s “kicking muscle,” it plays a critical role in straightening the knee and lifting the leg, making it essential for acceleration and sprinting.
Given the pain he experienced, Smith missed the Rutgers game. He wasn’t sure if he would play against Michigan, either.
“I was like, I don’t know if I’m gonna play against the team up north. Like, I was debating if I was going to play or not because it was really bad. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to play,” Smith said. “But I had to do everything for the team. And I wanted to be out there, and I did everything I could, and we got the win.”
Smith, who said he does not regret playing in the UCLA game, also admitted he was less than 100 percent in The Game, but he’s fully healthy now. He’s excited to remind everyone what he can accomplish at full strength. Smith now turns his focus now turns to Miami — and, eventually, another national championship.
“Now it’s time to crank it up a little bit, because now it’s time to win another natty around here,” Smith said.
I agree!
I wholeheartedly agree!
CARSON HINZMAN, FUTURE COMEDIAN? I hope Carson Hinzman has a long, prosperous football career ahead of him. But if things don’t work out on the gridiron, he may have a future in stand-up comedy. (I could, too, but I prefer to sit.) Hinzman had Ohio State beat reporters belly laughing Monday during the team’s Cotton Bowl press conferences.
The first round of laughs came when Hinzman realized the press conference had a Zoom component. With a reporter’s question coming through the speakers above him, Hinzman jokingly looked up at the ceiling to answer.
Another hilarious moment followed during an exchange with Doug Lesmerises about Gabe VanSickle’s nickname, “Sicko Mode.” Hinzman shared several nicknames for Ohio State’s offensive linemen, including “Piggy” for Austin Siereveld, “Tigre” for Tegra Tshabola and “Dilla” for Joshua Padilla.
“I don’t think anyone actually knows his real name,” Hinzman said of Padilla.
Other nicknames included “Big J” for Julian Goines-Jackson and “Big E” for Ethan Onianwa. Hinzman declined to share his own nickname, choosing to “keep that one under wraps for now.”
“It’s been fun to be a part of a group like that that came together after a lot of experience left from last year’s team,” Hinzman said. “Playing these big games with them is pretty special.”
Last but not least, Hinzman addressed his bleach-blonde hair. When asked if it was a mistake, he said:
“I don’t know. All the guys are like, ‘When is it gonna wash out?’ And I was like, ‘That’s actually the funny thing about bleaching your hair — it doesn’t.’ Unfortunately, it was really cool until I woke up the next morning. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m still blond,’” Hinzman said.
Hinzman said it will be cool once his hair turns into frosted tips — à la *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys in the ’90s. His girlfriend disagrees.
“We’ll see,” Hinzman said. “My girlfriend’s not necessarily the biggest proponent of it, so we’ll see.”
We need this man in front of a microphone more often.
NOT BIFF TANNEN, BIFF POGGI! Michigan interim coach Biff Poggi did not mince words when describing the Wolverines’ football program under Sherrone Moore, calling it a “malfunctioning organization” he hopes to fix if he becomes the team’s permanent coach.
Jim Harbaugh.
Matt Weiss.
Connor Stalions.
Moore.
Poggi has seen enough.
“It’s been five years of a malfunctioning organization,” he said. “Let’s call it what it is: It’s happened every year. The athletic director doesn’t want any more of that.”
It has been a malfunctioning organization. If I am named head coach, there will be a massive self-examination.#Michigan interim head coach Biff Poggi said the program will be re-evaluated if hes hired as permanent head coach.https://t.co/awWfFgcNkn pic.twitter.com/2hpNABVZLT
— Charles Post (@chas_post23) December 22, 2025
One, heck yeah, Biff. I actually respect the heck out of that. Two, let’s call it what it is, Biff: Warde Manuel isn’t likely to stick around once Michigan completes its investigation into the athletic department. Well, he shouldn’t — but you never know with That School Up North.
Regardless of whether Manuel survives for the 1,000th time, Poggi believes he can be Michigan’s next coach.
“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said. “This place is magical, and the program means a lot to me. It's one of the things I want to fix before I go smoke myself to death with cigars. I want to fix this.”
Can he?
I’d never doubt a man who ends his nights with Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and a Cuban cigar.
Will he?
I don’t think so.
And that works for me!
SONG OF THE DAY. "get by" - Ethan Regan.
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