Archives for August 2011

Starting on Monday, we will begin to preview the upcoming 2011 season and all the challenges that face first-time Head Coach Luke Fickell. Think about that for a couple minutes — Fickell is a first-time head coach taking over arguably the most high-profile job in college football. He literally has ZERO EXPERIENCE POINTS as a head coach. The word daunting is daunted by that challenge.

So for this week’s open thread, let’s discuss Coach Fickell’s future. This week’s poll is “How long do you think Luke Fickell’s Tenure” as the Head Coach of THE Ohio State University Football Team. How long do you think it will be? What season outcomes have to happen for him to be coaching OSU in 2012? I’m firmly in camp “Waiting For Urban” but if it turns out that Coach Fickell isn’t a long-time fit, who do you want and why? Or why would you like to see Fickell stick around?

Let your thoughts be known!

[poll id=”9″]

College football has had its fair share of scandals lately but honestly they aren’t anything new to the NCAA. They have been happening since the first school decided to allow its name to be used to promote a football team. The problem is not confined to just football as every year in nearly every sport there are reports of allegations and rumors of scandals. I am choosing football as an example because in my eyes the biggest scandals happen in this sport because it has the most players and coaches and visibility to the public as a whole. It doesn’t help that my beloved Buckeyes have been entrenched in their own scandal going on 9 months now. So I want to tackle what I think is the problem and the solution and how I think College Basketball has got it figured out or at least they use to.

I need to start by saying this is a fix in general and not specific to any person or school. I don’t think every player in college football is breaking the rules or cheating. I do believe every school has their fair share of players that do that though but the vast majority are not.

Here is the problem as I see it. Not every person is made for college (I wasn’t). If you look at the football team as a microcosm of college admissions you will see what I am talking about. I read one time that something like 40% of incoming Freshman never finish their first year of college for one reason or another. The 2 biggest reasons were grades and money (both attributed to too much partying). Most of those who dont finish college most likely never should have went but fulfilled their parents dream for them as college is the only acceptable way to succeed in life according to society. Recently reports have come out that the amount of debt incurred vs. the extra money made in the future by college grads has put going to college as a detriment and not a good thing. I digress if you look at CFB graduation rates you will see CFB athletes as a whole are worse off than or equal to the general students at a given university. Why well a large number of CFB players aren’t prepared to attend college let alone graduate. Even with the huge amount of added help players get they struggle. A large number of those never wanted to really attend college and their actions show it by failing classes and getting arrested and doing everything they can to avoid getting a college education. So the problem is easy to identify some athletes are not college material.

Here is how I would fix this problem and it is an easy fix. The NFL needs to right this minute remove the “a player must be 3 years removed from their graduating class” rule. This rule has always been designed to keep the NCAA happy and keep the NFL from developing their own farm system. The NFL and NCAA have been in collusion with each other for a long time and every rule they make is designed to keep that agreement in place. If high scool players who had no interest in being an actual college student athlete were allowed to earn a real living right out of high school instead of forcing them to attend a school for a minimum of 3 years. It would easily weed out a large number of the kind of people who are tempted to receive extra illegal benefits. Would it solve every problem I am sure not but it would cut it drastically. The kind of kid who would take 5k bucks or a trip to Vegas would never go to State U. when he could go play football professionally for even 50k or 100k a year in the minors or millions straight to the pros. So to solve the problem I think they just need to give these players an option besides going to school they dont want to be at.

The scandals in CBB are far less and fewer on a whole. That was until recently when the NCAA and NBA started to collude again by forcing kids to go to college for 1 year or oversees for one year to be eligible for the NBA draft. Are their still issues and violations in CBB sure there are but on a scale of that in CFB it is much less and hardly as big.

Bottom line for me is give these kids an option other than CFB for 3 years where some of them will be tempted to take illegal benefits and let them earn a real living. It may not be a perfect fix but it is better than most I have heard lately.

So around 4:30 this afternoon, I was busily minding my own business, trying to get work done when two instant messenger windows pop up simultaneously. Fellow MotSaG’ers SYR and Kade saw it fit to interrupt my unbelievable streak of productivity to let me know about the latest missive from ESPN’s Pot Feardy:

As Ohio State heads into its Friday meeting with the NCAA Committee on Infractions, it appears the university’s dealings with the NCAA over problems within its football program will not end there.

The NCAA notified Ohio State by letter last week that it is still investigating other issues involving the program.

The result could be a second notice of allegations and a second trip through the NCAA justice system.

The thing is… Look at that URL and then look at the title of the article.

I share the link with sportsMonkey who later asks me, “didn’t that title mention something about a notice of allegations? That would be rather surprising (and heart-stopping for some of us). But, in their overzealous glee, ESPN just threw that headline out there — a “second notice” of allegations. That initially may have been a stretch.

What I love about this article (that has been updated numerous times, with ABSOLUTELY NO indication of what was changed or when (something we bloggers are fastidious about)) is that initially it said that Ohio State officials were not going to comment on these new “rumors.” Truth is, Ohio State did plan on commenting on them. Just not to ESPN…

Ohio State spokesman Jim Lynch told 10TV News on Wednesday that the school has not been notified by the NCAA of an investigation into “other issues” with the university’s football program.

(from 10TV)

ESPN is wearing its bias on its sleeve (this is not news) but it’s really starting to get ugly. They are kicking a hornets nest and Ohio State is starting to buzz a little louder.

Roger Lewis a 3 star 6’2″ 190lb wide receiver became the 12th verbal commit today for first year Head Coach Luke Fickell. Lewis who had offers from several Big East and PAC 12 schools as well as most of the MAC schools choose Ohio State today over all of them and had been getting heavy interest from other B1G schools and SEC schools since he started to stand out at this years summer camps he attended. Lewis said he ran a 4.42 40 yard dash at the Cincinnati Bearcats camp this summer received several inquiries and offers but knew he wanted to be a Buckeye from day one. He wants to follow in the lines of great OSU receivers like Ted Ginn Jr. and Santonio Holmes. I am sure Buckeye Nation would be ecstatic if he became one to be mentioned in that group of future OSU HOFers.

For you social network addicts, MotSaG now has a stream over on G+.

Feel free to circle us over there, if you wish. We’ll be using it to notify followers of new posts. However, we’ll also likely be doing a bit of microblogging over there as well; mostly small updates and newsworthy items that may not require the full-main-site-treatment here at MotSaG.

We’ll be installing some +1 functionality here soon, too; so keep an eye out for the Google buttons to start appearing next to our posts.

And don’t forget you can still get us on Facebook, too.

Enjoy!

The yearly (and to me, a skosh creepy) bonanza of watching the future Ohio State football team check into the hotel for fall camp happened over the weekend.

Also, this happened:

MotSaG did not have anyone on the scene, but 11W did and they have video (Freshman here, everyone else here). The Ozone has the pictures you are looking for, as does FotB, Josh Winslow, who brings both freshman check-in and the rest of the team.

One person notably absent was WR James Louis, who, according to Twitter, is looking to transfer to a Florida-based school. That’s a shame. Two of the always-entertaining Buckeye Twitterers (Jonathan Newsome and James Louis) will not be in camp this fall and will be missed.

This also marks the beginning of our coverage of the season. Our content will be ramping up from here on out.

We’ll be looking at the units and players we think we’ll be taking the field this year, what the season will hold and we’ll make fun of ESPN’s College Gameday the only way we know how. We’ll also have an update of our Social Network exploits and all the ways you can interact with us.

And I am in the process of overhauling the Twittering Buckeyes page, with all sorts of incoming freshmen on the “Current Buckeyes” list. Coming up next: actual Twitter lists that you can follow.