Ramzy: We Are Not Okay

He wants this to be about OSU's weird nepo-hires, but OSU has always had weird nepo-hires, even when they were really, really good.  Their last 10 years worth of starting QBs were Barrett/Haskins/Fields/Stroud/McCord. One of those names is not like the others, and it's because they've whiffed on three years of QB recruiting in a row. That's what's changed here and why they're falling off hard.

Tough s**t. We lived through two decades of a seemingly never-ending golden age for OSU football, where you achieved the highest of highs and Michigan sunk to the lowest of lows. Michigan could never get out of its own way against you, the spotlight was always too bright, and you always just made one more play. That is, if you weren't blowing Michigan off the field already. 

Time to take a good, long taste of your own medicine, embrace the suck, and find a deal to deal with it. 

This comment encapsulates the difference between the two programs at the moment:

Which brings up the question: do college football programs exist to produce NFL draft picks or does it exist to win games as a team. Is Ohio State the former and is Michigan the latter?

Yes, commenter NorthBerg, that is the crux of the matter. Teams win, players don't.

"Ohio State had just been the nation's most formidable program two seasons earlier."

I had to google OSU's 1998 season to see what he was talking about. 

OSU did have a great season that year—they pounded everybody they played by two scores or more, including Michigan.

Except for Michigan State, who beat them 28-24 in Columbus.

That '98 MSU team was mediocre, finishing 6-6, but a guy name Nick Saban coached them to the upset of #1 OSU that day.

If the current playoff system had been in place back then OSU would have been one of the four teams, and might have enabled Cooper to stay a year or two longer than he did.

Actually Ramalama-ding dong you are better than okay.  The Ohio is now #1.

You are the #1 fan base with the highest percentage of dickfucks in it.  Now that the Raiders left Oakland you sit alone atop the mountain of fans and a team that no one else likes and respects even less.  The only time anyone likes anything about you is when we see all the video and pics of your fat, obnoxious, face painting fans sobbing uncontrollably after every loss.

3 points will do it to you...

I wish them nothing but the worst of luck replacing their QBs and coaches in the near future. 

Not sure what the odds will open at for The Game in 2024, but I'm taking Michigan. 

OSU DT Tyleik Williams announced that he was coming for 2024 with this line….

”RELOAD THAT MF CLIP!”

steele chambers uses his get outta jail free card.  the exodus continues.  glorias!

Ohio State sucks for a few main reasons:

- Their coach is legitimately bad. "Haha beard dye etc." sure but he's not a good head coach. He's clearly very mentally soft and gets bothered by media criticism and lets it affect his actual coaching. I'm sure the guy is a good coordinator, but let's be serious here. He's a Boston College assistant given the keys to Ohio State where he's slowly but surely running the ship into the ground.

- Their roster construction is weird and bad and they don't know how to use it. Loading up on 5 star WRs is a successful strategy if you know how to use it, and they don't. Their offense is loaded on the position that only touches the ball 15-20 times a game and is severely lacking in QB and OL play. Not a good combination.

- They don't develop ANYBODY. Sawyer, JTT, Egbuka, Henderson, McCord, Stroud, Fleming, Steele Chambers, any number of their faceless DTs and LBs. These dudes are all the exact same players as they were the first day they got to Columbus. The talent alone is enough to win 12+ games but the coaching is so so so bad that they've regressed to getting into rock fights with Rutgers and Indiana and getting embarrassed by MISSOURI

Very unfortunately, I think all of this is easily fixed by just hiring a real head coach. Legitimately, just grab a guy like Fisch, Dan Lanning, Deboer, etc. But for whatever reason they seem very stubborn and attached to Day and I don't get why. Dude is a New Hampshire mercenary, not a former player or long-time assistant. Will be interesting to see how long they voluntarily keep themselves in the gutter before they axe that loser

I take great enjoyment in watching the deterioration of the Buckeye football program.  After selling their souls to you know who, you know who showed up in late November to collect.  

fucc ohio state 

I think everything is fine there and I hope it continues. 

That fan base is delusional and deserves a long hard decades long fall from "grace"

Fleming's unit has been defined by its unrelenting and aggressive incompetence.  It attempted three 2-point conversions in 2022 and took pre-snap penalties on all three of them

Not sure why he is talking about the special teams coordinator's fault that the OFFENSE had pre-snap penalties on 2-point conversions.  Unless it was a fake extra point, it wouldn't have been his players out there.

Love this nostalgic look back at Reggie Germany‘s journey to enlightenment:

“Reggie Germany was forced to sit that one out, having infamously pulled off a 0.0 GPA”

Gives me Dean Wormer warm feelings inside.

This feeling will get worse if scUM wins the natty.

OK, now we have to win it.

Thank you. Reading that was almost as enjoyable as watching the last four minutes of the Rose Bowl.

This prompted me to look up Reggie Germany, the OSU wide receiver who scored a Blutarsky-like 0.0 GPA in 2001. I found this story. Turns out he opened up a Crumbl Cookies franchise in Centreville, Ohio, this year.

And this is the best quote in the story:

“When you look back on it (his Ohio State years) and you can say, ‘Yeah, I gave everything I got,’” he said.

Wow, that was extremely well written. For a buckeye, and not even in crayon.

Ohio State is two plays away from playing for (and probably winning) the Natty and going undefeated this season. Cry me a river. 

The special teams thing is stupid, but the other big stupid is that they’re complaining about recruiting.  Are you kidding?  All but Bama and UGA would kill to have that roster.

One thing is definitely true from that article.  I AM surprised to learn that Urban Meyer is actually human. 

Ohio State fans are really taking all of this too far. They lost one game this year on the road by six points to the number one team in the country that is about to play for a national championship. Ohio State had a great year. I am not even going to consider their bowl game when they had a third string quarterback playing, opt outs, and nobody giving a shit because let's be real, nobody gives a shit unless it's for the National Championship. Columbus needs to chill.

Oof there is a lot of logic in there so I really hope HC 3rd Base doesn't read it  

He needs to write one phrase, "Fire Ryan Day". Everything else he writes are just window dressing. 

I go to 11W periodically to see how they are thinking about their team. There are a few rational people there who realize that they lost to the #1 team in the country by 6 points on the road. They would've been in the playoff next year. Instead, they want to fire everybody except Knowles. They drove McCord out of town only to discover the backups were worse and their "best" option is now a transfer QB worse than McCord.

When you don't understand why you are losing, you can never win. What Harbaugh did to start winning started with having a consistent identity for the team. But, even more, he took away some of the built in advantages of Michigan's opponents. You're using bag men to get recruits? Well, let's have NIL and level the playing field a bit. You're hoarding all the best recruits? Okay, let's allow players to transfer without losing a year of eligibility and no questions asked. SEC has a bias in its favor for the 4-team championship? Well, let's have a playoff and give more teams a chance.

I have no love for OSU and wish them decades of slogging through coach after coach trying to figure out how to get back on top. I love that they seem to be blowing up the ship out of arrogance and hope they turn into the wastelands of great programs that were Nebraska, Michigan, and Alabama before they found themselves again (is Nebraska coming out of it?).

#BeatWashington

#FinishTheJob

Ramzy is correct.  Ohio is not okay.  They weren't okay even when they were winning.

Really weird metaphor, but they remind me of the US "Big 3" automakers in the 70s:  fat, dumb, happy and greedy.  Everything was great when there wasn't any competition.

Then Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota showed up and life changed forever.

Right now, Ohio is like the Gremlin.  (Remember American Motors?)

I think Ramzy is a fine writer and probably the best on the OSU beat - which isn't necessarily that high a bar to clear, but whatever - but every post I've read from him this year is some version of "this is unacceptable and there's just a tweak or two to make in order to get back to winning national titles", which just shows a level of detachment that inevitably befalls a fanbase that hasn't had anything close to struggling in most of their lifetimes.  He talks about firing Fleming and mentions Corey Dennis as another nepotism hire by Urban Meyer, yet only points out that Fleming is a bad recruiter while skipping Dennis because, well, he's doing a good job at that.  He talks about Mizzou like they're South Carolina in 2001 but even before the game Missouri was a top-12 team nationally who hung with Georgia and beat a bunch of ranked teams.  OSU just got beat by a better team, and while I'm sure they'd have done better with Harrison and co., I'm not sure they'd have done that much better offensively.

OSU isn't in need of some quick fix - they're suffering what all great teams do, which is the inevitable ebb and flow of time in this sport.  Michigan was down on a handful of seasons ago, mired in the muck of upper-middle-class mediocrity.  And then they got better and started to win at a rate they've never sustained before in the modern era, and are one game away from a national title.  But I doubt they'll just keep winning at a 95% clip well into the future.  They'll have their ups and downs, and OSU just got off the heaters of all heaters under Meyer and early Day, but there was no way that would have been sustainable.  It just doesn't happen - you can't be scrappy and hungry when you're better than 11/12 of the 13 teams you face a year.  And that'll get even more pronounced in the 12-team playoff, where they can back into the 6 or 7 seed even with a couple of losses.

Yes, Day should make changes to his staff because they aren't good on special teams, but there's nothing holistically to "fix" at OSU - they're just playing slightly worse than they had 7-10 years ago, and in a sport where the margins between teams are so thin that'll mean a handful of teams leapfrog you.

Hilarious 

Incisive meandering lacking reflection in its mirror of truth.

I, for one, am enjoying this Carnival Cruise of the Gulag Archipelago.

I enjoyed reading this article

Strange. Buckeyes score 3 points in a bowl game, and all he can talk about is special teams. I mean, everything he said about special teams was correct, but they're the least of the problems. 

I think his argument using Fleming and regular season statistics is valid in a sense.

Using Mizzou and the Cotton Bowl is not. Look at Florida State's performance in the Orange Bowl. Bowl game's outside of the playoff - especially for teams with NFL draft picks and crushed playoff aspirations - are entering spastic death spirals as far as their importance goes. Their implied sense of tradition is dissolving away as the sport moves towards exclusive financial motivations for bowl execs, programs, and players alike. You couldn't pay an NFL player to suit up for a post-season exhibition after their playoff aspirations ended and college football is slowing migrating in the same direction. It's just business now.

Ohio didn't lose an unacceptable game in the Cotton Bowl. They lost an exhibition game many of their key players didn't care about after their higher goals were roused and a program that was simply over-the-moon to be invited to such a stage (MIZZOU) did show up and balled out as best they could. With hardly a missing draft pick in sight.

It was an inconsequential game. However, I do remember the days when Ohio always had killer special teams and deadly kickers who something something boa constrictor comparisons. And I remain grateful Fleming is employed by Day and their special teams remain surprisingly mediocre for the first time in a seeming long time.

Day inherited a situation...

3B Day.

That article provides a fantastic description of OSU as the impersonal, win-at-all costs Empire. Other than the "stars," the players are plug-and-play throw aways who are just there as fodder for the OSU "championship" juggernaut to march on.

Meanwhile, Michigan is the Rebel Alliance, with an emphasis on Alliance. We see the cohesion of a Michigan team where every player is celebrated and raised up in an effort to help them achieve their best.