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| They're winning, duh |
Before I get to my weekly bitching and moaning about Buckeye football, I wanted to bring up the building excitement for the ongoing baseball season. I know that anyone who stumbles upon this corner of the blogosphere isn’t looking for MLB updates but this is my one public forum on the internet and I’ll be damned if I don’t give a shout out to the Wahoo warriors at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.
It was my 30th birthday this past weekend (please direct all cash gifts to the Jim Tressel legal fund) and my wife organized a surprise weekend of baseball and debauchery in the great city of Cleveland for me. The Indians managed to sweep their cross state rivals (sorry Ian) and the once unimaginable run at the AL central crown continues. Not only do the Indians have a 7 game lead on their closest divisional foe but also sport the best record in all of baseball! Ed. Note: We'll be the one's apologizing come this post-season.
Watching this magical first two months has been a great reprieve from the endless bad news trickling out of Columbus this spring and I encourage any baseball fan to hop on that bandwagon before it fills up. I am a huge MLB supporter and the Indians have continually punched me in the gut over the years with their near championship runs and mind numbing trades. Finally, those player swaps are paying off this season and I can only pray that the Tribe is this year’s Cinderella. Time will tell but almost 50 games have past us on the calendar and the Indians continue their dominance. OK, enough baseball. Let’s get to the Bucks.
Pre-season polls are popping up all over the internet and not a whole lot of love is being shown to our boys. I have seen them slated anywhere from 10-25 in most polls and some of the most extreme (stupid?) have left OSU out of their top 25 all together. I realize that losing your head coach for 5 games (I think we all expect it to be longer now) and 5 of your starters to open the season is a massive blow to the team. However, you can’t convince me with a straight face that there are 25 other teams that could defeat and even depleted OSU squad to start next season.
How stupid are preseason polls in the first place? To answer my own question, incredibly stupid. The turnover in college football is constant for every team in the country. There are always new players on both sides of the ball and for many of these guys their next meaningful college snap will be their first. Polls that are released 2 weeks before the regular season starts tell us nothing. There are countless examples of teams who started in the top 10 of a preseason poll who were never heard from again (cough… Michigan… cough) come September. The only factors that go into these arbitrary rankings are the previous year’s finish and the number of starters returning. Those are important aspects to a team’s success but it no way is it enough information to give a ranking.
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| People are loving themselves some Landry |
Just the fact that the NCAA allows preseason polls to have any effect on the season is appalling. Teams that are buried on the initial top 25 poll are at a clear disadvantage to teams that start at the top. It may take a previously unknown squad more than half a year to work its’ way up to their rightful place when an undeserving school with cache can camp out at the top while playing a cupcake schedule. It just doesn’t make sense. In no way can one gain any insight into a team’s competitive ranking until at least game 5 or 6. Until that point, nobody can use injuries, player performance or coaching meltdowns to critique a given school. I just can’t find any reasonable way to justify a top 25 rather than to sell papers (do they still sell papers?). Unfortunately for us fans, that is way down the list of things that piss us off about the NCAA so I wouldn’t count on anything changing soon.
Can Ohio St. survive the first five games and make a run at another Big Ten title/BCS game this year? I think it is entirely possible despite the hate that spews from ESPN and the like. No matter where the Buckeye’s start off in August they will skyrocket up the polls with any decisive victory in the early going. This is still Ohio St. and we will have more superior athletes than most teams out there. The haters are going to hate but it will be impossible to ignore the Buckeye’s if they succeed without the tat5 and their head coach. So don’t take it as an insult when those first “real” polls appear in August and Ohio St. isn’t in their customary 1-5 slot. I can see why the public at large has a hard idea, more than usual, giving the bucks their due this offseason. Hell, I think most buckeye fans are even wary about what those first few weeks will bring. You know what though? All of those headaches have subsided for now. I have a pennant race to watch!
