So…times are slow…the Champions League has decided it is only for teams that can play defense (FU Liverpool and your inability to NOT give up a goal in the last 8 minutes of play)

This is the time of the year where an incredible void of no football games and the bowl selections have created what most people (including yours truly) cannot stand in the least bit…

“Message Board Heroes”

OSU has them…they talk about the school’s eleventy-billion national championships that happened before they were born or how they were there when “The Horseshoe” was dedicated…or maybe the lore of OSU Heisman Trophies from yesteryear. If someone from another team’s fan base says anything against these irrefutable facts, they “just dont respect OSU’s rich history and tradition as a national college football power.”

Here is a summary of my thoughts on those points in the above paragraph..

“You know what these things will do for the 2009 Edition of your OSU Football squad?” “Absolutely NOTHING!”

Dont you worry Oregon message board guy/gal/beer snob/phish listening pseudo-hippy/etc, I havent forgotten about you. Congratulations! You have won the Pac-1+9 for the first time in ‘like’ forever (or since 2001..shared with USC). That team looked spendid this year. Apparently, Oregon’s offense is putting up points equivalent to the Fielding Yost teams of Michigan back in the day. As a college football fan, I appreciate the fact Oregon has a dynamic offense that seems to be as lethal as there is and has the play-calling craziness that only Les “The Hat” Miles could rival. They were fun to watch this year…for realz. I mean that…srsly. I live out here in Pac-10 Land, which means I hear all about Oregon, U-Dub, and USC. Pac-10 has some entertaining football in general. Lots of offense…a little bit better defense (sans Oregon State and USC) than the WAC or Mountain West…and some of the schools use QB1 to determine play calls in any situation.

So what I have gathered from the small amount of perusing on the Oregon Message Boards and the local media is as follows:

1. OSU hasnt played against a team as good as Oregon on it’s schedule this year
2. Speed kills…wait until OSU sees the Oregon offense
3. OSU doesnt have the offense to keep up in this game
4. Terrelle Pryor is nowhere near the talent-level of Masoli

I figured that I would address some of these generalized lifted comments from the Oregon Scout Board…

1. OSU hasnt played against a team as good as Oregon on it’s schedule this year

This may be correct. It is probably a fair statement. Sagarin has the SOS for Oregon at #4 and OSU coming in at a cool 59th. I wont even argue that point. Regardless of SOS, OSU brings something to the table that none of the other teams on Oregon’s schedule possess, which will be addressed a little later.

2. Speed kills…wait until OSU sees the Oregon offense

I (along with most of Buckeye Nation) take some offense to this statement. While it is true that speed is the ultimate weapon for a football team, any speed that Oregon has on offense is equally countered on the Ohio State defensive side of the ball. This is where a lot of the confidence in this game is originating within the OSU fandom. This is by far the best defensive line that OSU has possessed since the 2002 National Championship squad. Think about that for a second. Miami was an offensive machine that year..just like Oregon. Oregon may have speed in the backfield with James and Masoli, but if the O-line gets blown up on regularity by the OSU D-Line…Oregon is in trouble. For the record, OSU has plenty of speed on the edges and at LB (Spitler’s participation will be minimal as most of us imagine that the OSU defense will be in the nickel for large chunks of the game).

3. OSU doesnt have the offense to keep up in this game

Sorry, OSU does have the offense to keep themselves in this game. Tressel plays to a gameplan and his game planning has never been to get into a shootout with another team. It is reckless and that isn’t the way that OSU plays football. If he has some trust in Pryor (work-in-progress), he will open up the play book a little. However, Oregon is a turnover machine. With this in mind, I would imagine that the gameplan will look a lot like Oregon State’s, until Oregon stops it. The only difference is that there is a runner taking snaps instead of a pocket passer…whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen. If Masoli and James continue to put the ball on the ground in the Rose Bowl, OSU will win by about 20. What does that have to do with OSU’s offense? Everything…

4. Terrelle Pryor is nowhere near the talent-level of Masoli

Masoli has been a diamond in the rough this year for the Ducks. He is a fantastic system quarterback that has been a perfect fit for the Oregon offensive scheme. Without him, they lose about 4-5 games this year. Does that mean he is infallible? Absolutely not. Masoli carries the ball around like Tate Forcier, which equates to opportunities for a ball-hawking defense to sample in some tasty “fumbalaya.” With that in mind, it is amazing how a fantastic offensive display can mask the stink of all of the other shortcomings of a team. On the other hand, Pryor has been a work-in-progress this year (to say the least). There have been times where it may have been advisable to bench him for a series or two just for a reality check (See Purdue..ZOMG) and other times where he has played nearly flawless football (ie the last three games of the season). Now for the Oregon fans that read this little ditty have to realize a few things when they go back and watch some OSU highlights of those last three games of the season…

1. Flawless football for an OSU quarterback is to not turn the ball over, regardless of the other stats.
2. Most of the OSU fans (while annoyed with this approach) understand that when the OSU quarterback doesnt make mistakes there is a strong likelihood that OSU will win. It might be ugly…but a win is a win. Let me help you…would you take a 1-pt ugly win against Stanford (Jeebus..What happened there?..)? Thought so…

A couple of other notes for the Oregon faithful that dont understand the OSU fans.

• There are a lot of us. I mean a shit-ton..especially on West Coast. Yeah…we get it…Who wants to live in Ohio? Well, some of us do and some us dont, but it is still home. Come on…we take over a bar every Saturday in Portland (Blitz-Ladd)…
• One of the things about growing up in Ohio is that most of us have a pretty good understanding of football, because we have grown up with it in our faces every Friday, Saturday and Sunday during the Fall and Winter months. This gives us a lot of perspective for the primary lifeblood sport of the state, and it is competitive in every region of the state. Most of us understand that match-ups and fundamentals mean more than schemes. Sure talent will win over a lot of games in high school, but this isnt high school. Again, this where a lot of the confidence that you dont understand is coming from. I could give a “rats ass” that Oregon’s defense held Oregon State’s Rodgers to like 60 yards of rushing and the offense went run happy against the #1 Rush Defense in the country (at the time). It just doenst matter in this game for a number of reasons like….
  • Rose Bowl isnt at Autzen..sorry Uncle Phil couldnt buy this one…no matter what hideous uniform combination you guys put out there.
  • Oregon State may have a comparable defense, but it doesnt have the depth of Ohio State on the D-line, which was worn out by the middle of the 3rd quarter in the Civil War.
  • Rodgers is one back (a great back nonetheless, but still one back)…Ohio State has two running backs that run hard and are very good and not easy to bring down. I wont go into their stats and whatever. Let’s just put it this way…these guys would be playing at any school in the Pac-10 on a regular basis…even Oregon.
  • Oregon’s O-Line…I believe that Masoli’s Knee Brace weighs more than half of the starters. We’ll see if they can handle the onslaught of pressure coming at them from the Big AND FAST OSU defensive line.
• Allow me to digress for a moment…Speaking of Ohio High School football (in particular NW Ohio region), I notice that Patrick Henry is still doing it’s thing in the midget division of the state with Coach Bill Inselmann. When is Big Bill going to get off of the gravy train and coach in a real division for another school where making the playoffs isnt a mere formality? I understand the allegiance, but come on….I can remember PH used to be a basketball school, until they found a loophole in the system (ie small school with minimal competition in the area outside of Liberty Center = guaranteed playoff spot every year in region). Maybe you should take a queue from your neighbors down Route 108 and get out of that joke of a conference and go independent or join a tougher conference…maybe play some real schools that are more than 20 miles away from Hamler on a regular basis…I’m just sayin’. Winning the NWOAL is like being the world’s tallest midget.

Back on topic…I really do look forward to a great game with Ducks in January. Hopefully, Oregon fans will realize that the OSU team that shows up in Pasadena will not be the same team that showed up to play USC or Purdue earlier this year…or Florida in 2006, as much as you might want to believe it is. And yes, speed does kill…it kills offenses, as easily as it does defenses.

~YNBA