Recapping this game is proving to be more difficult than I originally planned. The game proved once again to be a tale of two halves. This game wasn’t as lopsided as last week but the result was still quite favorable for Buckeye fans. In this wild Big Ten season, we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat. The officiating in this game was bad. Deplorable. Egregious. And in the end? Bad on both sides of the ball. So I’m getting it out of my system and moving on.

First, hats off to the defense. They once again stonewalled another offense to the tune of 276 yards of total offense, holding them to 129 yards under their season average. It was called on multiple times to to come up big in the fourth quarter and delivered. Brian Rolle’s performance in particular sticks out. He was everywhere. The defensive line also played big with both MotSaG favorite John Simon and Cameron Heyward getting BIG sacks.

Boom Herron continues to run hard and win over our hearts. He didn’t have the numbers from last week but he got in the endzone when it mattered most and had more than one man-sized carry where he was not going to be denied.

While taking off last week on a much-deserved rest, Dane Sanzenbacher returned to his wide receiver wizard ways, doing his best Gonzalez impression. The other wide receivers, DeVier Posey in particular, didn’t have quite as good a day. Corey (WR) Brown is still looking for his head and waiting for that flag to come while Taurian Washington is still wondering what could have been. Posey is just thankful that his OH THE HORROR WHAT JUST HAPPENED touchdown drop did not end up deciding the outcome of the game.

Terrelle Pryor’s numbers weren’t anything special. His two interceptions were unfortunate. But he did pick up the biggest 4th and 10 of the year and led the team in rushing with 78 yards on 15 carries. He may not do it prettily, but he wins games. And that just chafes everybody else’s buttocks. And we love him.

And finally, let’s point out that Kirk Ferentz once again has done less with less while Tressel does more with more.

So the Buckeyes go into week thirteen, Hate Michigan Week, 10-1 and still alive in the standings of the Big Ten and right where they want to be in the BCS.

It’s feel-dirty-day as we all want to see Michigan pull off the upset. Make no mistake, we won’t be rooting for Michigan. But we’re not rooting against them, either. Can a meteor strike the Big House? Would anyone notice?

The live chat for the Iowa Game will go up later.

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time accepting that The Vest is 4-1 against Iowa as head coach of the Fightin’ Buckeyes of the Olentangy for two reasons. One – it seems like they’ve played way more often than five times in the last nine years. I even went so far as to look it up and sure enough, they didn’t play each other in 2001, 2002 (I knew that one,) 2006, and 2007. Two – I must have taken the 2004 loss pretty hard, because before I looked it up I would have sworn our record against the Hawkeyes would have been around 4-3 or 3-4. The point is, there’s not nearly as much history to examine – compared to some of the other matchups this season – as I would have thought.

Ohio State (9-1, 5-1) at Iowa (7-3, 4-2)
November 20, 2010, 3:30PM EST
Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City, Iowa
TV: ABC/ESPN3
3 randomly selected previews from elsewhere: The O-zone, The BBC, ESPN

The 2010 football season is much closer to its end than it’s beginning. Those of you still in the Midwest may have seen the sun for the last time until next March or so as the bleak, gray November begins to roll in. Life is probably beginning to get a little depressing. If you want to be even more depressed, consider the following: for Ohio State to win an outright Big Ten title, they need to win out and have Wisconsin and Michigan State each lose once. For them to go to the Rose Bowl, they need to win out and probably have Wisconsin lose. And in the last week of their season, Wisconsin plays a Northwestern team whose QB blew out his Achilles on the game-winning play against Iowa last week. Which means their more likely (although not very likely) loss would have to be this week. Against a certain team up north that has a weasel as a mascot and may or may not be infected with multiple venereal diseases. I don’t know about you, but I may avoid watching that game entirely just to avoid the possibility that I might accidentally root for the weasels. The 2008 Capital One Bowl was bad enough.

But on to this week’s vaunted opponent…

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz is a perennial contender for Big Ten Coach of the Year honors, because the perception is that he gets a ton out of players that don’t necessarily have the raw talent a team like, say, Ohio State, can attract. He’s also frequently listed as a potential NFL coaching candidate. Just in case this kind of rumor makes it distracting for his team, I’d like to point out that the Bengals might have a coaching vacancy soon, and I’ve heard (from the voices in my head) that Ferentz is on the short list of potential replacements for Marvin Lewis.

I’d advise Ferentz to pass, should the Bengals come calling. Remember what happened to Hayden Fox when he left Minnesota State to coach the Orlando Breakers? No one else does either, because they all stopped watching. Point is, Ferentz has a good thing going in Iowa City, even if he doesn’t have a Luther van Damm or a Dauber Dybinski on his coaching staff to help him through the tough times.

Okay I’ll admit it, all that was an excuse for me to post a Craig T. Nelson picture because I always used to get Hayden Fox and Hayden Fry mixed up in the heyday of the Screaming Eagles. Moving on…

Iowa has had a disappointing season so far, having shot themselves in the asses multiple times before making a valiant comeback attempt at Arizona early in the season. They lost a squeeeker (with 3 e’s) to Wisconsin the week after the Buckeyes’ own debacle against the Badgers and then last week they managed to find a way to lose to Northwestern again. I wonder if Pat Fitzgerald is paying rent for all that space he’s got in Iowa’s collective head right now. Not only that, they almost lost to Indiana.

On the other hand, they delivered a good, old-fashioned butt-whoopin’ on Michigan State earlier this season that wasn’t as close as the 31 point spread indicated.

So which Iowa team will show up? The one that came within a ground-assisted incompletion in the end zone of getting beat by INDIANA? Or the one that dominated Michigan State, Penn State, and Iowa State? I don’t know about you, but the whole “State” thing makes me nervous.

What I want to see tomorrow:

• Wisconsin losing (but not TSUN winning)
• No turnovers for the Buckeyes
• 100+ yards rushing from Boom
• Fewer than 5 penalties
• The opportunity for us to be thinking about (but not talking about) roses next weekend.

How about you?

Numbers, numbers everywhere and not a drop to drink.

Presented without comment.

As always, stats are grabbed from cfbstats.com.

I went to bed excited and happy to hear that Tyler Moeller got his 6th year of eligibility. I woke up this morning to a nightmare Fox Sports has just signed a six year contract to broadcast the newly established Big Ten Football Conference Championship Game. I thought I was over having to watch Fox Sports trying to cover CFB when their BCS contract ran out last winter. This means I will have to hear some stupid baseball guy try to pretend like he knows anything about CFB arrrggghhh Joe Buck I hate you. Everything about this decision is based on the fact that the BTN and Fox Sports are in bed together so I understand why they did it. I just can’t stomach listening to Jimmy Johnson and Terry Bradshaw talk about players they know nothing about and a game that is unfamiliar to them. Maybe they can hire Bob “just a bit outside” Uecker to help out Joe Buck and they can talk about how awesome the Yankees vs Red Sox rivalry is the whole game.

In what seems like a actual intelligent decision by the NCAA OSU standout Tyler Moeller will get a medical waiver for a 6th year of eligibility. It honestly couldn’t happen to a better person as Tyler has suffered from a near death off the field attack by a Florida Gator Thug errrrr fan and then this year he tore his pectoral muscle on Oct. 2. He was having a brilliant season before the injury happened. Here is to hoping we get a whole year of watching Tyler at the STAR position next season.

I’ve read a lot of content over the last few days criticizing Penn State’s choice to go for it on 4th down late in the first half on Saturday. Everyone makes (mainly the same two) excellent points: they were well within field goal range and had they kicked a field goal would have led by 14 points going into halftime, and the 4th down stop by the Buckeyes seemed to turn momentum into their favor and the game was never the same after that.

However, I’m going to be a little contrarian, and not just because I haven’t written a post here since Calvin Coolidge was President. I think had Penn State gotten the first down and followed it up with a TD to put the Nittany Lions up by 18 points, no one would have considered going for it audacious at all. And while watching the game live I remember thinking as the officials spotted the ball after the third down play, They’re going to go for it, and they’ll make it. There was no doubt in my mind of this, and I’d wager (were it legal) that the majority of people watching the game live were thinking the same thing, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Penn State coaching staff did too.

Let’s agree on this: they were owning our asses on both sides of the field up to that point. Owning them. It’s my thinking that there were two directions in which the momentum could have gone after that particular moment. Had they succeeded, Penn State would have kept their momentum alive. But of course they didn’t,  which shifted the momentum back to the Buckeyes. I would contend that three additional points probably wouldn’t have affected their momentum much more than failing on 4th down did.  Let’s not forget, the Buckeyes ended up winning by three touchdowns, so the three points by themselves would have been mostly irrelevant had everything else progressed as it did. So I suppose the question is, would everything else have progressed as they did had Penn State kicked a field goal there? I say yes, others might say no. Had Penn State gotten a TD on that drive, would things have progressed as they did, with the defense coming out fired up and taking initials in the second half? I don’t think so. My guess is it would have been a big nail in the 2010 season’s coffin for many of us.

In other words, did the fourth down decision make a difference in the game, or did Tressel’s going scorched earth in the locker room at halftime do it? I would argue that Tressel’s halftime performance did more, mainly because Pryor and company didn’t exactly light things up immediately following the turnover on downs. This is open to debate, of course, and no disrespect intended to those of you who feel otherwise.

Go!

Amir Williams a 6’10” 220 lb. basketball recruit chose OSU today over the Florida Gators. He is listed as the no. 2 Center in the country for the 2011 recruiting class. He will be joining an already impressive recruiting class and it doesnt hurt that he is from Michigan and that he also chose OSU over scUM and Purdue. He is a top notch recruit with great offensive skills and good feet. He should fit in well with this program. My only suggestion is that he should put on some weight but he is young and it is easy to do. Another great job done by Thad Matta and his recruiters.