Ohio State Frosh Progressing Quickly

[buckeyehoppy]

Looks like many of the Bucks frosh recruits are going to push for playing time.

So much for grading recruiting classes...Michigan always out-recruits Ohio State, right? I guess the scoreboard says otherwise.

http://www.buckeyesports.com/content/?aid=1151

[mattvan1]

Michigan always out-recruits Ohio State, right?

Or maybe tOSU graduated so many seniors and don't have enough sophs to fill in, so the frosh have to step up? You can spin it however you want, but tOSU should have converted their chance last year - they don't come around very often. 2007 will be a fascinating year in the life of Jim Tressel - especially after getting his ass handed to him by the Gators. Can he coach (which I believe) or is he just a salesman? 9-3 or 12-0 are both possible. It's going to be a fun year.

[buckeyehoppy]

Michigan always out-recruits Ohio State, right?

Or maybe tOSU graduated so many seniors and don't have enough sophs to fill in, so the frosh have to step up? You can spin it however you want, but tOSU should have converted their chance last year - they don't come around very often. 2007 will be a fascinating year in the life of Jim Tressel - especially after getting his ass handed to him by the Gators. Can he coach (which I believe) or is he just a salesman? 9-3 or 12-0 are both possible. It's going to be a fun year.

I don't see 12-0 out of this Buckeyes team, but you never know.

So what if they lost the NC game last year? At least they got that far. And, okay, so they were expected to get that far after starting the year as the mythical pre-season #1.

The Buckeyes, within the next five years, will need to start setting up their schedule to include the best teams from the SEC. These are the teams they have never beaten. They need to be able to prove they can beat anyone, anywhere, and anytime.

I think the best test of that this year will be the game in Ann Arbor. It will be the best place for the trend to start.

[mattvan1]

It looks as if the marquee non conf games are set through 2015. WTF are we doing with a home and home with Army? Southern Cal in '08-'09, which is great. Agree with your SEC point, a home and home with Bama or Auburn would be great. Although with their conference schedule, a lot of SEC teams do not feel the need to play tough non-conference opponents. Some do, but they don't really have to.

http://www.nationalchamps.net/NCAA/future_schedules/ohiostate_future.htm

[furls]

The Buckeyes, within the next five years, will need to start setting up their schedule to include the best teams from the SEC.

SEC elites are not going to be available. Even the good teams that would add a challenge already have one (Florida vs. Florida State) and the trend in college football right now is not towards increasing strength of schedule. Frankly, it just ain't going to happen.

[furls]

Recruiting class ratings are a joke and often do not consider how well a team is filling its needs. For instance, USC has 9 5* running backs right now, the value of another 5* running back is not that much to them, but if they recruit one this year, their ranking will reflect it as a great recruiting class.

Ohio State has done very well at recruiting for need and finding players with not only the talent to excel, but the work ethic to get better and the personality to fit in on the roster. Here are some interesting numbers for you....

AJ Hawk 3*
Mike D'Andrea 5*

Troy Smith no stars
Justin Zwick 5*

Maurice Wells 5*
Antonio Pittman 3*

Jemario O'Neal 5*
Kurt Coleman 3*

Malcolm Jenkins 3*
Vernon Gholston 4*
James Laurinaitis 3*
Jay Richardson 3*
Robiskie 3*
Hartline 3*
Anderson Russel 3*
Donald Washington 3*
Anthony schlegel 2*

The bottom line is that these guys are not right even close to 1/2 the time. The only thing that I will say they are pretty good about is projecting the top 1% guys like Ginn, Wells, Bush, etc.

[FUDU]

2007 will be a fascinating year in the life of Jim Tressel - especially after getting his ass handed to him by the Gators. Can he coach (which I believe) or is he just a salesman? 9-3 or 12-0 are both possible. It's going to be a fun year.

Tressel has already proven he can coach, both in single games and for a season.

What this year is about is his ability to adapt and win in a very different style than he did with the year before.

So far he has ran the old ball control style and won, then on the fly adapted to a wide open attack (and was very successful). Reverting back to the ball control style in a time when there are so many opponents going witha wide open offense will be the challenge.

Will he have the perseverance and patience to stick with his plan the whole year?

[furls]

Word on the street is that Ohio State's offense is not going to be anywhere near as conservative as we have all been led to believe. I wrote my preview a couple of weeks ago, but if I could turn back time I would definitely rework some parts of it based on leaks out of camp.

[swerb]

Word on the street is that Ohio State's offense is not going to be anywhere near as conservative as we have all been led to believe. I wrote my preview a couple of weeks ago, but if I could turn back time I would definitely rework some parts of it based on leaks out of camp.

Sweet.

I have Robiskie and Pretorious on my college fantasy football team.

Robiskie is about to light YSU (and Spoon) up for 150 yds and 3 scores in the opener.

[buckeyehoppy]

The Buckeyes, within the next five years, will need to start setting up their schedule to include the best teams from the SEC.

SEC elites are not going to be available. Even the good teams that would add a challenge already have one (Florida vs. Florida State) and the trend in college football right now is not towards increasing strength of schedule. Frankly, it just ain't going to happen.

It doesn't mean it's right and it points up all the more the need for a playoff and a modification, if not wholesale realignment of the "Bowl System".

Bottom line is that Ohio State can schedule Y-town State two years in a row and get away with it because it benefits the favored team in the BCS. That your bottom line. It is not right for a team to "cream puff" a schedule, as so many schools are doing now, and get into a BCS game.

BCS teams should win their conferences and if they get in as an at large team it should be by schedule strength. This year's sked for the Bucks is laughable and it happens again in 2010. The "marquee" game that year is Miami (FL). Well, they won't be nearly the team in the Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson days.

On the other hand, it might also be the closest they get to scheduling SEC caliber football, so maybe we should be thankful for what we are getting. But, for my money, I will be completely disappointed if Ohio State doesn't win both meetings.

[furls]

We all can see the obvious flaws in the current system (dilluting bowls, weak schedules, etc.), but you cannot fault a team for playing by the guidelines and system that is in place.

Nothing is going to change in the immediate future (there may be some compromises like a 4 four team BCS play off), but the system is going to exist as it is by and large because everyone is making money right now and we all know that money drives sports until the fans get so irritated that it affects revenues.

[buckeyehoppy]

We all can see the obvious flaws in the current system (dilluting bowls, weak schedules, etc.), but you cannot fault a team for playing by the guidelines and system that is in place.

Nothing is going to change in the immediate future (there may be some compromises like a 4 four team BCS play off), but the system is going to exist as it is by and large because everyone is making money right now and we all know that money drives sports until the fans get so irritated that it affects revenues.

Your right about all of this Furls, but just because you can make money off the system never means that the product can't be improved.

A four team playoff isn't enough. Even an eight team playoff would only include the major conference champs. It would still leave competitive teams out.

A 16 team playoff would be ideal, particularly in proportion to the number of teams in D-I football. Even at it's most competitive, a 16 team playoff only includes a quarter of the truly most deserving teams from the truly most deserving conferences.

At 16, there are probably a handful every year that may or may not belong. However, it will also allow for a team that might have had a slow start and might have slipped out of contention to get back in with a strong finish. It would allow teams to improve their positions and it would require all teams to play hard ever week or get played out of the running.

At 16, it would also allow for "cinderella" teams to make it. It would also make it possible for conferences like the MAC and the Mountain West to aspire to that level and perhaps knock off a giant (the way Boise State took out Oklahoma last year).

At 16, the money pool might be diluted. But who would ever know if it wasn't tried? I believe that the money would get bigger for the teams farther up the food chain. The teams in the NC game would be like the teams in the Super Bowl. Perhaps a lot for college kids to handle, but when a recruiter from Ohio State wants a player to play for the Buckeyes these are the types of situations that a player is recruited for.

Based on the current BCS Poll (which, as luck would have it, works pretty well for college football) the teams would be drawn from the top 16 teams, straight up or down, in the final poll.

Not all conference champions will, or should, get an automatic bid. It will require a team from the MACs of the world to actually knock off a respectable BCS caliber team and win their conference. It might not be fair to those "mid-major" teams, but they are already fighting an uphill battle. If you are an undefeated "mid-major" team, that pretty much implies that you have won your conference and beaten somebody bigger than you. That might even be the case if they lost one game.

But, unless you had a muscle bound schedule, it isn't really likely that a team that would qualify for the 16 team playoff would be able to do so with more than three losses. Even Notre Dame is "easing up" their vaunted sked to include more than just the service academies as light touches.

College football needs a system that will include all the teams that deserve it, and maybe a handful that don't to guarantee the competitive balance. The sooner this happens, the sooner that teams like Ohio State don't have to purposely play "light touch" teams to guarantee a chance at the BCS.

[FUDU]

A 16 team playoff would be ideal, particularly in proportion to the number of teams in D-I football. Even at it's most competitive, a 16 team playoff only includes a quarter of the truly most deserving teams from the truly most deserving conferences.

I think 8 is ideal.

Take a look at the top 8 teams in the country every year, then look at the top 16. IMO there become a noticeable difference between the quality of teams fro around the 8th spot to roughly the 15th or 16th spot.

You start getting into 3 loss teams around the 16th spot, 2 loss teams are already very noticeable by the time we get to 16.

The top 8 usually consists of 1 loss teams with rarely more than two 2 loss teams that high, and much of the time that one loss for those teams came from another top 8-10 team.

I like the thought of a Cinderella team in the mix but you cannot artificially create the Cinderella effect IMO, it has to happen naturally or it isn't really a Cinderella team.

IMO for the best quality playoff format restricting the filed to 8 is best for now.

[furls]

An 8 game playoff would extend the season to 15 (or 16 in some cases) games. That is a pretty significant increase. Now additionally, how are you going to split the funds from these games? Think about it, your NC is going to play 3 bowl games...$$$.

I guess an easy solution to the number of games problem is to reduce the season back to 11 games, but that just further amplifies the $$ disparity issue, essentially you are taking one home game per year away from most of the country to give additional revenue to the top 8 teams in the country.

Still, even the playoff does not get to the basic underlying problem... scheduling. Teams are still going to schedule themselves in such away that give themselves the best chance for at large births. Now if you say that you have to win your conference, well then you still have not done anything about non conference scheduling and you have added another game, the conference championship game, to the schedule (so right now we are 12-13 reg season, 1 conference championship game, 3 play off games) bringing the total to 16-17 games.

As I have written, time and time again, non conference scheduling is more about maximizing revenue even more than maximizing wins (it just so happens that the two go hand in hand). THe only thing that would ultimately affect non-conference scheduling would be for the NCAA to force the big boys to give the little guys "home and homes" AND the NCAA would have to remove the strength of schedule bias that currently exists.

Right now, no one really cares about how "good" a teams losses are (like the NCAA tournament committee does) they just care how many there were. You guys did it yourselves up a couple of posts, talking about 3 loss teams. Look at Ohio State in 2005. That team had 2 very high quality losses, losing to eventual national champs and the #3 team in the country. Quality losses, but in the end, all the pollsters and fans really end up seeing is 2 losses.

In the end, it is flawed patchworked system that is not going to get any better any time soon. I would say that we could see a 4 team play off (and one type of set up) in a couple of years, but again, trying to get the Bowl committees and NCAA presidents on board with anything is going to be an uphill battle.

[FUDU]

Squeezing in the extra games wouldn't be a problem, I mean how many weeks off do some of these programs get between regular season and bowl season?

I'd be willing to bet OSU wouldn't mind playing a game 2-3 weeks after the michigan game as opposed to waiting 50+ days.

I don't get why people think money would change, all that making a playoff would do is put a different/additional label on a bowl game. No bowl games would be omitted.

Everything else would stay the same.

[thedirtceo]

Tennessee found room in their non conference to get Cal in there.

They would be better suited to play a Miss State or Arkansas(who fit USC in).

I think it is more of a $$$$$ issue than a space one.