The Bucket Gets Provocative

Yo, it’s over. We had a great shot but the shots didn’t fall. What a great run, though, for our Basket Bucks. Thanks, guys. You were a pleasure to watch…

And now back to our regularly scheduled football program.

Where we safely predicted that once the digging started, it wouldn’t soon stop. As Will Rogers used to say: “To get out of a hole? Stop digging”. Except we are not in charge of the dredging and the muck-raking here.

We are more in the business of starting rumors (!) than in deflecting them. That is - to be more precise - we report and amplify and relate our experience to rumors. So when someone else gets the rumor mill revved up, we have to actually do research and report back. Last week?

1) Urban Meyer bought a house in Columbus and is readying himself to be the next OSU football coach.
2) Gene Smith is resigning due to “the scandal”.
3) Jim Tressel is feeling so much pressure from the alumni that he will be forced out.

As you might recall, we began publishing our now-daily Boarding House feature with the loose description of an explosion at the boarding house: “Rumors are flying”. (Did anyone ever really get that joke? It is from that Vaudeville Era, as am I – at least in spirit…).

Now, we are forced to think through these latest mutations, or should I say – permutations – of an incident a year ago when Coach Tressel failed to forward on a speculative e-mail. We dutifully responded to these specious attempts that it is more likely the Urban Myth applies to Penn State than to Ohio State. Gene Smith is in charge of NCAA basketball pairings right now and is probably otherwise occupied. And there is a greater probability that the alumni will come out in full support of Tressel rather than in opposition to him.

Other than that? Well, we all make mistakes, right?

As a prime example, JT and I share mistakes in common including admitting to at least a mistake in judgment, as we have both been divorced. And both of us, seemingly, found happiness after admitting that mistake and moving on. Happiness. Mine is pronounced. His is presumed.

Some people insist Urban Meyer has a house in Columbus.

But is seems that Buckeye Nation can’t move on. That we are waiting for the inevitable demise to be announced. As if the NCAA Huns will come together and smash us, then scatter us to the winds. Since that is going to happen anyway, well – why not just give up now?

As CP Cavafy intones in “Expecting the Barbarians”:

“Why don’t the worthy orators come as usual
To make their speeches, to have their say?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today”

And as it was pointed out by Mark Helprin in “Digital Barbarism”, in the poem, the barbarians do not arrive, and the people, who have already surrendered, are regretful that they don’t!

Steve Helwagen pointed out, when this saga broke that: “People have lumped Tressel in with a pair of basketball coaches, Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl and Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun, who it seems were less than truthful in dealings with the NCAA. There is a difference, though. Tressel seems to be covering for violations committed by his players. Pearl and Calhoun were trying to cover up wrongdoing by themselves or their staff members

Oh, yes, we like our mighty to be fallen for some peculiar reason. The whole treatment in its excess reminds me of the treatment of Mother Theresa by that agnostic, Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a book about Mother Theresa and called her “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.” He cited volumes of instances to buttress his accusations including “her praising the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. There is also film of her groveling to the Duvaliers: licking the feet of the rich instead of washing the feet of the poor”. It demonstrates that any icon can be diminished if one can find n “illuminating” incident.

Hemingway, much less tongue-in-cheek has been paraphrased by me before as saying that life breaks everyone. It’s only how you act afterwards that makes you any different. I would like to see us act a lot more supportively. And to act as if we, and Coach Tressel, are in it for the long haul. Together. Just in case!

As the mystics remind us: It is better to struggle forever than to die once. I say, let us continue the struggle with heads held high. And don’t distress. And don’t dis Tress.

Everything’s gonna be all right…

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Tressel‘s traditional stout defense… And I bore in – and possibly bore you – with yet another defense of our football coach.

I may or may not have sent provocative e-mails to the top ten coaches (as determined by salaries) suggesting improprieties by their most prominent players. They may or may not send those up the proper channels; to compliance, to the athletic department, and to the media that demands to know all allegations well before they are proven out. What do you think – what would we hear?

And, thus, I continue my determined and unflagging defense of Coach Tressel – his overall intentions, integrity and vision – in the face of what others assume is unassailable facts and logic. The “unassailable facts” however are really based upon shallow “gotcha” journalism and a lack of context or attempt at understanding. The “logic” is a twisted way of arguing (one that my wife enjoys because of its success rate), that whenever I talk about specifics, she talks about generalities. Whenever I counter with my own countervailing generalities, she shows my errors by bringing up specifics.

It’s frustrating. Like reading this column. Like truly understanding this situation and not relying on sound-bites or dismissive judgments. Hey – thinking is hard work!

Let’s look at some context. Let’s permit the pragmatic light of reality to intrude into all this theorizing. Jim Tressel is now having his world turned inside out and upside down because of a mistake in judgment. An error of omission – not of commission. He was sent an e-mail alleging facts and he didn’t follow it up or turn it over. From that error of omission, of inaction, many judges and jurors out there leapt right to the death penalty phase of the discussion and concluded such wearying epilogues such as:

1) Tressel should be fired.
2) Ohio State is just no damned good.
3) Buckeye fans are frauds and hypocrites
4) Forget the SEC – no one cheats and covers up like Ohio State

Here at this intermission point of negotiating the truth, let us understand that the athletic department, compliance department, Tressel and staff are inundated with e-mails, stories, rumors and pseudo-investigations of player activity. We know of many tips and stories that were provided the athletic department that proved to be misguided, self-serving and baseless. Most of the stories? They are almost always about the stars of the team – the most vulnerable to these kinds of accusations. Of course, the athletic department is defensive. Of course, they hope the largely anonymous allegations are untrue. Of course, they can’t do a full-scale stop-the-presses inquiry of each one. As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it”.

That doesn’t mean that the men in charge are criminals or venal manipulators. Hey – I know personally of issues that were turned over to compliance and staff and they looked into them and found them inconclusive or even incoherent. Not wrong – just difficult to pin the truthful tale on the writhing donkey. There are 23,000 D-I football athletes, according to a report last week. And do any of you out there have kids in college? I think that most of them are doing something “wrong”: much of the time. Not necessarily just drinking caffeine or having pre-marital sex, which passes for “wrong” at some schools. No, they are involved in gray areas of morality and risk-taking behavior and thoughtless gestures. They feel they are the kings of entitlement. Of invulnerability. Now, multiply that by us putting our star athletes on pedestals and lavishing them with attention and praise. Yes, what could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything, all the time. If you investigated each suggested incident, there would be no time for teaching moments and coaching moments or even the games themselves. So, when an e-mail comes in that says – oh, crap – trouble on the horizon, no one expected Tressel to jump in his car and run to compliance. It was just another possibility in the endless streaming of possibilities.

So, is JT exonerated? Did he act properly? Should he be excused for this error of omission? No, no, and no. But is there a climate of lack of control or malicious intent, of subverting the nature of college amateur standards? That’s when this gets ridiculous. That’s when the parallel universe of arguing specifics-versus-generalities has taken over the logic of what went on and what goes on.

Now, let’s all go on…

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Adjusting to 24/7 and a new level of Bucknuts-mania… No change is as seamless as the one for which you prepare. We now have more the three-fourths of our subscribers “moved over” and - although we realize that some of our subs only show up when there are football games – we won’t be minimally satisfied until we get to 98%; or so. Fortunately, we already have a few hundred new subscribers since the 24/7 move took hold a little over a week ago.

Listen, when you have 180,000 or more people registered with the site, some names and passwords and avatars fall through the cracks! But we are diligent and relentless and we want everyone to enjoy the Bucknuts experience.

And, speaking to that, here’s the list of either new features or enhancements for members of Bucknuts that are new enough (or different enough) that they are worth pointing out now that we are part of the 24/7 family:

1. There’s now a very utilitarian mobile version of Bucknuts.

2. A comprehensive prospect database will be built out over the next 2-3 months, amplifying our already over-the-top Buckeye-based database.

3. We will see recruit and team rankings.

4. There will be a flood of new content from other schools with an emphasis to orient you to Buckeye- affiliated info.

5. There are already 26 team sites at 24/7 and there are new announcements planned almost weekly (expect 40 team sites by football season…).

6. We are now part of a national 24/7 recruiting board.

7. Don’t forget 24/7 Sports Radio!

8. There is a clever application so that you can follow users, and an ability to customize the board to show posts from users that you do follow.

9. We have created a unique ability to jump from boards that you follow with just one click.

10. All of the article comments are linked to boards.

11. You can now scroll through photos attached in a topic by clicking arrow left and right.

12. There’s an entertaining voting system and user ratings for the message boards.

We will regale you with new features and the current features will continue to blossom. We want what you want: 24/7!

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Defensive linemen – the series… I have given up my offensive comments about the 2011 team and am now getting defensive in the series of position reports for next year. Let’s talk defensive linemen this week. We are so blessed at the defensive line positions for now and the future that I can keep this quickie summary blessedly short and still be straight over tackle with you guys (an expression I picked up in the south…).

I can’t hide the fact that we lost Dexter Larimore and Cam Heyward from a stellar line last year. But we also can’t hide the fact that we have the best incoming group maybe ever and an even better group (!) after that. Yes, we will be fine anchoring the defense.

As presumed starters next year, we return the fierce duo of John Simon and Nate Williams with Jonathan Hankins, Garrett Goebel and Adam Bellamy figuring large (literally) in the veteran two-deep. Out of sight but not out of mind? Don’t forget emerging possibilities like J.T. Moore, Jonathan Newsome, Darryl Baldwin and Melvin Fellows.

How about that aforementioned super class coming in? I think at least two guys will be in the two-deep despite the also-aforementioned depth. Both Joel Hale and Michael Bennett are my choices to crack the depth chart although Kenny Hayes and Steve Miller were higher rated and Chase Farris can play all four line positions!

Oops – we forgot Solomon Thomas – who will be back for, well…part of the year.

With that embarrassment of riches, can the rich get richer? You betcha, as the stock pile grows ever larger, emanating mostly from the Buckeye state.

While we are likely to lose the best of the best in Chris Wormley, we can’t complain. ‘Cause if he is a 10, then the 9.5’s will just have to do! (I remember when Connor Smith was a 10, btw…)

We are told that Tom Strobel is already “in” and the Bucks are better than even odds on:

1) Greg McMullen
2) Adolphus Washington
3) LaTroy Lewis
4) Se'Von Pittman

And as “back-ups”, just in case? Offers have allegedly gone out to Tommy Schutt and Jordan Watkins (Georgia). And our Mark Porter/Duane Long axis tells us that lesser-known Trae Clark (a mobile 6-4 330-pounder) is a dark horse super candidate for the vaunted position of nose tackle.

Add it all up and say a collective “whew”. There are always things to obsess over in Buckeye Nation but the quality and quantity of the defensive line (for – say – the next 5-6 years) is not one of them.

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How spoiled are we?... Really now. Other teams speculate about the players they have or the opportunities they could have had. We look at a 12-1 season with 15-16 minutes of bad football and a BCS bowl win and ask, “What if?”

Spoiled, I tell you!

Sometimes the worm turns simply on bad luck with personnel. Think about if Eugene Clifford had stayed out of trouble; or if Shariff Floyd hadn’t been bamboozled by Urban Meyer with the deathbed speech; or maybe if Thaddeus Gibson had come back. Wow. Lots of talent and probably (possibly?) a different outcome in Madison.

Those are some great “what-ifs’, but as some have outlined on various message boards, ratchet it up to an even greater level of speculation and think:

1) Assume that the caprices at the NCAA had blown our way and they found out in a timely manner that Cam Newton and his family are guiltier than sin and that the whole Auburn ordeal had ended as it should with suspension and probation and coaches on the rack. Thus, Auburn would have been out of the hunt.
2) Remember Iowa? They just barely lost to Wisconsin and could have won. Easily. That would have moved us up to, say, #4 then, with Auburn sidelined.
3) And Stanford? There was the same likelihood that they could have lost to either USC or Arizona State. Lose to either one and we are #3.
4) With no one else claiming a better schedule or with the NCAA looking down its nose at “the little sisters of the poor”, the Bucks get into the title game with Oregon. And:
5) Just like the previous year, we take the Ducks to the woodshed as they showed all sorts of vulnerabilities in their “title game” with War Eagle, after all.

Coulda. Shoulda. Woulda. We are – indeed – spoiled. But that scenario could have – indeed – happened. It was a helluva a year regardless and maybe closer to all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips than we remember now in the off-season.

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Ohio’s bountiful harvest – now in the Buckeye barn… Each year, we talk about JT and staff building a fence around Ohio and harvesting the best that the good land provides us here. OSU did a fabulous job again with the 2011 class, which was a high quality harvest, indeed, and 2012 promises to be even better.

So much for Ohio by itself. I wanted to look at the total Midwest recruiting possibilities from last year and to grade our regional production. How well did we do with the top recruits from all across the Midwest?

One could say it was “second verse – same as the first”. And while we got no one named Henry (and really no one named Willie or a Sam, although the O-line gives me the Willies and we do have two Sam linebackers); and if you are under 50 and don’t understand those lame references, click here.

For the rest of us, we rely on data and none is better than Bill Kurelic’s fantabulous “Midwest Football Recruiting News”. Facts are stubborn things and Bill is the dean of marshalling those facts and figures. Based upon his final Midwest recruiting summary, here’s where we stand:

Who we got from across the Midwest and who we missed

Here’s interesting stuff (well, at least to me). Bill Kurelic ranks the Top 100 players in the Midwest – yes, that includes a lot of other states in addition to Ohio - even Michigan! As a great example, here are the absolute Top Ten of the Midwest and where they ended up:

1) Braxton Miller OH Ohio State
2) Lawrence Thomas MI Michigan State
3) Kenny Hayes OH Ohio State
4) Davaris Daniels IL Notre Dame
5) Doran Grant OH Ohio State
6) DeAnthony Arnett MI Tennessee
7) Michael Bennett OH Ohio State
8) Steve Miller OH Ohio State
9) Kiaro Holts IN North Carolina
10) Trey DePriest OH Alabama

So, not only did Ohio State keep all the big-timers in the state – other than DePriest – they also got five of the top ten in the Midwest.

Looking deeper into the Top Fifty, for color and depth, Michigan got four players: Brennen Beyer (MI), Justice Hayes (MI), Greg Brown (OH) and Chris Bryant (IL). You would say, “Hey – pretty good. Not a bad class. Gaining on the Buckeyes!” Right? Take a closer look: In the Top 50 in the Midwest, Ohio State had 15 kids! The disparity continues.

Here’s how the talent ranked for the Ohio State kids who made the top 100 in the overall Midwest:

Braxton Miller - #1
Kenny Hayes - #3
Doran Grant – #5
Michael Bennett – #7
Steve Miller – #8
Joel Hale – #16
Nick Vannett – #19
Chase Farris – #21
Evan Spencer – #24
Ron Tanner – #25
Brian Bobek – #28
Devin Smith – #29
Cardale Jones – #31
Derjuan Gambrell – #35
Chris Carter – #38
Antonio Underwood – #75
Tommy Brown - #93

How the other Big Ten teams did recruiting Ohio

From a different perspective, it’s instructive to see what in-roads the other Big Ten teams made into Ohio as it presages future recruiting triumphs and failures. So let’s take a look at who got what from the Buckeye state.

* Nebraska: 2 Ohio players
Kevin Williams – DL, Holland
Max Pirman – LB, Orrville

We didn’t offer either of them…

* Iowa: 2 Ohio players
Ray Hamilton – TE, Strongsville
Johnny Lowdermilk – LB, Carrollton

We didn’t offer either, but took a look at Hamilton…

* Michigan: 7 Ohio kids!
Ken Heitzman – DE, Hilliard
Chris Rock – DE, Columbus
Jack Miller – DL, Toledo
Antonio Poole – LB, Cincinnati
Frank Clark – LB, Cleveland
Greg Brown – DB, Fremont
Tamani Carter – DB, Pickerington

We didn’t offer any of them either although Brown and Rock were once considerations. You have to be a real recruiting junkie to have even heard of Carter, Miller or Heitzman!

* Michigan State: 4 Ohio kids
Connor Cook – QB, Stow
Roger Williamson, - WR, Dayton
Joel Heath – DE, Cincinnati
Donavan Clark – OL, Finneytown

Probably the best haul of the bunch out of Ohio; Williamson could have been a productive Buckeye and Clark might be better than a couple of our Ohio O-linemen but – still – no offers from OSU…

* Wisconsin: 5 Ohio kids
AJ Jordan – WR, Trotwood
Ray Ball – OL, Westerville
Jesse Hayes – DE, Cincinnati
Darius Hillary – DB, Cincinnati

We took a look at Jordan and, uh, passed. We could have taken Ball instead of one of our perpetual two-deep guys but we didn’t. If past is prologue, they will turn him into a line stud and he will grind meat against us. But, final answer? No one of these guys got offers from OSU…

* Penn State: No Ohio kids!
There weren’t a lot of good kids from other states, either. We lost the O-line battle for Angelo Mangiro but he was from New Jersey and that doesn’t count by this reckoning…

* Illinois: 2 Ohio kids
Jeremy Whitlow – WR, Cleveland
Chris Boles – OL, Toledo

Neither had offers or was considered by the good guys. Zook is losing whatever presence he had in Ohio, landing two second-tier Ohio kids out of a class of 27…

* Minnesota: No Ohio kids!
The Golden Goofs usually reach way down but they scoured the country to achieve true mediocrity this year. Hey – they only had five from Minnesota out of a class of 23…

* Indiana: 7 Ohio kids!
Shane Wynn – WR, Cleveland
Cody Latimer – WR, Dayton
Jay McCants – WR, Cincinnati
David Kaminski – OL, Strongsville
Zack Shaw – LB, Coshocton
Mike Replogle – LB, Centerville
Mark Murphy – DB, Akron

The Hoosiers got the best haul from the second tier but still no OSU offers amongst the bunch. Shane Wynn came closest. And as a trivia answer: Replogle is the third brother in five years to go from Centerville to Indiana to play linebacker.

* Northwestern: 4 Ohio kids
Geoff Mogus – OL, Lakewood
Deonte Gibson – DE, Lakewood
Drew Smith – LB, Cincinnati
Nick VanHoose – DB, St. Paris

Quick show of hands: how many of you have heard of these guys? Neither has the OSU recruiting insiders…

* Purdue: No Ohio kids!
Not only none from the neighboring state of Ohio but Indiana didn’t get any from its own state either!

So, of all the Ohio guys that went elsewhere, who did we lose to a B-10 team that we wanted?

Uh, none?

Sorry to distract you from the scandals and the gossip, but on the recruiting front – the Buckeyes continue to rock.

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No distractions at the bottom of the page this week. I wanted to laugh at you guys for a change so bring it on!