And Now We Play The Waiting Game, 8/12

Only three more football-less Saturdays until we can finally stop talking about Ohio State, what we're going to look like on offense, etc. Until then...

The Times They Are A'Not Changing: I don't really care to discuss today's NCAA hearing at length; just Google News it and you'll get enough versions of the same story to last you till next year. In any case, the NCAA will proceed at a pace that would make Terrence Cody look positively Denard-esque, which isn't anything new. While we all know what we want to happen, it won't, and we'll all be frustrated but this is the NCAA we're talking about here. It's like trying to make sense of Dadaist art. Whatever happens, happens, and there's no use wasting any more time thinking about it, especially with real, actual football on the way. And that's all I have to say about that.


CtK Day 22: 

On Denard: "I don't know if I've ever seen a more explosive guy with his hand on the ball." You'd obviously expect Mattison to say something like that, but I wonder where Denard ranks on Mattison's list in a fluff-free environment?

Exit Schnellenberger: As somewhat of a history buff, this post from EDSBS is excellent (not to mention well-written, as usual).

Above all, you will remember the suits, the anachronistic skin of a coaching generation long since shed for khakis, team shirts, and the crass trappings of the sleepless modern technocrat coach. We once got an email from a reader who was In New Orleans around the same time FAU was preparing for the New Orleans Bowl. The reader had seen Schnellenberger, standing outside a restaurant in the Quarter,wearing a blue sport coat, pink shirt, and white pants. Immaculate from cuff to collar, and striding with the deliberate purpose of a man with a bellyful of creole butter and spiced meats, he struck a match and lit a cigar. The reader sounded awestruck, and should have. It's not often you see real live nobility in the flesh, and it will get rarer and rarer still with the retirement of one of college football's last grand dukes.

College football will be losing a legend after this season. He has had a truly remarkable career, despite the fact that his coaching flame begin to flicker at FAU of all places. Hopefully this isn't the end of EDSBS's always hilarious Schnellenberger rankings. Suspenders!

Conference Expansion: With TAMU to the SEC looking like a good bet, the first domino has fallen in the dreaded but inevitable transition to the Super Conference Era. Of course, the SEC will be looking to add another member,  with a number of names coming out already, including: WVU, Virginia Tech, Clemson, OU, and Oklahoma State, FSU, and Miami. If expanding the SEC's recruiting footprint is the main concern, you'd think that Clemson, FSU, and Miami would be out, but who knows. In any case, strong rumors are circling via a vis FSU's potential move to the SEC, a rumor which FSU AD Eric Barron goes all Johnny Tightlips the issue, saying it's just a rumor but that it could happen.

I'll go on record as saying that super conferences would be incredibly stupid, but whatever. I just don't see the appeal of four massive conferences that are geographical nightmares and make no sense whatsoever, but it's obviously all about the Benjamins. If the Big Ten expands, it has to be Notre Dame or Texas plus somebody else (it's not really important who, as long as one of the two teams are ND or UT), but neither are exactly likely, what with the Longhorn Network for Texas and ND's history with the Big Ten being what it is. I actually kind of like the Big Ten's current set-up, and I would hate to see us expand for the sake of it.


More camp notes (QB-focused) from 11W...sounds like Fickell is tentatively leaning on Bauserman, as I expected. Completely unrelated, but DT Jonathan Hankins seems poised to have a big season for the Buckeyes, making Michigan's strange pseudo-recruitment of him even stranger. The infamous Branch picture from the '06 PSU game shows up in EDSBS's picture countdown. Mike Gundy...44, still a "man." Arkansas loses starting tailback Knile Davis for the season...a huge blow for a team that will seriously contend with Alabama and LSU in the SEC West. Tyler Wilson figures to be a pretty good replacement for Mallett, but this is one less weapon at his disposal (that offense is still loaded, though). Forde compiles a list of underachievers...normally I don't really care for Forde at all (and I still don't after this), but this list is relevant simply for the fact that it's a reminder that Dabo leading the Tigers to another mediocre year could quite possibly mean RR will have a job again, which I, for one, would be genuinely happy to see.

The Replacements: Taylor Graham

Our third installment in the offseason fact-finding mission that is "learn about OSU quarterbacks not named Terrelle Pryor" is Taylor Graham. Like the recently previewed Kenny Guiton, Graham is a little bit of an unknown outside of OSU circles. A comprehensive recruiting profile from a Buckeye perspective can be found here.

The Basics

Graham is an imposing 6'4'' 230 Redshirt Freshman from Wheaton, IL. Some relevant information re: his high school career and injuries: his junior and senior seasons were cut short by injuries. To even get an OSU after all that seems a little...odd. But, as mentioned he does have the measurables, and could've just been a project and/or legacy recruit (his father, Kent Graham, was also an OSU signal caller, leading the Buckeyes to an 8-4 season and a 28-point loss in Ann Arbor). Our Honor Defend explains:

Graham, from Wheaton, Illinois and son of former Buckeye quarterback and NFL mainstay Kent Graham, is the lone quarterback of the 2010 class and, worth noting, not the first option on Ohio State’s big board of quarterback recruits.

So, basically the Guiton-Boyd situation. A "stellar" camp performance netted Graham a seemingly desperate offer, not unlike Rich Rodriguez's mad dash at the the beginning of 2008 that ultimately netted a commitment from Justin Feagin (who was only debatably a quarterback, quite honestly). We swung and missed on Pryor* et al and OSU missed on Nick Montana and Andrew Hendrix. You'd expect Graham to be a middling three-star given this brief explanation of his recruitment, yet Rivals had him in his top 250 (at #236, a four-star prospect). Graham's size and pedigree alone seem to have been enough to merit an offer and an above average ranking from the scouts. The Rivals 250 list's blurb for him reads: "Son of former Ohio State quarterback Kent Graham." Graham also acquired offers from Wisconsin, Michigan State, and UCLA, among others.

Comes with standard annoying recruiting video music

The Numbers


The downward trend in sample size continues; Graham literally has none. In fact, due to the aforementioned injuries, he doesn't even have impressive high school stats. Having been redshirted in 2010, he has no OSU game reps to speak of.

Spring Game Hype/Notes


Graham finished the 2011 Spring Game with a ho-hum stat line: 4/9 for 91 yards, with 68 of those coming on a single touchdown pass to the 6'5'' T.Y. Williams. Naturally, the first thing the announcers mention when he takes his first snap is that his dad is Kent Graham. Taylor Graham has got to be thinking "Guys, I'm perfectly capable of running the company playing quarterback at OSU. Stop talking about my 8th-round draft pick father, please."



Spring scrimmage footage:

Graham takes the field at 1:30, 5:00, and 10:40. Touchdown pass comes at 11:35; pretty nice pass that beats the corner and safety. Great touch, a good sign for a guy with a strong arm. Otherwise, Graham completed a few safe out routes, missed a back in the flats, had a pass deflected that should've been picked, and took several sacks in a display of immobility hearkens back to John Navarre. The sack at 2:08 is especially 2004 USC Rose Bowl-esque. The blitzer comes right up the middle unblocked, and you'd think Graham would see him but I guess not. Mobility is an issue to say the least, as he took a whopping five sacks in the scrimmage. On the plus side, he didn't turn the ball over.

Pointless Prognostication


Graham is basically Bauserman with an actual chance at being good. However, that doesn't mean he will actually ever play, and there's little to no chance he plays in any significant capacity in 2011 unless disaster strikes. Graham is a nice player to have waiting in the wings to serve as that 1-year transitional quarterback type a few years down the road. A strong arm and good size paired with little to no aggregate experience at the college and high school levels equals ain't going to play any time soon. If he does, look for relentless blitzing from opposing defensive coordinators that would make Manny Diaz blush. Graham strikes me as a very Todd Boeckman-esque type, if we're playing the YMRMFSPA game. Given Graham's family ties to Ohio State and his apparent love for the university, a transfer is ostensibly unlikely. Sticking around and hoping for a Braxton Miller early entry to the NFL and starting for a year is probably his best case scenario.

I'd look for Graham to get some garbage time snaps against Akron, Toledo, and IU**, racking up some relatively negligible numbers but giving him more college snaps than me, which is good.


*[insert "man we were lucky" talk here]
**IU football...still bad.

The Replacements (Buckeye Quarterbacks Edition): Joe Bauserman

In light of Pryor's exit and the resulting black hole at quarterback position for the Buckeyes, I'd like to run down the roster of remaining quarterbacks (Bauserman, Guiton, Graham, and Miller) to get a feel for what we will be dealing with. I will make some predictions, and many of them will probably be wrong but it's June so I get a pass. This is simply an early look and is by no means comprehensive; however, in the interest of good, healthy "moving on," it would behoove us to know what we'll be up against. I'll start with what sounds like the best case scenario for an ailing Michigan defense: one Joe Bauserman.

Spring QB situation fluff

The Basics

Joe Bauserman, a 6'1'' 230 pounder out of Strasburg, Va. started his Ohio State career as a walk-on in the 2007 season, in which the Buckeyes were eventually thumped by the Tigers of LSU in the national title game, 38-24. Bauserman was a 2-star prospect, ranked the 55th best quarterback in his class (2004) by Scout and a 3-star, 22nd best ranking on Rivals. For a frame of reference, this put him one spot behind Curtis Painter and eight behind Michigan State's Brian Hoyer (this was of course the Henne class, in which he was ranked third behind Anthony Morelli and Rhett Bomar). He's already 25 years old, and has a few years of minor league baseball experience, having been drafted in 2004 by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 4th round. Apparently that didn't work out, because it's been all football for Joe since 2007.

According to Ohio State's official athletics site, he has "an active arm and ability to make a variety of throws," which would make some sense given that he played baseball. In other relevant news, the "Buckeye Bits" section of his bio explains that he was "third in [the] team bowling competition." Yes, this is indeed important and relevant.

The Numbers


Well, there's not much at all on Bauserman statistically, obviously. Here are his stats: they're not even worth mentioning. So yes, he is old but that doesn't mean he is seasoned in any way. For what it's worth, he did throw touchdown passes against Purdue and Eastern Michigan this past season. There's not much to go on, but even if there was I don't think there'd be much to go on.

Spring Game Hype/Notes:


In OSU's Spring Game, held on April 23rd, Bauserman went:

4-of-11, playing with the first-team offensive line for his first series -- when he was sacked twice, took a delay of game penalty and was flushed again by Simon pressure -- and for his last series, when he threw his only touchdown.

Not exactly a great performance. The usual "it's the Spring Game" (actually, scrimmage) caveat applies, but he didn't do himself any favors. He did throw a touchdown, though.

According to The Plain Dealer:

He was the first quarterback to take the field for Saturday's Ohio State scrimmage, the last of 15 spring practices for the Buckeyes, but most fans probably wouldn't be disappointed if the 25-year-old former minor-league pitcher isn't the first quarterback out there against Akron on Sept. 3. 

The Lantern:

Joe Bauserman picked the wrong era to try to be Ohio State's quarterback. 

Bauserman himself put a word in on his role in the QB race:

"People want excitement and the guy that they've never seen before is going to get them thinking about it," Bauserman said Saturday, speaking to reporters for the first time this spring. "It doesn't bother me. I feel like I can play at this level just as well as anybody else." 

There are many other fluff-type stuff coming from Bauserman like the above, indicating that he is well aware that: a) he has come out of the spring without having secured the job and b) he represents the "unexciting" to the average Buckeye fan. Center Mike Brewster comes in with some boilerplate praise:

"Joe's a real solid guy. He knows the offense. He's going to make the smart play. That's what you want from your quarterback," Brewster said. "I think Joe will be the No. 1 probably going into camp and, you know, he's comfortable back there and that always makes you feel good if your quarterback knows everything about the offense."

This is generally football speak for "talent-deficient" and "can't make a play."There is some mention of his mobility, which could help him some if he actually is able to make the smart play. With tailback Dan Herron and wideout DeVier Posey out, whoever the quarterback is will have to produce some on his own if the Buckeyes are going to escape the first 5 games unscathed. OSU has enough talent to do so, but does Bauserman have what it takes to lift Ohio State's offense from mediocre (i.e., without Pryor, Posey, Herron, etc.) to competent?

Here's some more Spring fluff from the horse's mouth:

Pointless Prognostication:


Bauserman is a lose-lose proposition for the Buckeyes. Despite folks extolling him for his experience, he has played very little (and not a single meaningful snap to boot), and his Spring Scrimmage performance was far from impressive. While I don't want to lob any more criticism at Nick Sheridan, who did his best for Michigan, Bauserman does not seem to be much of an upgrade over Nick. Old+little game experience=a bad situation waiting to happen. We'll see how it progresses throughout the summer and into the fall, but as time goes on, the number of games I see Bauserman playing in before handing over the keys (ZING) to Miller/Guiton/Graham will probably drop. I see Bauserman getting in and managing the Bucks to a pair of uninspiring wins against Akron and Toledo before one of the aforementioned triumvirate takes over. He does have some size and ostensible mobility; he won't be Craig Krenzel (they're approximately the same size), but he could be a poor man's version. Bauserman is basically the default starter on September 3rd if Fickell prioritizes "experience" like a lot of coaches do. Unless somebody else makes a significant push in the fall, it's hard not to see Bauserman at least taking the first snaps of the 2011 season. Like '08 with the Pryor for Boeckman switch in the USC game, I see Miller taking over at some point during the Miami game.

The Little Sensor

By now you've probably been thoroughly inundated with coverage of the fall of Jim Tressel and the impending doom headed toward the Ohio State football program like a locomotive. Yesterday's SI article revealed that things are worse than we thought, meaning a whopping 28 players since 2002 are now implicated. Jim Tressel is a dependable wooden rocking chair that has seen some things, many things, only to fall apart from within, bursting with ravenous termites that undermine every iota of moral high ground he once had with every bite.

Perhaps most inexplicable to me (and most disturbing) is the Brobdingnagian gap between previous public opinion of Jim Tressel and what he has now become. How were we all so fooled? While OSU had certainly not been the "model program" even before this bombshell came to the fore, I admit to holding a certain sense of respect for Tressel; a begrudging, hateful respect, but respect nonetheless. He beat us over and over again, and I almost got to the point that I wanted him to say something disrespectful, not be PC, step out of the comfortable cocoon of coach speak. Basically, I wanted him to be Mark Dantonio just for a second, just to prove that he wasn't a robot. But, Jim Tressel was not and is not Mark Dantonio, in both flaws and virtues.

The reason I say this, that I respected him, is that it only makes this all more frightening. Jim Tressel fooled an entire state, an entire conference, and the entire college football world, that he was a good guy. They called him "the Senator," but I have no doubt that he could have won the actual office if he was so inclined. Everybody was so amazingly wrong. I imagine a portrait of Tressel is sitting in some dark and musty room, gathering dust and getting uglier and uglier as a decade's worth of transgressions piled up on top of each other.

"'What does it profit it a man if he gain the whole world and lose'-how does the quotation run?-'his own soul'?"

--------------------------------------------------


This becomes not a question of morality, of right and wrong, of good and bad. We all know that Tressel committed violations with varying degrees of directness, from ignoring the obviously ill-gotten cars of his several of his players to the now infamous fixing of a summer camp raffle (!). SI quotes a former colleague of Tressel's:

"In the morning he would read the Bible with another coach. Then, in the afternoon, he would go out and cheat kids who had probably saved up money from mowing lawns to buy those raffle tickets. That's Jim Tressel."

 What can you say?
--------------------------------------------------------

At some point, Jim Tressel made the decision to be what he became. Tressel infantilizes the concept of morality by referring to it as a "little sensor," as if it were a fire alarm, all-seeing until you take its batteries out. Jim Tressel is a fire alarm with its batteries taken out, useless like eyes out of eye sockets. This little sensor, according to Tressel, "knows right from wrong." If only it were that easy, that automatic. It's fairly easy to do something you know is wrong if the benefits outweigh the perceived risk of punishment and/or shame. History bears that out quite well. If Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and take-your-pick-horrible-person had little sensors, it's a wonder they ever slept with the little device's constant shrieking in their heads.

It is not insignificant that Tressel has projected this understanding of morality upon this "little sensor," a thing you can imagine if you tried. He just didn't listen to that little sensor, and that's where he erred. If you ask me, this little sensor is yet another act of trickery, of a desire to deflect blame and disrepute. More often than not, the average person knows whether they are doing something wrong; they are often betrayed by their own bodies. A facial tic, a rising heart rate, a bead of sweat. These are all reactions to and precursors of deceit. Tressel is not the average person. He mastered the art of body language over the years, remaining stoic and unmoved at all times despite the assuredly great joy that every 60-yard punt and 3-yard run brought him. The happiest I've ever seen Jim Tressel look was in that picture of him with the ridiculous facial expression after the Miami game.

Perhaps it was early, then. He wasn't yet trapped by his decision to go down that dark road just yet. Like Dorian Gray's portrait, the sins accumulated over time, attaching themselves to a proxy source, until the time that all those wrongs converged upon him all at once. The same goes for Coach Tressel, who, all at once, is forced to deal with  what he's done (at least publicly). I don't doubt that he is a good man in a lot of aspects of life, but his actions, juxtaposed with a heretofore assumed air of stoic Midwestern principle, make it all the worse. Somewhere, that portrait of JT is back to its original state, the burden of his missteps transferred unto him and him alone. Leave the little sensor out of it; the batteries have been sitting in some box in his attic, next to old family picture albums and a box of long unworn Youngstown State gear. 

As I rewatched the 2003 Fiesta Bowl earlier today, I couldn't help but laugh at the way that the world drops hints along the way, randomly and without purpose. With Ohio State up 17-14 with a couple of minutes to go, the Buckeyes were forced to punt, several minutes after Mike Nugent missed a field goal to give OSU and Coach Tressel a six point lead. Roscoe Parrish returned it deep into Buckeye territory to set up a game-tying Miami field goal as time expired. The camera panned to Tressel after that return, the momentum entirely with the Hurricanes, looking on with that same stoic glare tinged with that special sort of discomfort reserved for special teams miscues. With the camera still focused on Tressel's visage, Dan Fouts presciently says:

And Tressel can't believe how quickly things have changed!