I don’t know about you, but I’m having trouble believing the season is already almost a third of the way over. I guess my dad was right – the older you get, the faster time goes by.

Of course, my dad probably can’t believe it’s already 2010 – for him he just saw Back to the Future in theaters.

A brief digression – can you believe that Back to the Future is already 25 years old? Put it another way – when I was born, The Godfather was only 15 years old. I’m depressed. Moving on…

This weekend marks the return of former TTUN defensive coordinator Ron English to the Horseshoe. He was last seen getting canned by the Wolverines after the 2007 campaign. Or “the year they lost to App State. AHHHHHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!” in the parlance I prefer.

EMU's coach gives you his evaluation of his 1-4 record against the Buckeyes as a defensive coach at TTUN

As el Kaiser made very clear the other day, this is a game that the Buckeyes should dominate. Personally, I’m thinking they actually might. Normally, this kind of game is one where the Buckeyes come out flat, looking hung over and disinterested, and the game usually ends up being more exciting than it should be for a while.

Of course, normally last week would have been a week like that, not to mention the opener against Marshall. We know how that turned out. Cam Heyward,  Tyler Moeller, et al proceeded to pour pudding on the opposing offenses’ heads much like O’Doyle in Billy Madison. Also they beat the ever-loving crap out of them. I don’t enjoy dipping into hyperbole – mainly for jinx avoidance reasons, but this defense is as mean and dominating as any I can remember. I’ve gone out of my way over the last few weeks trying to come up with a group of Silver Bullets past that I can remember being so nasty.

The offense? We’re not doing so badly there either. It would be nice if Brandon Saine would go ahead and finish testifying against the mob boss, though. That’s the only logical explanation I can think of for his absence the last few weeks – he must be in witness protection. Somewhere in Idaho there’s a 6′ 1″, 220 lb man cleaning floors in an elementary school, talking about how he used to run by opposing defenses so fast one might think he was flying. In Columbus – I mean, Kansas.

The special teams.

Ugh.

rewg;noedrjeoij;go;erjier;oje;rgeartg43TY6AQ6Q356TYAQ ZEH DWB6WUH JWA dtf yh5g4r

Sorry, I blacked out for a minute there. The point is, until they get their crap together I’m referring to them as “special” teams, if you know what I mean. I would continue along these lines but it’s a family site and I don’t want to push the boundaries too far. Just picture me writing 2000 words about Corky Thatcher from Life Goes On and my opinion of the job he’s done on kick coverage so far and you’ll get the gist of it.

Here’s what I want to see tomorrow:

1. No turnovers.
2. Fewer than five penalties. At least in the first three quarters, or while the score is within 35 points.
3. No EMU kick returns over 25 yards.
4. No EMU punt returns over 10 yards.
5. Heyward should literally eat someone on EMU’s offense. Or their coach.
6. Ron English walking off the field, head held low in shame and seeing his coaching record against the Buckeyes fall to 1-5.

Final score prediction: Buckeyes 52, EMU 6

*all predictions subject to change after the fact. The opinions of Bacon Ninja regarding the outcome of Ohio State games are purely hypothetical and do not necessarily represent his true feelings on the matter. In fact, for the purposes of supersition and jinx avoidance Bacon Ninja offers a generic prediction of Opponents 72, Ohio State 0 for every game this season, unless they are playing an SEC school in which case the prediction will change to Opponents 347, Ohio State negative 30.

Over at NDNS I wrote a bit of a rebuttal to everyone in the sports media that has been talking about the pass interference call at the end of the 1st overtime in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl. The narrative that ESPN and their ilk have been pushing is that the Miami game is one of redemption for Canes players because of the “controversial” call. If nothing else, I hope the post can be a little red meat for people trying to get pumped for the game this weekend. Me, I’m going to be drinking Pepto-Bismol like it’s Natural Light and I’m 19 and poor again all week.

I am keeping the post at NDNS because I agreed to play nice and watch my language over here, and this is a topic that makes me furious. If you don’t mind a whole butt-load of F-bombs, or if you want to see how I write when I’m furious, clicky. If not, I won’t hold it against you. Much.

Upon waking up this morning and re-watching last night’s game on BTN, I decided that there were some important points that I left out of the recap. Here’s what I saw after the Miller Lite Home Draft wore off and the Advil kicked in…

I was remiss in failing to point out the game Tyler Moeller had last night. He was telegraphing his blitzes a little, but it didn’t seem to matter. Great game and a great story.

How about Dane Sanzenbacher? 3 catches for 113 yards and a TD. Not bad for what I think of as a possession receiver.

The special teams weren’t as bad as initially thought. Really all their crappy plays – the blocked PAT, the almost-missed PAT, the long kick return given up, and the blocked FG – came during the first quarter. After that they played pretty well, specifically laying the wood to the Herd’s kick returners. Also, Ben Buchanan had a pretty good night averaging 40.8 yards on 4 punts, including 2 (and just barely missing on one more) inside the 20.

I am relieved to have seen that the Buckeyes looked as good after a second look as they did at first. After re-watching the Rose Bowl countless times since January a sense of dread had become almost palpable because the game still seemed closer than the final score ended up being. Sure, Pryor was good in that game just looking at the statistics, but he made a lot of plays that still looked like vintage bad-Terrelle. Last night’s game only had a couple plays like that. It’s progress.

And finally, let’s toss it over to Marshall’s coach who was asked about TP’s whereabouts sometime during the second quarter. His response? “Down by the 40-yard line, walking on water.”

We’re coming to you LIVE from 6,464 feet above sea level with the first game recap of the 2010 season! Ohio State was the tuberculosis to Marshall’s Doc Holliday (see what I did there?) and dominated from the opening kickoff, ultimately prevailing by a final score of 45-7.

Before the game I had predicted a final score somewhere around OSU 27, Marshall 20 because of all the crappy games the Buckeyes had thrown up to begin seasons past. I’m overjoyed to say that I was wrong. Horribly, embarrassingly wrong. There were a few problems, as I will discuss shortly, but overall I don’t see too many things that a Buckeye fan can really get too angry about.

ESPN boxscore

Positives
Total Offense: Ohio State – 529, Marshall 199

Turnovers : Marshall – 3, Ohio State – 0

Brandon Saine looked like a man possessed, kicking ass and taking initials (because he didn’t have time to take names) to the tune of 103 yards rushing on 9 carries in the first half. For someone who had pretty high expectations to start his career at Ohio State followed by a lowering of those expectations based on performance, it’s nice to see him looking like the franchise back many people thought he was capable of being.

TP looked very, very good, especially in the first half of the game. I can only think of one or two throws he made that made me want to throw up – a significant improvement over last year’s season opener. If he can continue to play like this for the rest of the season, I – for one – will be very happy, and I think the rest of you will be too.

Was it just me, or did Brian Rolle look like a mini-sized Usain Bolt on his second quarter TAINT (Touchdown After INT)? Who knew Mighty Mouse was so fast?

Jamaal Berry looked promising on the last drive of the game. It could be that Marshall was just ready to go home, but his play inspired those of us watching the game at 6464 Lounge and Sports Book to say “Holy Crap, that dude is f*&%ing fast!”

Negatives
The special teams looked really, really bad – aside from the fumble force and recovery on the opening kickoff – in the first half. I will contend that Marshall’s one touchdown was pretty lucky. Had the blocked kick gone in ANY direction other than the one it did, we would be talking about the shutout Ohio State pitched tonight. Nevertheless, it was an ugly play that followed a partially blocked extra point, a breakdown in kickoff coverage, and an almost-shanked extra point.

The Buckeyes committed seven penalties – but the standard of fairness obliges me to point out that two of those were false starts by a true freshman during the final drive of the fourth quarter. Still, OSU’s at-least-five-year-long streak of having their starting left tackle commit at least one false start penalty still lives. Dammit.

Thoughts
I have to admit, I was quite the Negative Nancy going into this game. The Buckeyes, for whatever reason, have seemed to come out halfhearted in their opening game the last few years and I expected the 2010 edition to be more of the same. Don’t get me wrong, I still thought they’d win. I just thought it would be closer than most expected.

It may be the excessive amount of Miller Lite Home Draft I imbibed this evening, but I’m feeling decently about the season after tonight’s game. Hopefully the rest of you are too.

And so it begins.

The season is finally upon us and the first game of the year is against the Thundering Herd of Marshall University. First, lets get the funny out of the way. Marshall hired a new coach and I swear to Woody Hayes his name is DOC HOLLIDAY (Insert your favorite Tombstone reference here)

“Why Ike Marshall, whatever do you mean? Maybe poker’s football’s just not your game, Ike Marshall. I know! Let’s have a spelling contest!”

Jim Tressel is very familiar with the Marshall Thundering Herd. As the OSU head coach, he faced (and vanquished) them in the 2004 thriller that needed a monster field from Mike Nugent. Previously, Tressel faced them while the coach at Youngstown State, beating them twice for the Division 1-AA championship. The talent level will be tad higher in this game.

Marshall is returning fourteen starters, seven each on either side of the ball. Last year they finished 7-6 out of Conference USA. Under their first year coach they are going to run a spread type offense (Tyler T at Along the Olentangy has a little more detail about Marshall’s possible offensive schemes) and try as they will I imagine they will struggle like most first year head coaches do.

On offense, the quarterback will be a former Mr. Football in the state of Florida, A.J. Graham. He has a stud wide receiver to throw to in Antavious Wilson who, as a freshman last year, caught 60 passes for 724 yards which earned him freshman All-American honors. They haven’t settled on a starting running back yet but they did run well the last few years so whoever it is will be capable.

On defense, they are led by linebacker Mario Harvey who last year had 117 tackles and 7 sacks. The defense as a whole was solid last year holding opponents to 24 points per game. There best cornerback was recently kicked off the team for his third arrest. That should bode well for the first outing of OSU’s passing attack.

There you have it folks, a little info on the team who proudly chant ” WE ARE …… MARSHALL”.

Having said all that and knowing Ohio State is a far superior team (currently favored by 28.5 points) here are the questions we need to answer in the first game of the year.

1. Who will be our leading rusher in this game Boom, Zoom or Pryor?
2. Will Terrelle Pryor throw for +/- 250 yards?
3. How many turnovers will the defense get?
4. Which defensive player makes the biggest impact on this game?
5. Final Score Prediction?

This week’s Predict the Score contest is sponsored by The City Pool, purveyor of fine, quality Ohio sports-themed T-shirts. They have offered up as a prize one of their excellent Ohio Pride t-shirts, which for my money is one of the better t-shirts out there for the discerning OSU fan. Sublime in its simplicity, I will be picking one up (since MotSaG staff is not eligible to win) and wearing it proudly around town. Since your chances of predicting the final score are slim, I suggest you head over and pick one up as yourself.

el Kaiser says
1. I think Saine is poised for a huge year – Saine
2. under 250 for Pryor (we’ll be well ahead and he’ll be on the bench before he gets to 250)
3. 2 TO’s (2 INTs)
4. Johnny Simon makes his presence known
5. OSU 37 Marhsall 0

Sylvester-Yon Rambo says
1. Boom will lead us this game with 125 yards
2. I say over 250 yards as he will have 2 or 3 long TD throws early
3. 3 TO’s (1 Fumble and 2 INT’s)
4. Jermale Hines has a pick 6
5. OSU 52 Marshall 3

sportsMonkey says
1. Zooooommm Saine
2. Pryor will be pulled way before he reaches 250, unless the Bucks are in trouble (in which case he wouldn’t be reaching 250 anyway)
3. First games tend to be sloppy, I figure at least 2. Hopefully Homan gets his first INT of the year.
4. Homan
5. I know we’re all “rah-rah Pryor” after the Rose Bowl, but let’s not forget his history with spotting opposing teams at least 7pts a game due to INTs or fumbles. Hopefully he won’t have that problem this year, but all I have to go on is history at this point. OSU spots them a score, they earn another score or two on their own: OSU 31-13.

In one of the worst secrets ever kept since the one about el Kaiser likes to wear womens clothes in his “private time” multiple sources are leaking out info on the release of Big Ten Divisions today.

Here they are:

• Losers Division
  • Michigan
  • Nebraska
  • Iowa
  • Michigan State
  • Northwestern
  • Minnesota
• Winners Division
  • Ohio State
  • Penn State
  • Wisconsin
  • Purdue
  • Indiana
  • Illinois

Before everyone gets their panties in a tight wad there are pros and cons to this alignment and at least in private we MOTSAGers have discussed or fought over them since Nebraska announced they are joining the conference.

I know the vast majority of Buckeye fans are going to hate seeing this and expect THE GAME to be move and affected in a negative way. I hope everyone will at least look at the big picture of the good of the conference which I feel is just as important as our own team’s importance. We aren’t the Big 12 or MWC and every decision made is made for the betterment of every member institution and not just the best programs.

I can’t imagine OSU and scUM will be the last game of the year and then a possible rematch in the CCG but no schedule has been released yet so you never know. (Updated, see below)

Look at it this way and you can start to see why they split us this way. The last weekend of the regular season will include these games OSU vs PSU, scUM vs MSU, Indiana vs Purdue, Illinois vs Northwestern, Wisky vs Minnesota, and Iowa vs Nebraska…… That is a tremendous lineup of games that will make the B10 extremely relevant and important on the last week. It also sets up a OSU vs Nebraska or scUM Conference Championship Game every year with PSU getting to go once every 25 years or so.

Bottom line fellow Buckeye fans is when we decided to expand as a conference we all agreed to change. We have no idea if this is good or bad change for at least 4-5 years. I fully expect more changes and more expansion in those 4-5 years.

Stay calm and remember it doesnt really matter when THE GAME is or what division we are in. We just have to win every game we play and we will be OSU.

Update:

Just announced on Big Ten Network that tonight at 7 PM Commish Jim Delaney will announce live on the Big Ten Network the conference divisions.

Another Update:

According to ESPN Big Ten Blogger Adam Rittenberg:

Several signs point toward the Ohio State-Michigan game remaining on the final Saturday of the regular season. We’ll know for sure tonight, as athletic directors Gene Smith (Ohio State) and Dave Brandon (Michigan) will appear on the Big Ten Network’s announcement show.

The Dispatch is reporting that 97.1 FM radio station is reporting that THE GAME will remain as the last game of the season

RUMOR ALERT:

I cant confirm with a link but rumors are flying that only Divisional games will count toward going to the CCG.

As we come to the end of our countdown to gameday I would be remiss if I didnt honor what has become tOSU greatest position. Maybe we arent LBu or RBu or QBu but we can now and forever be known as Punter U. Mr. Skladany was one of our greatest ever and really he was a trend setter. He paved the way for some of the greatest punters ever in CFB the likes of Tom Tupa and Andy Groom and A J Trappaso and many others. Thank you Mr. Skladany for all you have done to make Tressel Ball an acceptable form of coaching.

Wow. Three days from this very moment I’ll be on my basement couch, having rocked Hey Buckeyes! on the stereo all day with my Block O flag hanging off the front porch of my house. I don’t know about anyone else, but I plan on tearing through the bulk of a 24-pack of some inexpensive domestic brew and yelling at my projector screen for a good three hours Thursday night.

In short, I’m so excited about the opening of college football season I could crap my pants.

Which leads me – if a bit graphically – to something that occurred to me the other day. My kids got their OSU jerseys for this season via UPS – a white #2 for my daughter and a red #1 for my son*. I have watched College Gameday probably every Saturday since its inception and one thing that always sticks out to me watching games in Columbus vs. other places is the sheer number of people rocking the Buckeyes’ jerseys on game day. And I’m one of the worst, with a personal collection that has included the following:

• #11 (Antoine Winfield)
• #8 (Steve Bellisari – err… Drew Carter)
• #16 (Dr. Krenzel) – although this one wasn’t a Nike jersey and it used to piss me off because the stripes on the sleeves were wrong, so I only had this jersey for about 3 weeks.
• #7 (Teddy Ginn, Joe Germaine, Joey Galloway)
• #10 (St. Troy)
• #28 (Beanie)
• #2 (Cris Carter, Mike Doss, TP)

So I guess I have a bit of a personal stake in thinking the jersey-as-gameday-uniform is one of the unique little twists that OSU has.

* – an aside for those of you without kids: Jerseys are expensive and kids grow too fast for one to last more than two seasons, tops. It freaking sucks. But we do what we must to remain true to tradition.

I haven’t done any in-depth research on this – just in case any member of the A-Team feels obligated to jump into the comments and point this out – but it seems to me that this is the case. I know for a fact that at Air Force games very few fans rock the jersey, which isn’t really saying much. Most Air Force fans are like the good natured little league parents, cheering for any big play, no matter which team had it, bringing jello-molds and Rice Krispie Treats to the games, and hoping to go home knowing that darn it, everyone just had a really good time. I drop more f-bombs between my bed and the alarm in the morning than the entire capacity of Falcon Stadium does during a game against Navy or Army. But I digress…

Can anyone else think of a college football team whose supporters wear their team’s jerseys in similar proportion to ours? Does anyone else go along with my “white jerseys are for girls, scarlet jerseys are for guys” mantra? Am I just partially insane or full-blown bat-s#&@ crazy? And is Marshall as good on offense as they are if you’re playing them in NCAA 11 on All-American or Heisman difficulty?

I leave these questions to you.