“Telling Quotes” is a weekly recap of the Big Ten’s top stories using five quotes from around the conference (with a moderate Ohio State lean).

“Big Ten Media Days” is an event usually reserved for reporters asking mundane questions about depth charts and injury reports. The 2012 edition was anything but as coaches and select players from each B1G squad tried to work their way around the enormous elephant in the room. With the NCAA dropping a devastating hammer on Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, the topic of discussion was expected to be slanted that way.

Surprisingly, all parties involved found other things to discuss. Football things, even. Not to say the Penn State situation and its ensuing fallout was ignored -- it wasn’t -- but a majority of that conversation revolved around the differing opinions coaches have on recruiting current Penn State players.

Quotes from Media Days after the jump:

Read more...

With the 2012 football season now just a month away, it’s time to roll out the preview of the Big Ten Conference teams, beginning this week with a look at the Legends Division. Last year was an overload of “new” for the Big Ten. It was the first year of the divisional alignment with the catchy division names...the inaugural conference championship game...and a whole new logo. All that to go along with four first-year coaches and a new member school in Nebraska.

Although six time defending champion Ohio State suffered through its worst season in two decades, on balance the conference had to be happy with the results of their new-look league. Wisconsin won the league’s first title game in a 42-39 thriller of a rematch with Michigan State, after the Spartans had prevailed during the regular season in one of the most dramatic finishes in recent memory.

It was something of a surprise that after Big Ten officials took great care to divide the four traditional “power” programs (Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Nebraska) equally between divisions, it was two teams from what was thought to be the league’s second tier, Wisconsin and Michigan State, that rose to the top to square off in Indianapolis in December.

Read more...

Sandusky is convicted. The Paterno statue is gone. The NCAA hammer has just fallen on Penn State. Kickoff at Beaver Stadium is at noon on September 1st against the Ohio University Bobcats. If that last bit strikes you as more than a little bit unseemly, join the club.

(Note: This column was written before Monday's NCAA press conference, though it has been edited slightly since)

I have pretty much kept my powder dry as far as writing on the Penn State situation here on the front page at TCF. To begin with, the subject is itself repellant, and the ”unspeakable” quality of the crimes and the cover-up rendered it that way for me for quite some time.  Besides that, I went for many weeks making a point not to join the “I’m more outraged than you are” competition going on among genuinely outraged Americans with keyboards. To paraphrase Ms. Steinem, I felt the world needed my opinion on the subject like a fish needs a bicycle. Little has changed in that regard I'm sure, notwithstanding what follows.

With the Sandusky trial behind them and years of civil suits still ahead, Penn State University is pressured by the looming season opener to come to grips now with just how Penn State football will proceed...or not proceed...in light of the Freeh Report’s damning findings.

Read more...

Thirty years ago the University of San Francisco basketball program was one of the most consistently successful in the sport. The Dons won back-to-back National Championships in the 1950’s with Bill Russell in the pivot and in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with stars like Ollie Johnson, Phil Smith and Bill Cartwright they were the second-strongest program in the West behind John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty. They even owned the top spot in the polls during the 1977 season.

Read more...

There is no amount of reality that can change the mind of someone in denial. Committed smokers will ignore every warning to their health until it's too late. So, too, apparently will the Board of Trustees of Penn State.

Seemingly committed to implementing most (but not, of course, all) of the recommendations of the Freeh report that detailed institutional criminal indifference to the helpless and numerous victims of Jerry Sandusky's sick obsessions, the Board of Trustees still can't understand the fuss about a little ol' statute of culprit and disgraced former head coach Joe Paterno that stands as a beacon of sorts, in not so Happy Valley.

The results of the independent investigation into the whys and wherefores and hows of Sandusky are such that for whatever good intention Penn State's so-called "Grand Experiment" of balancing athletics and academics once had that experiment is now over and it failed miserably.

Read more...

A year ago the Ohio State recruiting class of 2012 was close to being written off as a down year...an unavoidable consequence of the trials and tribulations the program went through in 2011. But starting on November 28, the day Urban Meyer became the head coach of the Buckeyes, the team’s recruiting fortunes turned around. Meyer and his staff finished with a flourish, landing several top-rated prospects in the last few weeks before signing day, and arriving in early February with a class ranked among the nation’s top three or four by most of the scouting services.

A handful of this year’s freshmen enrolled early and went through spring football, but the majority have yet to suit up for their first full practice session, so projecting the ten most likely to contribute significantly in 2012 is guesswork on the order of...well...of last week’s Ten Breakout Buckeyes. But here we go.

Asked in February which of his new signees he expected to redshirt in 2012, Meyer’s response was, "We don't redshirt. We're going to recruit the caliber of athlete you do not redshirt at Ohio State." I do believe Meyer will use his freshmen early and often, not least because, with the exception of his running back and defensive line units, his current roster is not a very deep group at all, and the incoming group is loaded with talent. In the Tressel years, about half of any freshman class would redshirt for a variety of reasons, and although Meyer wants all of his first-year guys to be ready to play, invariably some of them will end up saving a year of eligibility.

Read more...

This is the 2012 version of the annual column in which I speculate on ten OSU players I think are about to emerge as star-quality talents in the season ahead, throwing in the perennial missed guesses at no extra charge. Even with 16 starters returning, the Buckeyes will be counting on several key players to make the leap from starter to star, and those are the guys we’ll try to identify and profile below.

The rules are the same every year...no seniors are on the list. Senior breakouts sometimes happen...but it’s rare, and besides, it’s against the rules of my list.  And no true freshmen are allowed either, although several of them will no doubt be exploding onto the scene in Columbus. (That’s next week’s column)  So everyone on my list has at least two years of eligibility remaining, though one guy in particular may be tempted to go pro a year early after this season.

The majority of Buckeyes on my list are returning starters, and all ten are projected to start in 2012. If I’ve learned one lesson in five seasons of doing this, it’s that it’s nutty to project a player to break out if you can’t project him to be on the field a whole lot. The list is defense-heavy, including three defenders in the top four that I feel are on the cusp of stardom.

Read more...

Close might be matter in horseshoes and hand grenades, but I’ve found that actually hitting your target usually returns the best results.  It’s true in sports, and it’s applies in life.  Losing a close game still means you lost, and almost getting the job means you didn’t get the job.  Sometimes, something might present itself as what you hope it is, but a closer look can tell you the brutal truth.

On the surface, the whole world of College Football has earned itself a giant cookie for applying common sense, and evolving towards the proper solution for crowning a champion.  On the other hand, I can cite only unfathomable levels of stubborn to understand why anyone would cut a good idea short before they’re even halfway to righting and undeniable wrong.  Make no mistake about it, the process of selecting just two teams for a title shot, in a faction as large as what we now call the Bowl Subdivision of Division I NCAA Football, is a borderline criminal act.

In the past decade and a half, we’ve had some interesting dialogue, some heated debates, and most of all, some inconsistency.  If you’ll concede that this whole system is based on the absence of common sense, it’s the inconsistency that bothers me the most.  For example, perfection is the best thing you can for, but the reward for such an effort varies, depending on geography, and even chronology.  The ultimate prize is awarded for perfection in Tuscaloosa and Austin, but perfection equals participation awards in Idaho and in Fort Worth.  At a school like Auburn, six years can change the meaning of undefeated from “Good Effort, Good Job” to “National Champions”.

Read more...

Ohio State will return two thirds of their starters from 2011, but only three of their ten coaches from a year ago. Defensive co-coordinator Luke Fickell is the only coach with any significant tenure on the Buckeye staff, as the two other returning assistants, running backs coach Stan Drayton and defensive line coach Mike Vrabel, will both be entering just their second season in Columbus.

Urban Meyer brought in six new assistants to the staff, and we’ll profile them below so they won’t be total strangers when you see them on the sidelines this fall. Almost to a man, Meyer’s new assistants have strong Ohio ties, to go along with reputations as top-notch recruiters. Meyer knows he needs a deep coaching bench because historically his programs have lost coordinators and other assistants to head-coaching opportunities elsewhere.

Meyer hired a young, like-minded offensive coordinator in Tom Herman, and strengthened the defensive staff with Everett Withers, who will be co-defensive coordinator along with Fickell. All three of those coordinators might be head coaching candidates at other schools down the road, but for the moment, the Buckeye staff has a wealth of talent and experience at the top.

Read more...

There is no Texas or USC on the non-conference schedule for the Buckeyes in 2012, and with dates in East Lansing, Madison and Happy Valley looming down the line, the temptation might be for Ohio State to look past the September slate. But a team entering the season riding a four-game losing streak can afford to do no such thing.

Despite the lack of marquee names, no apologies are necessary for the strength of the early OSU schedule. There are no FCS programs...no YSU’s or Appy States. The Buckeyes will host Miami (OH), Central Florida, California and UAB before they jump into Big Ten play, and today we’ll look at that first third of the schedule to see if any of the non-conference visitors could potentially spoil Urban Meyer’s coming out party.

Read more...