Archives for September 2007

It’s all their fault

FootballAs I’m watching Tulane hang with LSU (who are 40(!) point favorites), I can’t shake this feeling that it’s all Appalachian State’s fault. Their monumental upset of Michigan in week one has emboldened and energized underdogs across the country. This is college football, not March Madness! The Louisiana States are supposed to crush the Tulanes of the world, not let them lead 9-7! So now, teams like aforementioned LSU, Arkansas and Louisville are reaping the terrible benefits of what App. State hath sown. I don’t see it ending anytime soon now. Sure, LSU will probably go on to win this game, but the damage is done. Tulane believes!

(I will take this opportunity to point out that some teams are able to handle their business against lesser foes.)

So while I could take the easy “Buckeye Fan” road and blame the Wolverines (who are currently losing to Northwestern *snicker*), I’ll take the high road and blame Appalachian State. You know, the team that lost to Wofford. They ruined it for everyone else.

Thanks a lot, Mountaineers.

Update: I love college football!!

Week #5: Minnesota Open Thread

OSU FootballWelcome to the Open Thread of week 5, where the Buckeyes will meet the Gophers in the Metrodome for the last time.

Minnesota has been its own worst enemy this season. Of the eleven teams in the Big Ten, ten of them have turnover margins ranging from plus 5 to minus 3. The eleventh, Minnesota, has a margin of minus 12. The Gophers also lead the conference in penalties. And defense, you ask? Let’s put it this way: as bad as Northwestern’s D looked against the Buckeyes last week, Minnesota’s is even worse, across the board.

However, no one is quite sure how good Minnesota’s offense could be if it didn’t turn the ball over so often. They run a spread offense, and are a second-half team (the Gopher offense has outscored opponents 111-62 in the second half this season). They play with a nothing-to-lose mentality until the final whistle. Clearly, this is a team that the Buckeyes must score a lot of points on early.

In short, though, this should be a easy tune-up game for the Buckeyes, and give them an opportunity to practice some “away-game-at-night” skills for the real competition coming up in the next month or so.

Enough analysis – the Gophers don’t deserve it. If you still crave analysis, head to BP or 11W.

This week’s questions for the MotSaG crew:

  • Final Score?
  • # of total TOs earned (or caused by) the Little Animal?
  • Do you prefer kittens, or puppies?
  • What side of the spoonage with V. Gholston would you prefer? (Acceptable answers are Spoon or Spooned By.)

sportsMonkey
Final score: OSU, 50-13 with close to 600 yards of offense
Lil’ Animal TOs: 2
Kittens/Puppies: Puppies
Spoonage: Hmmm… Tough one. I guess “Spoon.” That way I could leave if it got weird. Otherwise I’m locked in a crushing Gholston snuggle singularity from which light can’t even escape.

Sylvester Yon-Rambo
Final score: OSU, 34-3 Buckeyes with 400 yards offense cause we play Tressel Ball which means great Field Posistion.
Lil’ Animal TOs: 1 Forced Fumble and 2 sacks. So 1 TO
Kittens/Puppies: Puppies for sure……Kittens SUCK
Spoonage: This is an easy one for me I want to be spooned by ARMS. I want him to whisper sweet nothings to me about Buckeye victories and killing people with his Biceps. I want also see on a side note……VG SPOONING Little Animal……while his dad is in the background in full face paint talking about thier spooning posistions………I think I have said to much about my dreams.

el Kaiser
Final score: OSU, 48-0 with at least 500 yards of offense. I doubted the Buckeye firepower last week, but not this time. D pitches a shutout.
Lil’ Animal TOs: I’m going with 2 as well, but one he takes to the house.
Kittens/Puppies: Kittens all the way. I hate those cute little dogs with their floppy ears and the wet noses. They can bite it!
Spoonage: I’m going to abstain from the spooning question. I feel it’s time to inject some testosterone back into MotSaG.

Link Round-up – Week #5

Blog/site newsBetter late than never, right? Here are a few links from the past week.

Todd Boeckman leads the Big Ten in Passing Efficiency and is 10th in the nation. Things are going according to plan.

Injury Report: Beanie Wells doesn’t have a “tender ankle” and if all goes well, Lawrence Wilson will be back for OSU’s BCS Bowl game. Or should he redshirt?

Ohio State is not overlooking Minnesota’s weak defense. They’re just planning on out-running it, out-muscling it and overloading it.

I mentioned the Nike contract last week, but The Other Paper actually has a much deeper look at the contract. Interesting tidbits about Michigan’s contract with Adidas, too.

Ghosts of Wayne Fontes is wondering why people are sleeping on the Buckeyes. I think that will be the prevailing mindset for the next month or so. Eventually we’ll have something more concrete than the Washington win.

Love him or hate him, it’s hard to argue with Mike Hart’s body of work. We’re actually warming up to the dude here at the MotSaG HQ. In fact, we’re already feeling bad about the fact he’s going to be 0-4 against OSU. That’s no way to end a career. Regardless, this piece by Brian at MGoBlog is great blogging.

A Michigan fan (and Pastor) put his “allegiance” up for eBay, donating the proceeds to his church. The winner? Do I even need to tell you? (Here’s the eBay auction)

Weekly Vernon Gholston shot

I was originally going to use this one, but thanks to Maje for providing the link to this week’s Gholston ogling:

Vernon Gholston

A co-worker of the Monkey and mine mentioned that Vernon even has muscles on his face. I think his eyebrow muscles can curl more than I can.

(The link round-up will be up sometime this afternoon!)

Sweatervest Memories

OSU FootballIt’s hard to believe that it’s only been seven years since Jim Tressel was hired as coach of the Ohio State University Buckeyes.

Since then he’s gone 66-14, a record which is bested by only Pete Carroll of USC. Not counting his inaugural year, he’s running with an insane 85% winning percentage.

In the past five years alone, Tressel has competed for two BCS titles, winning one, and finished ranked 4th or higher four times. And he’s done that mostly by playing “Tressellball,” a low-risk, anti-West Coast style of play.

And of course, he’s owned the Wolverines, winning five of six matchups.

So, without further adoration, we at MotSaG have assembled a small photo album showcasing some highlights of Sweatervest’s seven years at OSU. It’s what we like to “imagine” what might be representative of his tenure and coaching style at The Ohio State University.

You’ll need the Flash Player to view the slide show. Click the following image to launch:

tressalbumlaunch.jpg

All images courtesy of The O-Zone

BlogPoll – Week #4

Rank Team Delta
1 LSU
2 Oklahoma
3 Southern Cal
4 Florida
5 Ohio State 1
6 West Virginia 1
7 Texas 1
8 California 2
9 Oregon 2
10 Wisconsin 1
11 Rutgers 1
12 Boston College 4
13 Kentucky 4
14 Clemson 1
15 Hawaii 3
16 Cincinnati 5
17 Purdue 8
18 Missouri 2
19 Michigan State 7
20 South Florida 4
21 Georgia 5
22 Virginia Tech 4
23 Arizona State 3
24 Alabama 11
25 Kansas 1

Dropped Out: Penn State (#7), South Carolina (#14), Texas A&M (#19), Louisville (#22), Nebraska (#23).

We have both LSU/OU and OSU/West Virginia tied, so we go with the arbitrary alphabetical order for no other reason than “O” comes before “W”. Let us hope we will not run afoul of the recent BlogPoll curse, where homers (such as us) rank the home team a little higher than the BlogPoll collective and then see their team lose. I am confident that no such collapse is imminent, as we’ll be beating Minnesota by at least five touchdowns on Saturday.

It’s still weird seeing Kentucky and Cincy in the top 25. Remember, this is football, not basketball!

I didn’t notice it until now, but Penn State fell from #7. Yikes. But, you lose to Michigan and bad things will follow.

UM’s 2-2: Electric Boogaloo

— Scene: University of Michigan Locker Room Pep Talk, 3:00 EDT 22 Sept. 2007 —

Carr: “Who are we?!?”

Team: “WOLVERINES!!”

Carr: “Push it!!”

Team: “PUSH IT TO POP IT!!”

Carr: “Rock it!!”

Team: “ROCK IT TO LOCK IT!!”

Carr: “Break it!!”

Team: “BREAK IT TO MAKE IT!!!”

Carr: “Who’d we lose to?!?”

Team: “I-AA APP STATE!!”

Carr: “And who made us look like high-schoolers on national TV?!?”

Team: “OREGON!!”

Carr: “And have we learned any humility or developed any class yet?!?”

Team: “NO!!”

 

If you want to take a trip down memory lane, here are the ESPN highlights from Michigan’s famous game against ElectroRock University. Ah, I totally forgot how awesome Ozone “ShabaDoo” was at quarterback. Those were good times.

Sing it wit me: “din DAA DAA da doh doh, din DAA DAA doh doh…”

I’ve always hated John Elway…

BrownsOSU FootballAnd it turns out, if I was five or six years older, I would have hated him even earlier:

Ohio State had the ball & looked to be driving for the winning score or at least running out the clock. Facing 2nd & 12 from the Stanford 27-yard line with just 1:38 to play, Tomczak tried to hit Williams in the end zone but the tipped pass was intercepted by Stanford S Charles Hutchings. Bruce took the blame for the play call that gave the ball back to the Cardinal. Four completions later, including a 35-yarder to Harry had the ball at the Ohio State 18-yard line. When Elway rolled to his right, Harry went to the left corner of the end zone. Elway turned & threw back across the field to the wide-open Harry for the winning score.

Via “This Date In College Football Belt History — September 25” from The College Football Belt

Henton in jail

OSU FootballOSU’s third string QB, Antonio Henton, was arrested yesterday on charges of “soliciting.” More details to come.


Link
New, updated Link.

UPDATE: Antonio Henton has been suspended from the team indefinitely. His academic status at tOSU is unchanged.

Initial Analysis:
Yes, it’s a bad thing that a crime was committed. But let’s avoid the melodrama that will no doubt seize control of the anti-OSU crowd, shall we? These are kids, making dumb mistakes. They must learn to accept the consequences.

Moreover, it’s not really that bad of a black eye for the university. What more proof do you need of your coaches’ control over the players than the fact that one was caught sneaking to a Kroger parking lot, at 8:30 p.m., to solicit some $20 booty? (Wonder if he was trying to use his Plus card.) Clearly it wasn’t easy for him to get girls. Clearly he was afraid of breaking curfew. Clearly he didn’t have any extra money (or his standards would have been, shall we say, “higher”). Ergo, the athletes are being controlled just fine.

No matter what anyone says, there’s just no way to control everyone’s actions all the time. Kids will do what kids will do… you can do everything in your power to educate them and create an environment free from temptations, but in the end, impulsive things will happen. It’s at that moment that consequences become extremely important.

BTW UM fans and bloggers: Before you start with the “OMG tOSU teh suk” posts and comments, you might want to revisit some relevant history.

Update 2 (el Kaiser): Like SYR mentioned in the comments, it appears that the charges appear to have been dismissed. Not sure about that, but that’s what the Franklin County site lists. We’ll be on top of this as it happens.

Update 3 (el Kaiser): Updated link to citation. Thanks, Jeff.

Irish lose bye week

FootballSOUTH BEND, INDIANA – Earlier today, Notre Dame officials were surprised to learn that the Fighting Irish football team had dropped to 0-5 on the season, after somehow losing during their bye weekend.

“I’m not exactly sure what happened,” said head coach Charlie Weis. “We lost to the Spartans on Saturday, which left us four games down, now they’re telling me that we lost to the bye week too. I’m confused.”

weis.jpgThe loss has exacerbated the failures of the Notre Dame program, and has only added to the most disappointing season in team history.

Amazingly, until its win over the Irish, the Bye Week had never won a game in its 120-year history. Its victory finally ends the NCAA’s longest-running record of 78,232 losses in a row.

“I’m not sure what the big deal is about that record, though,” said Weis. “I mean, it’s just statistically likely to happen sooner or later. Go ahead and blame me, if you want. I think. I mean, that Bye Week doesn’t have a Super Bowl ring, does it? So it doesn’t know everything. What were we talking about?”

The football team is facing severe criticism from fans and alumni. Athletic department officials are already threatening to limit Weis’ contract extension to only eight more years. By 2015, say most Notre Dame fans, these Tyrone Willingham-related losses are expected to finally come to an end.