Fiesta!

Come all you rambling boys of pleasure
O-linemen of easy leisure
We must kick 'Horn ass and hope we'll see
Arizona once again

Some housekeeping: I may be moving into new digs in the near future. Whenever it happens, I'll drop the link here so all five of you can follow me.

Sittin' on top of the world, part 3

Part three of a three-part series of incoherent rants, jumbled musings and confused bullhockey about the last three seasons. Highlighted here is the Season of Upstarts and Broken Hearts, 2008.


So, it was 2008, I guess. We had a pretty good football team coming in, I guess. Number three in the country or something. I wasn't ready to get excited about much of anything, because regardless of how the season began and where we ranked in whatever preseason poll was being thrown out based entirely on program reputation, the fate of the entire season hinged on one game. In a down conference, after two years of embarassment, Ohio State had one shot to "redeem itself". As most of you probably already know, it did not. In the wake: "sputtering rage, gibbering condemnation and resigned ennui" as That Dirty Hippie Up North so eloquently put it. The one thing I actually cheered about all night was when Marcus Freeman finally got to Mark 'Dirté' Sanchez on a 4th down sack, when the game was already over, and the Humanitarian was running up the score to impress the voters. I don't have anything against Carroll or USC or running up the score; I just simply pumped my fist and let out a little, defeated "yeah!" from the comfort of my living room couch. Looking back at this, I realize now why exactly I was cheering a great play by a team down 32 points: it still had some measure of fight left in it. Say what you will about Heacock, Bollman, the Vest and their failures on the national stage and I will probably agree with 90% of it. But don't you ever knock this group of seniors for anything outside of the occasional blown assignment or missed block. Marcus Freeman, James Laurinaitis, Alex Boone, Malcolm Jenkins, and every other senior on that roster has invested anywhere from 4 to 6 years in the program, and every single one of them deserves our admiration, thanks, and utmost respect for representing the university most of you attended and nearly all of my readers (all three of you) cheer for. Marcus Freeman had been relegated to pass coverage and blitzing on only the most obvious downs all night, and even though it was hopeless and there was nothing but embarassment and shame and resigned ennuie to be had after this game, he still fought to the end as best he could. Like a fucking warrior-poet.

Ohio State again had a shot at redeeming this season if not the program as a whole in its night home game against Penn State. In a game I still can't entirely explain, the Ohio State defense held up against an offense that looked unstoppable against everyone save a fluky game against Purdue. Heacock, despite Penn State's athletic WRs and RBs and spread offense, did not chicken out and play soft. He played man on occasion, blitzed on unconventional downs, and the defensive line actually got pressure - plenty of it -on Daryl Clark. Penn State was held to its lowest scoring output of the season, and needed two freshman mistakes by the One to get out of Columbus alive. For the third time in 2008, Ohio State was held without an offensive touchdown. The best game Jim Heacock had coached since Texas in 2005 was ignored largely because of the failures of Jim Bollman's side of the ball. But that loss, and the other offensive woes, can not easily be laid entirely at the feet of Jim Bollman. After all, he's a glorified line coach. He's Mike Debord with a Buckstache. Tressel is the balla, shot-calla of the offense. He chooses the plays. Apparently, Bollman literally suggests three or four plays and Tressel just picks one. Not only is this somewhat disturbing, it's disheartening that Bollman is receiving criticism, much like Ohio State, over something he doesn't have as much control over as people would like to believe. The rest of Ohio State's season was so nondescript I can sum every game up in basically one sentence: Pryor attempts less than 15 passes, Beanie Wells solidifies his draft stock when playing, the running game muddles along okay without him, and the offensive line consistently gets owned by the 2-star and 3-star Jimmies and Joes of Northwestern and Ohio. Terrelle Pryor has been nothing but impressive. He has made his freshman mistakes - taking large, drive-killing sacks chief among them - but they have not come in the form of constant turnovers, or really anything that would make you even begin to think he might not be the long-term answer at QB. Other youngsters impressed, Dan Herron and Michael Brewster chief among them, and Jermale "the Jackhammer" Hines looked impressive filling in for Kurt Coleman when he could. It was by no means a youth movement, but it was encouraging to see the next iteration of Ohio State football taking shape in these younger players.

The season was a disappointment. I don't think anyone can argue around that. This was the most talented team Jim Tressel has coached. Outside of a tough road date at USC, it was reasonable to expect an undefeated season. We had a sixth year (!) senior at quarterback, three seniors on the offensive line, arguably the best cover corner in the country, and a top-5 linebacker corps. Typically, the expectations of the Ohio State fanbase are a bit much, to put it lightly. There are many in our fanbase who think it is our birthright to go undefeated every year and that anything less is simply unacceptable. Personally, I am under no illusions that Ohio State fans are "owed" anything, or that even while donating millions of dollars to the AD that they "deserve" something. There is a difference between expectations and demands. I expected an undefeated season, but I'm not opening up Lane Avenue Torch and Pitfork over a two-loss season.

Nonetheless - and this is something I think all CFB fans can agree on - Ohio State is developing a character, and this year did nothing but reinforce it. Come the big games against the supposed big boys, Ohio State crumples. It fails. It dies trying. Whatever happens, it defies simple explanation. Some attempt to take the easy route and blame Ohio State's "lack of athleticism" (Mark May, Colin Cowherd, Todd McShay) even while their colleagues continually place Ohio State players at or near the top of their NFL draft boards at basically every position. Others point to Ohio State's soft conference schedule, something over which the Buckeyes have no control. In 2007, people pointed to the lackluster OOC schedule, featuring two macrifices, a D-1AA team and a Washington game scheduled years ago, shortly after Washington won a Rose Bowl. Again, this isn't something Ohio State can easily control. Most of the Ohio State fanbase faults the two coordinators: Jim Bollman and Jim Heacock. These two are easy targets, given their staid, consistent-yet-underwhelming schemes and the general perception that Tressel is still one of the top-five coaches in America.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle of that clusterfuck. I buy arguments regarding Ohio State's conference being down because the counter-argument literally doesn't exist, I buy arguments about the two coordinators, and I can see why people think Ohio State lacks athletes, even though to do so, I must forget most of what I know about football, defensive and offensive schemes, gap assignments, reads, so on and so forth. The problem is not, and will probably never be a lack of athletes. There is no unifying cause of Ohio State's problems in the "big game", but I do think these problems will begin to be addressed by doing the following.

1. Give Heacock and Bollman a nice, long sabbatical/vacay in Naples, and bar them from entering the state of Ohio for any reason other than to visit family ever again.

2. Tressel must cede playcalling to Bollman's replacement. He will be compensated with a lifetime supply of Bonbons and a private Beach Boys (what's left of them) concert.

3. Hire Mike Barwis or one of the wolves who raised him as S+C coach. Steve Rehring, in both attitude and physical shape, is the embodiment of everything wrong with the Ohio State offensive line. In the offseason, he claimed he should be given time off from practice because he's been their for four years and knows what's going on. In 2007, he showed up to camp at a nice, lean 350 fucking pounds and lost his starting job as a result (which he would win back after dropping supposedly 30, maybe 10-15 lbs). The entire offensive line is resting on laurels it doesn't even have.

Sigh. I should probably wrap this up, shouldn't I?

The last three years have been interesting, to say the least, if you're an Ohio State fan. It all started with a monumental win at 2nd-ranked Texas in 2006, and three years later, it's come full circle to a rubber match with the Longhorns in the Fiesta Bowl. Many, including myself to some extent, won't give the Buckeyes a chance. 90% of the idiots who don't give Ohio State a chance will claim that Ohio State "can't win the Big Game", while simultaneously calling this a "rubber match" after Ohio State 24-7 triumph in 1 vs. 2 in Austin (seems like a somewhat big game) and Texas' 25-22 escape from Columbus in a game in which both teams were also ranked in the top ten. This era of Ohio State football isn't set in stone yet, despite all the negativity surrounding the program and its players. The coaching staff must put together one of the best gameplans they have in their time here, to send these seniors, ones that they have failed four consecutive times in the biggest games of their lives, off on a high note. If anyone is owed anything, it's these guys:

Sittin' on top of the world, part 2

Part two of a three-part series of incoherent rants, jumbled musings and confused bullhockey about the last three seasons. Highlighted here is the Season of Unfulfilled Promise, 2007.

So the fluke may have been just that, a fluke. We'd never lose a game that ugly under Tressel again, for reasons I can no longer scrounge from what remains of my seventeen year old self. It simply couldn't happen again, could it? We're the elite of the elite, a top 5 program, and nothing can slow us down, right?

Well, for the first eight games, 2007 seemed to return to the storybook sensibility that 2006 often portrayed up until the brutal, final end. Bruised and battered from humiliating defeat, a young team was rising to the occasion to redeem itself and the program for one massive, recent failure that shamed them (unfairly) in the eyes of the nation. Led by yet another in a long line of big, bruising Buckeye running backs, an affable, fifth-year (!) junior at quarterback and a downright sick defense, the men of the Scarlet and Gray were carving out a warpath to New Orleans, and they were hellbent on bringing back the crystal to its rightful home. That yarn culminated in a 37-17 prison rape of Penn State in Happy Valley. Todd Boeckman put Troy Smith's performance in '05 to even greater shame, Thunderous McTankly could not be stopped by the best run defense the Buckeyes would play all year, and the passing game finally showed signs of being a genuine threat, something other teams actually have to worry about. The defense gave up some yards to Penn State, but they "always ran on us", so it was forgivable, ya know?

Two weeks later, [Name Redacted] and the fighting [Redacted]i came into Columbus with two losses: to middling Michigan and Iowa teams. In quite possibly the strangest choice of defense in his entire time at Ohio State (outside the Florida game, of course), Heacock chose to run almost exclusively soft zone against Juice Williams, one of the most mistake-prone quarterbacks this side of Chris Leak. Blitzing only on obvious passing downs (a meme that will be reinforced later on), Juice was asked to make simple reads and simply run to the side they're not blitzing on when said reads were covered. Thus, we have the easiest 4 TD passing day Juice Williams has probably ever had. Maddeningly, Jokester Jim number two chose to blitz on seemingly every down on Illinois's final possession, and, enragingly (that's a word now), all Juice had to do was run where there wasn't a LB blitz. That's it. Ohio State gave him the easiest first downs of his life, and he took them without question. But to blame this game on Jokester Jim number two and Jokester Jim number two alone is unfair, and ignorant of a number of other factors I don't feel like listing because for me the grief is still too near oh fuck it here they are: Todd Boeckman threw three picks, three defensive breakdowns and one terrible fumble call by a corrupt ref and simply a better game from the Illini gave Illinois the win. It's as simple as that. Despite their thuggish actions after the game, I hold no grudges to Illinois for exploiting the second-dumbest defensive scheme I've seen.

Sigh.

So you can tell that loss still sticks with me. Losing to Ron Tiberius* Zook at home is something that should scar anyone for life, even if you're a Northwestern fan (my condolences).

*Not really his middle name, but should be

You know the rest of the season. Ohio State rode Thunderous McTankly to a 14-3 win at Michigan, Pandora's box was opened in the intervening weeks: War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, American Idol, and Ohio State finding its way back to the title game. Against an SEC team.

Hell, LSU looked beatable. Darren McFadden beat them By His Own Damn Self, and so did a meh Kentucky team. Surely we're better than Kentucky?

Turns out, not so much. After another fast start, the Buckeyes crumpled, and Tressel and Heacock went into their respect run-run-pass and soft-zone-obvious-blitz shells after LSU came back and left a big ol' mushroom print on Ohio State's hopes of actually winning. I don't know why they did it, I don't care to know why they did it, they did it, it sucked, life sucks, and we're never gonna fucking win a bowl game against these mulleted hicks and their fried food and their shitty T-birds and their shitty Kenny Chesney and fucking Christ next year better fucking redeem us.

I stopped thinking that way the next day. Well, at least the redemption part. I realized that as much as I love and support the players on this team, there is a chance that, like God Himself Bruce Springsteen once sang, their best will never be good enough. I knew it was a little early to declare this special group of players; Malcolm Jenkins, James Laurinaitis, Alex Boone, and the rest to be - for lack of a better term - cursed. To this day I still don't think they are, because since then I've realized the fault does not lie entirely with the players and the multiple first-day draft picks on both sides of the ball. The problem is increasingly coming from the top, and no matter how much talent is being brought in, this problem can not be covered by recruiting the daylights out of the "speed states" and grabbing three of the best offensive tackles in the latest recruiting class.

This is already too long, but as a footnote, you may have noticed a distinct lack of funny in this piece. This season was unbelievably frustrating because it showed what this team can be at its highest point (Penn State) and the very lowest (Illinois, LSU), and the timespan between those highs and lows was short and jarring. Thus, the humor, what little their was, didn't come easy.

I want to point out that I have never felt a sense of entitlement for this program. I have never believed that since I spend so much money on Ohio State merchandise and because my father donated something like 1/10th of his company's worth to the University, that the program, or the players, owe me a damn thing. Even when I was young and (less) stupid, this concept never entered my mind. I owe far more to this program for great memories of great football than it does for my meager contributions. When I call for the heads of certain coaches in the final installment of this series, it will not be because I "demand" it or I find the current (very good) state of Ohio State football "unacceptable". Think of them more as business recommendations, or how the program can improve its standing by trimming the fat, literally and figuratively. There is a particular path we don't want to go down, and that is the path of Michigan and Florida State - one of cronyism, nepotism, arrogance, misplaced trust and blind faith that because we are good we will always be good and nothing will ever change forever and ever amen lalalalalalalala I can't hear you we're the elite of the elite no matter what happens lalalalalala.

You get the point. I hope.

Buckeye (Bowl) Breakdown

Okay, since I was dumb enough to start this blog after Ohio State's football season has ended, I figured I should first discuss a topic most relevant to the team: the bowl picture. Things cleared up all nice and tidy-like with Oregon's successful Rape of the Oregon State Beavers (hurr hurr durr Beavers) and Pillage of greater Corvallis (is Corvallis big enough to justify a "greater"?). The 65-38 blowout knocked the Beavers out of their potential Rose Bowl grudge match against Penn SHTAAAAAAAATE, and vaulted both Ohio State and Boise State into the at-large picture.

Ohio State's most likely destination, should they land in the BCS, will be either the Fiesta Bowl or the Sugar Bowl. Since the BCS rotates the order of bowl picks year-by-year, each year a different BCS bowl picks first. This year's it the Fiesta. Assuming Oklahoma wins the Big 12 championship game, it'll land in the MNC to play the winner of the SEC championship game. Thusly, all the questions of whether or not anemic offenses in the SEC are the result of superb, NFL talent-laden defenses and whether or not the outright-redonkulous offenses of the Big 12 are the result of lackluster defenses will be answered forever and ever amen and annoying fans on both sides will shut the fuck up and stop bothering people who aren't even fans of teams in their conference some of whom don't know the first damn thing about football and most of whom couldn't give less of a shit and we'll never again have to have these stupid distance pissing contests that would make Scout and Rivals message board pedophiles douchebags proud. Right.

Anyway, the Fiesta picks first, remember? Chances are good that the Fiesta Bowl officials are going to remember how Ohio State fans made Tempe a Blood Orgy The University of Ohio State at Tempe in 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006, and will snatch us right up to be led to the slaughter at the hands of Texas or Texas Tech (fuck you and your archaic championship system, Big 12). Bring your daught-ah, bring your daught-ah, and all that:

Failing that, the Sugar bowl will take Ohio State, pairing them off against the SEC runner-up. The thinking here will likely be "how can we improve the image of a conference whose probable champion lost at home to Count Giggity and LOL Miss"? The answer: pair them up with an Ohio State team that still sees something useful in the services of the Jokester Jims. Who, you ask? Jim Bollman and his nefarious Bucktache and Jim Heacock and his cute daughter undying, desperate, unbridled passion for deploying the soft zone against any team with any talent not named Penn SHTAAAAAAAAAATE. This Deadly Alliance was largely the undoing of Ohio State in the last two title games and oh yeah, That One Game Out West of which we do not speak (except to bitch and moan). I'm willing to wager that, in order to disrupt a once-unthinkable crisis of confidence in backwater SEC country, the Sugar Bowl will take an Ohio State team that probably isn't deserving of a BCS berth.

If the world ends and Boise State and Utah are both selected over the Buckeyes, hope will renew, as we would fall to either the Orange or Capital One Bowls, both winnable. The OB would pit the Buckeyes against the winner of the ACC championship; either Boston College or Va Tech. This is not likely, as Cincinnati, Big East champ is much more likely to fall into this spot because there isn't anywhere else they would fit in the BCS easily. The Capital One bowl might not sound sexy now that the Buckeyes look to be BCS bound, but, in this intrepid blogger's opinion, is the most likely to yield a win, because Georgia looked erm, beatable, against Georgia Tech this last week.

The Georgia Tech that beat Wofford.

By three points.

Wofford.

Three points.

TL;DR: We're headed to Tempe, Nawlins, possibly even Orlando for New Years. Wherever you go, bring the lube.