It’s Thursday, baby! Let’s enjoy this break in the recent cold weather as we head to what should be a lovely Saturday to enjoy the ritualistic butchering of Kirk Ferentz and his mediocre son.
- REMEMBER THAT TIME IOWA PUT THE BUCKS IN A CASKET?
I’m old enough to remember the last game against Iowa. I got paid to cover that massacre. And I remember thinking midway through the third quarter, “Man, I did not see the ass whipping getting ran on my team.”
But unlike the Michigan State loss in 2015 that only gets more confounding and enraging the further we drift away from that game, I was at peace with Iowa entombing us at the bottom of one of their famous man-made lakes.
It was funny to me that Urban Meyer spent the whole week talking about how it would be “as if a bomb went off” at the Woody if a player even so much as hinted at overlooking Iowa. Then Mike Weber spilled the beans shortly after the game, saying the team overlooked Iowa.
But Ryan Day was on the sidelines on that fateful day in 2017. And the tree remembers what the axe forgets.
From Stephen Means of cleveland.com:
“It’s a scar that doesn’t go away (and) I’ve felt it this week, for sure,” Day said. “That was a tough day for all of us. Any time you have a scar like that, it’s real. We’ve talked a lot about it to our staff, we’ve talked a lot about it to our players, we’ve talked about it as an offensive staff, and we’ll continue to talk about it.”
Justin Frye is the only offensive assistant who wasn’t part of that meltdown. Day was the quarterback coach, Wilson the tight ends coach and Tony Alford coached the running backs. Brian Hartline hadn’t yet been promoted to wide receivers coach, but he was a graduate assistant in the room working under Zach Smith.
Hartline subjugated to working under Smith might be the funniest sentence in those two paragraphs. But that’s a topic for another day.
Jokes aside, I’m glad Day is re-living the trauma this week. Not getting bushwhacked by the likes of Iowa is what has separated his tenure from the terminal Urban Meyer days.
- HANCOCK AND JSN CLOSE TO RETURN?
Cornerback Jordan Hancock would probably be the best candidate to replace Denzel Burke midstream if the latter’s current form continues. Hancock has yet to play a snap this season, but he’s at the stage in his recovery where he’s wearing full pads at practice:
Also of note, WR1 Jaxon Smith-Njigba was spotted after practice working the Juggs machine. You guys will be pleased to know that JSN apparently still has a knack for snagging high-speed balls out of the air.
Would love for this to be the week JSN gets integrated back into the lineup with next week’s trip to Happy Valley looming. It’s also wild that the Buckeyes have performed in such a way that JSN has become somewhat of an afterthought. Him being back in the lineup this weekend would be like finding a lottery ticket on your commute to the job that pays you four-times what you’re worth.
- WANT TO GO THE GAME? THE PRICE ON A BRICK IS GOING UP.
Michigan and Ohio State appear destined to both be undefeated when they face off in Columbus next month. You’ll probably want to buy a ticket now if you plan on going because the price will only get more ludicrous as The Game approaches:
I love Ohio State. I hate Michigan. But man, I will never pay $700 to watch a football game unless I find that aforementioned lottery ticket. I’d rather save that money and attend a playoff game. Does that make me a bad fan? Maybe.
- DEVIER POSEY TURNED A FROWN UPSIDE DOWN
You’d be hard-pressed to find an athlete that Ohio State fucked over more than DeVier Posey. His punishment was egregious even by 2011 standards, which is how you know it’s terrible.
Thankfully Jim Tressel wasn’t the depraved criminal that Sports Illustrated tried to paint him to be. Otherwise, Posey’s post-Tatgate life might have turned out differently.
From Lori Schmidt of dispatch.com:
“Through your pain always comes glory,” he said. “When I served my (first) suspension at Ohio State, I was very blessed and fortunate to be able to do an internship at the student union with a lady named Tracy Stuck. Obviously, Gene Smith (OSU’s athletic director) and coach (Jim) Tressel set that up before he was out of his job, and that experience showed me I was more than a football player.”
Through that internship, he said, he learned how to be detail-oriented and coordinate events such as mapping out a 22-county swing that then-university president E. Gordon Gee made through Ohio. It taught him lessons he uses now running the transportation company Scott Stewart Logistics.
If anything, his second five-game suspension for receiving a free round of golf and for what the NCAA deemed a $720 overpayment for part-time work, was even more impactful.
“The day I was handed my second suspension, Tracy Stuck – she still works in student life, and we still have a great relationship; she’s been to my wedding – she asked me to write the idea to my foundation that day. I couldn’t play in the Nebraska game, and I was sad, but I came up with Pocket Full of Poseys that day.”
Pocket Full of Poseys “is a charitable organization centered on helping young people,” Schmidt noted.
It’s wild now that Posey almost lost his career over trading tattoos for trinkets and a free round of golf. That he’s not bitter over that—how much was lost in draft stock alone?—shows how mature he is.
Shoutout to Ms. Stuck. She saved a lot of people from looking like even bigger assholes in that situation. We could all use a friend like that.
THOSE WMDs. The new gods of the World Cup… The secret lab hidden in a monument… The life and confessions of a mob chef… The improbable rise and savage fall of Siegfried and Roy… How getting dog food delivered to your doorstep explains the inefficient, sometimes absurd, extremely convenient way online orders are shipped.