OSU Football Adds Opponents to Future Schedule

Everyone keeps harping how easy Ohio State schedule has been and will be going forward. Now I for one won’t defend their schedule except for the folks that say the SEC has a harder one and blah blah blah.

Here is the deal Ohio State has added Army to their schedule (Sept. 16, 2017) and Florida Atlantic University (Aug. 31, 2019). Nope not world beaters and can’t say these games will make Buckeye fans cower in fear. I will say this and yes I am pointing square at you SEC fans who love to talk smack. Do you see an FCS team on the schedule? Do you see a cupcake game before The Game with TTUN? Exactly no you don’t.

“Oh but our conference games are so tough” that’s the logic you get from fans or media from the Southeastern Conference. Your one division might be tough and yes for the love of all things holy The Ohio State University would win lots of games in your division let alone conference. Have you forgotten who leads the Scarlet and Gray on the sideline? Yeah the one who started the “SEC Dynasty”. Coach Meyer seems to know a thing or two about coaching seeing how he is the most active winning coach. I digress to point out yes the Big Ten may be experiencing down years for the last decade, but make no doubt about it its not dead.

Indiana during the regular season beat one of your SEC teams, the Wisconsin Badgers and Ohio State Buckeyes won against the SEC in bowl games (SEC vs. B1G bowl record 2-2). Heck the Big Ten after being pronounced dead after a crappy week 2 showing last year and rightfully so, came back and finished 6-5 for a conference bowl record. SEC finished 7-5 wow pretty impressive for the strongest conference in the nation.

I’ll tell you what SEC teams Ohio State has an open date in 2018, two in 2020 and 2021, one in 2022, also two in 2024. Why don’t we start making some noise and lets get some games as a home and home series. We folks up here in the North would welcome your teams into Columbus, to experience The Horseshoe. We would love to come down South to enjoy your college game day atmospheres.

Let Me Fix Your Team – Michigan Wolverines

I look around college football and I see a lot of disgruntled fan bases. They aren’t happy with their team whether it’s the coaching, the play on the field, all of the losing or a combination of these three. When I see these problems I start to think of a solution for these teams, but I never put them on paper before. But in you’re luck now downtrodden schools! Now I’ve decided to use my expertise to help you through your issues. With my help you’ll be a winner in no time. Just call me Doctor Josh! After helping Florida with their problems, I decided to take on an even bigger problem this week. It’s my toughest patient yet…

Patient: Michigan Wolverines
Status: 3-5 (1-3 in Big Ten)
Current Fan Base Mood: Most of the fan base is starting to realize their program hasn’t been relevant in decades, which has led to depression and heavy drinking. Also: #FireHoke #FireBrandon
Most Embarrassing Moments: Getting shutout by Notre Dame, losing to Minnesota, concussion management of Shane Morris, Brady Hoke’s press conferences, Dave Brandon in general, getting beat by their “little brother” (Mike Hart’s words, not mine) Michigan State, Devin “Pastry Chef” Gardner serving up turnovers and suffering a humiliating blowout loss to Ohio State. Wait that last one hasn’t happened. Yet.

Devin the Pastry Chef

Dr. Josh’s Advice: Well it’s good to hear Michigan fans are starting to accept what they are: a shell of how great their program was back when they were winning multiple national titles in the 1800s when there were only two other teams playing football. People say Notre Dame has issues with this, but at least they went to a national championship game in the last decade (even though they got smoked). Anyway the point is accepting your football team sucks is the first step.

Next you need to go out into the wilderness and go on a spiritual quest to discover who should be the true “Michigan Man” to lead your program back to being great. Of course the wilderness you’ll probably be taking your journey in is located in Ohio because that’s where the greatest Michigan Man ever came from. Come to think of it most great coaches around the country come from Ohio (Urban, Tressel, Stoops, Miles, etc.).

One more thing: I know it’s going to be tough getting through the rest of the season, so you might as well pick up some Domino’s pizza and a Coca-Cola. You should at least have some comfort food in your time of misery.

Prescription: As a certified college football doctor, I’ve sat back and watched fans along with “experts” say who should be the next head coach at Michigan. I laugh at these suggestions though because they’re all wrong. The Harbaugh brothers seem like fine gentlemen, but they don’t fit the recent competitive culture of the program. You’re overreaching and they’re unlikely to leave the NFL. Then there’s Les Miles, who is from Ohio and has previous ties to the program of course. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Wrong! He’s currently a head coach in the SEC, which is the greatest conference God has ever delivered to mankind according to Paul Finebaum and the College Football Playoff Committee. You can lose three games in that conference and still compete for a national title. No way he’s leaving easy street.

Rich & Les

Last, but not least I’ve seen Ron Zook’s name thrown out there as a “joke” candidate. That’s just wrong, man. This is a serious situation and as you know I take my job quite seriously. Just look at the fine prescriptions I made for Illinois and Florida. Their fans have done nothing but praise my miracle work.

I have the perfect coach in mind for the University of Michigan. This man was born right in Ann Arbor, Michigan! He’s fairly young at 49 years old and played at Michigan State in college. In fact he was a starting center for three years and earned All-Big 10 Conference honors. He was the co-captain of the team when they defeated USC in the Rose Bowl in his senior season. Not only a great player, but a great student too! He was the first ever graduate student to play on the football team at Michigan State. In addition to this Big Ten experience and hometown lineage, he has three years experience of being a head coach in the NFL and is currently the offensive coordinator for one of the hottest offenses in the league. Aren’t you dying to know who this is?

Can I get a drumroll please? This man deserves it!

This mystery man and the guy I feel should be the next head coach of the Michigan Wolverines is…

Pat Shurmur!

Shurmurnator

You won’t find another coach that battles as hard as this guy. He battled so hard that the Browns had to fire him because they knew he was going to deliver success and battle them to Super Bowls, something that the football gods won’t allow. So I’m going to list the reasons this is a homerun hire: 1) He’s forthright and open about injuries, something that is the exact opposite of Hoke. Proof? This quote describes Shurmur after his first preseason game with the Browns: “When his first game was over, he was open about injuries and honest in his assessment of individual players.” 2) You would be sticking it to your rival Michigan State, just like you stuck that spike in their field before losing to them last Saturday, which led to Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio sticking a late touchdown right up Michigan’s…. well you know. 3) It would bring back to life the once greatest parody account in Twitter history, fake Pat Shurmur. Fake Shurmur could then have epic Twitter battles with the current greatest parody account, Fake Bo Pelini. So if you’re losing you still get entertainment!

I don’t think I need to list any more reasons at this point because you’re probably at Shurmur’s front porch right now begging him to come to Michigan. In fact since you guys like hashtags so much, here’s one for you: #ShurmurToMichigan. I’m a genius!

Happy Halloween Michigan fans! For next week’s post I would like to take questions from you the appreciative audience. It’ll be a Q&A session where Dr. Josh can solve any problems you may have or are curious about. You can put those questions in the comments sections below or send them to Twitter: @SchottJosh. Be sure to send some questions!

Expandageddon Finally Here?

Although they have yet to put anything up on their website, ESPN has been reporting this morning that Texas A&M will announce on Monday that they are joining the SEC and Missouri, Clemson, and Florida State may be making the move with them, creating the type of Mega-Conference that the Pac-10 narrowly missed out on last year before anticlimactically adding Utah and Colorado.  Should this come to pass, the question then becomes how quickly will the rest of the dominoes fall?

It’s unlikely that Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott will sit back for long and let the SEC steal his thunder.  If A&M and Missouri are gone, the thin ice holding up the Big 12 will almost certainly crack.  Scott would love to get his hands on Oklahoma and Texas and would probably take Texas Tech and Oklahoma State as well, essentially giving him the same conference he almost had last summer.

And then, of course, there’s the Big Ten’s Jim Delany, who walked away the clear winner with Nebraska and a new championship game in last year’s round of expansion.  After finally bringing his old-fashioned conference up to date, how likely is he to let two other leagues render the move immediately obsolete?  Everyone knows that the conference wants Notre Dame.  Some other schools that were reportedly on the table last summber include the ACC’s Maryland and the Big East’s Rutgers and Pittsburgh.  The important thing about those last schools is that they are members of the AAU, which is essentially a requirement for Big Ten membership (Nebraska lost their spot after the move had already been finalized).  Notre Dame would be an exception, but one that the conference has already made clear it would be willing to make.

At that point, it won’t be difficult for the ACC and Big East to see the writing on the wall.  Having lost teams to both the SEC and the Big Ten, the two conferences would eventually settle on what would basically be a merger, as the two conferences will have exactly 16 teams remaining between them.

Perhaps the only true wild card in all of this is Boise State.  A solid performer on the field in recent years, the Broncos still haven’t been able to attract the attention of major conferences.  They arrive in the Mountain West just in time to watch all the good teams bail out.  With no real bargaining chips aside from winning a lot of games (their TV market ranks 113th in CFB markets, below Youngstown State and Massachusetts), this time the BCS might bust them.

Not surprisingly, the Big 12 will end up being the biggest loser here and may even cease to exist entirely.  Their four remaining teams (Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State) may find a home with the Mountain West or another mid-major angling for a power position.  But the moves at this level will be largely irrelevant.

Why?  Perhaps the most important piece in the New CFB Order fell into place yesterday, as the Pac-12 and Big Ten agreed on a Plus-One post-season format that would pit the top four teams (presumably by BCS-style rating system) against each other in a two-round bowl-based playoff.  When you put that together with four 16-team Mega-Conferences, who may seek to alter the NCAA rules and play as four divisions with a two-round conference championship playoff, you’re suddenly looking at a four-round, 16-team national playoff, as it’s unlikely that anyone from outside the Mega Four would be able to get a top 4 ranking.

ESPN ships eleventy-billion dollars to SEC. SEC ADs spend immediately on Jorts, Corn Dogs, and a Case of Lucky Strikes

Not sure if you heard the news

EPSN has locked broadcasting rights to all of the SEC games that are not covered by CBS. Eisner’s Army ponied up a total of 2.25 billion dollars for the next 15 years of…SHESH-SHEE-SHEE SHPEED…

This means a few things to college football, ESPN, and the world in general…

  1. First off…ESPN played this one smart. According to the Mayan calendar, we are all toast on 12/21/2012. They get “all SEC…all the time” until the rapture.
  2. The SEC Network came and went so fast…ahem…that’s too easy.
  3. ESPN the Ocho is one step closer to becoming a reality and will feature Ole Miss every week. Comcast and Time Warner will add this channel to their respective line-ups immediately…for no apparent financial benefit.
  4. Jefferson-Pilot Broadcasters will move to ESPN and join Speilman for all ESPN2 SEC 12PM ET broadcasts. In all likelihood, Speilman will tear off one of the two Daves’ arms and beat both of them to death with it before the sixth week of the season.
  5. Stuart Scott will now be destined to perform color commentary for SEC games. God help us all…
  6. College Gameday will perform a weekly spotlight piece on proper sun-dress wear at SEC games compared to the standard “Fat Chick in Draper jersey” seen with extreme regularity at the Big House.
  7. ESPN will re-hire (he is obviously not busy) Nick Lachey to sing the alma mater of the visiting team on top of each home team SEC stadium, which will lead to the SEC’s weekly version of the “Nick Lachey’s The Running Man”
  8. All commericals during ESPN SEC broadcasts will consist of the following: Atlanta Braves on TBS, Chik-fil-a, Wrangler Jeans (with Dale Jr…duh) and a modest portion of Sham-WOW spots.
  9. College Football Live will turn off spell-check on messages (you know the ones that show during each of the segments) originating from SEC states. Ironlically, these messages will look a lot like a result of JoePa smashing his Blackberry with a tack hammer. More irony, Paul Pozluzny made like 15 more tackles and threw his Butkus award at AJ Hawk (as he was making another solo tackle), while I was writing this elegant piece of literary mediocrity.
  10. Chris Fowler, Corso, and Herbie will now sport “the Flop” as the hair style of choice (See every male student at Auburn or Alabama) to cater the growing demographic. Jorts will be discussed, but Corso refuses to sport the jorts, due to fears of a potential baby arm sighting from the bottom of his favorite pair of Daisy Dukes. Desmond will be required to shave racing stripes in his hair to achieve the look of SEC D-Lineman fast, which just isnt possible with his BigTeleven roots.
  11. A new ticker will run at the bottom of the screen on Saturdays listing the 40 times of every player that has ever played in the SEC. Sponsored by Dr. Pepper.

If this doesnt get you pumped up for a Youngstown State game, to quote a great doctor …”you are lifeless and dead”.