OSU Guardian Angels Band and Other BCS Championship Observations
The long, slow march to sports depression has begun. College football is over. Before we know it, the Super Bowl will have come and gone and a collective nation of sports fans will bemoan the dreaded month of February. Yes, February, a virtual wasteland of NBA and NHL regular season action -- with football in the rearview, spring training still too far away to touch and college basketball yet to tip of the madness. In a word, misery.
However, before turning the page on a wacky college football season a few largely unresearched and unsubstantiated observations from a fairly unthrilling BCS National Championship game. All you OSU and LSU faithful, feel free to educate this casual Yankee observer in the comments section.
1. What's with the Berets? Honestly, I've probably watched a hundred Buckeyes games over the course of my life, yet I've somehow managed to not really notice that the Guardian Angels played in the OSU band. Huh? Is this the Ohio State Military Institute? Can someone clue me in? Of course, this realization would never have been possible without the 75 close ups provided by FOX. A year is not enough time between exposures to Thom and Charles.
2. The Whole Slow Thing: Alright, I'm not ready to say all those analysts were universally right, but I know one thing. It seemed like the Buckeyes receivers had a LOT of trouble breaking away from the Bayou Bengals secondary. To a layman, they looked...well...slow.
3. Shouldn't We Have Expected More from Mr. Butkus? Maybe my expectations were too high and my visions for James Laurinaitis in green-and-white were too lofty...but I was looking for a bit more from the Butkus Award winner. I haven't had a chance to look at the final defensive statistics, but #33 didn't stand out on that field. And, on a few occasions, he looked undersized and overmatched with LSU's big line pushing him way back out of the box and the play.
4. We'll Miss You, Jacob: Monday's game only helped solidify my man-crush on Jacob Hester. The guy does everything -- without fanfare or self-promotion. It's refreshing. I hope the King keeps playing in his ears in NFL locker rooms.
5. Short Guys are Fun: No, there's no proof that having a sub-5'9 guy on your team correlates at all to winning games. But we sure did like watching Trindon Holliday this year. We're looking forward to watching him and Mr. Devine in Morgantown for the next few seasons.
With that, we'll sign off on college football for a bit. Oh yeah, we also have a strange feeling Bo Pellini is going to be a pretty damn good head coach. Just a hunch...
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1 comments:
The slow thing...
OSU's receivers were so overrated this year. I think it was a hangover from the Ted Ginn / Anthony Gonzalez experience.
The one thing I would say is that the national media needs to remember that this was supposed to be a rebuilding year for Ohio State.
They talk about OSU as if Troy Smith, Ginn, and Gonzalez are still on this team. This isn't the same team that didn't show up against FLA. This is the team that scheduled NOBODY during the non-conference portion of their schedule. They were supposed to finish 3rd in the Big 11 behind Michigan and Wisconsin.
Instead of praising this OSU team for overachieving and taking advantage of the horrible ineptitude of Mizzou and WVU, ESPN has taken the opportunity to treat this team as if they are a continuous entity with the same personnel as last season who will choke again.
The Buckeyes got beat this year, but let's not forget that they were underdogs and had overachieved by most standards to even be in the conversation this season.
I hope you all enjoyed Ohio State's rebuilding year. If only all these other teams could have a rebuilding year like Jim Tressell's Buckeyes did.
Oh yeah... and there is no excuse for the beret.
I covered this on my own blog in an article called "Pat Forde is an Ignorant Hack"
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