UW-Ohio State postgame thoughts

The better team won. Even though Ohio State is not up to the standard of recent top-ranked teams, they looked good today, mainly in the fourth quarter. Here's why they won:

-They didn't beat themselves. How many blocking-related penalties did we have today, especially on kick returns, 20? How many fumbles? Poor passes? Ohio State didn't do that.

But mainly ...

-The Buckeyes' lines completely dominated play. From my vantage point, our skill position players are every bit as good as theirs, if not better, especially if PJ and Swan are healthy and play. Wells will get a lot of pub, but he wasn't touched on his touchdown runs, any one of our backs could have converted those opportunities. Their D-line had 10 sacks, although Donovan didn't help things by immediately tucking the ball at the end of his drop and making a beeline for the nearest defender.

Other thoughts:

-Have you ever seen Bielema as fired up as he was after that chop block call on Randle-El? I liked it, seemed like a bad call but couldn't tell for sure. Even if it was bad call, why do we still play Randle-El? All he seems to do is generate negative plays.

-Great pass and catch by Donovan and Beckum on the play immediately following what could have been a crushing penalty.

-Glad to see Pressley still involved in the offense, can't remember seeing him catch a pass before.

-Too many short fields for the Ohio State offense.

-Donovan still seems to be struggling progressing beyond his primary read. Case in point was a third quarter play in which he stuck on Beckum all the way and threw incomplete, even though Travis was tightly covered and Hubbard was more open five yards further downfield.

-Boeckman continued to hurt us with his legs, which just killed me.

-Did Vanden Heuvel's absence (Bscherer subbing) hurt us? I'm guessing EVH would have struggled to contain OSU's pass rush just as much. The Buckeyes have a scary young defensive line.

-Didn't like the second fake punt call, even if it might have worked, but the way they were moving the ball at that point it was probably worth a shot.

-Great catch by Robiskie, although Boeckman's pass probably wasn't intended for him. Those are the kind of breaks great teams make for themselves.

-Brown played pretty well today against a stingy defense. I think he'll be a four-year backup, next two years to PJ and/or Smith, after that to Clay or someone else, but he'll be a factor the whole time, like and Eddie Faulkner or Dwayne Smith.

-Hubbard really contributed today too.

-Brian Hartline = Curt Schroeder. The guy was hurt after every play he was involved in.

-Bielema just said it doesn't look good for EVH, Langford and Chapman; Chapman was down a couple times. We really need him against Michigan.

-Let's appreciate Beckum while he's still here - what a big-time athlete and gamer. He was the most talented guy on the field today - 140 yard and a touchdown. Hopefully he feels he needs to put on weight or work on his blocking and doesn't go pro after this season.

A little bit disappointed because we were in position to win but got beaten in the area the program is built upon - playing physical football. Still think we've got a great chance to pull an upset at home next week.

UW-Ohio State halftime thoughts

Like the way we're playing with them. This is shaping up like our previous three wins at the Horseshoe.

-Most of you didn't see this, but BTN had Matt Fischer, backup kicker and #96, starting at defensive tackle. Risky move. ;)

-Before the game I said to Andy that we should try some trick plays today - why not? Before the fake punt, Andy said they should try it just then; I disagreed, and he was right. Terrific pass by DeBauche (wasn't he a high school QB?) and terrific catch by Standridge - I've never understood why he's on kick coverage teams as a backup punter, but he made a beautiful grab.

-Like the way we're blitzing, bu they're not really effective - the route is too long or we're running right into blockers.

-OSU's offensive line started out playing really well, although our front seven did some nice things against them late. My sense is that their skill position guys are pretty much like anybody else's in the Big Ten, but the o-line opens up bigger holes and pass protects long enough for fairly average receivers to get open.

-OSU has five sacks, but don't blame our offensive line, those are coverage sacks.

-Donovan looks a little jittery in the pocket.

-Did anyone else notice DeBauche put his arm around Small and point to the flag thrown on the latter's big punt return? Hilarious!

-Shaughnessy and Fischer, er, Hayden are playing well, especially #92.

-Gilreath's fumble was overturned, but before the kick I muttered "Just hang onto the ball David." His mistakes are outweighing his big plays right now.

-Why can't we sack Boeckman? He's not that slippery? We brought down Kellen Lewis five times last week but can't get to this statue?

-Here's an idea: Kirk DeCremer should be starting with Newkirk swinging around to spell all four line spots. DeCremer is always around the ball making plays, and Newkirk would get just as many reps.

-Brown is running about as well as can be expected, he's not playing tentatively. Still wish we had PJ.

Should be a good second half, especially if we can somehow draw even.

Brewers' B-Force

Andy works for an organization that studies tobacco use, and this little nugget appeared in his latest newsletter, from a May Brewers press release:

On Sunday, the first 10,000 kids 16 and under will receive a Brewers Comic Book featuring Rickie Weeks and Corey Hart of the B-Force, who do battle against the evil spit tobacco monster Grossmouth. The comic books are compliments of the Wisconsin Dental Association.

Andy's first thought: Do you think Prince Fielder, Bill Hall, and all the other Brewer players that chew are pissed? :)

Prince chews? I hadn't noticed. ;)

Seriously, his chaw is as much a part of him as that ridiculous neck tattoo. I suppose that when Will gets to an age where he might want to chew tobacco, I might care more about Prince's tobacco habit, but for now if he hits 50 dingers and is a great team leader, go nuts with the Kodiak, man.

In related Brewers catch-up news:

Prince won the Henry Aaron Award for being the top offensive performer in the National League, and was honored as the top NL player in a vote of his peers. Still, when the NL Most Valuable Player is announced, I'm guessing it's going to be Matt Holliday from Colorado. And that wouldn't be a bad choice at all, he had a great year for a team that had a great run. Just hoping Prince can pull this off.

Also, Ryan Braun was named top rookie by the Sporting News, and like Fielder won Players' Choice honors, in the outstanding rookie category. I think he should beat Colorado's Troy Tulowitzki for the mainstream Rookie of the Year, although like Holliday, Tulo could benefit from the Rockies' late success, and Braun's defense was historically awful.

Here's the thing: my understanding is the Baseball Writers Association of America casts their votes before the postseason. Even though the Rockies' had a great late regular season run, their playoff run got much more attention, and the Brewers coughed up the division lead in August, through no fault of Fielder and Braun. So even though momentum favors the Rockies, we may get the first Brewers MVP since Yount in '89 and ROY since Pat Listach in '92.

Morning chuckles and grins

Who needs a morning laugh? Check out this link about a Born to Roam T-shirt a guy at work sent me yesterday:

www.birkoph.com/Wolf_tshirt.htm

It's probably more funny to people who live in rural or quasi-rural areas, where people might actually wear something like this.

This should also give you a grin: Will and I were walking downstairs this morning and I said "Guess what buddy? The T-Birds (our local high school football team) won last night!" and he says "Yeah! ... but not the Cubs, right Daddy?"

Calling O-H-I-O

SATURDAY ADDITION: Jim wrote a nice story on the Glenville connection in today's Cap Times, read it here. It's sort of buried on madison.com, but it's very well done and worth a read.

Most of you know that I spent my first two years post-UW in a humble little state called Ohio. It was an interesting time. Basically, my buddy Mike Pidanick and I would work 90 hours a week and play Madden and NHL ’96 for the other 78 hours. In warm months we added daily golf, with one year on the links accounting for 95% of my lifetime rounds.

We also spent lots of time watching high school sports, and after returning to Wisconsin I couldn’t help but think: the level of play and athleticism is significantly higher in Ohio. The difference was most noticeable in basketball, where athleticism is easier to spot. But the football players were also better. My second year there, Ben Roethlisberger came into Fremont and threw eight touchdown passes against our hometown boys. Eight! I can’t even begin to imagine a kid doing that in Wisconsin.

This has been on my mind more than usual since we play Ohio State this week. Let’s face it, the Buckeyes are going to take just about anyone they want from the state, but there are still lots of good guys left over. Lots of them end up playing in the MAC. I’m not saying we should be competing with Toledo and Kent State for recruits every year, but would Roethlisberger, Charlie Frye (who we also covered), or any of those other MAC stars contributed at UW? Damn right they would have. But we can also get high-level talented kids that would excel at OSU.

Henry Mason’s efforts have been outstanding mining talent from that state. I may be off a year or two here (Jim can help me out), but in the years preceding Mason’s arrival in Madison, we didn’t get much from Ohio. Kevin Huntley – a Crimson Streak from Fremont St. Joseph Central Catholic – was a solid four-year contributor. But after Mason arrived came a line of real standouts: John Favret, Chris Chambers, Mike Echols, Chad Kuhns (a Bellevue Redman), Lee Evans. Russ Kuhns, Delante McGrew, and Dontez Sanders were starters. On today’s team, Jason Chapman and Kyle Jefferson and standouts, Lance Smith is good when he’s eligible, Shane Carter is making plays, and Otis Merrill, Prince Moody, Daven Jones, Brandon Kelly, and Bill Nagy are also on the roster, most with a chance to contribute some day. All except Moody are northern Ohio, most of them Northeast Ohio, guys.

The Ohio connection, in particular Bedford/Cleveland, is the best pipeline we have going right now. St. Louis was great for awhile – the Fletchers, Bryant, Starks, etc. – and we’ve got Wes Kemp coming next year. It is vital to the future of this program to keep these alive. We can only get so much out of Wisconsin, the Twin Cities should theoretically be more competitive with Brewster at the U, and Zook and Weis should take more of Chicago than we’re used to. New Jersey is another goldmine, but the rise of Big East football, Schiano at Rutgers in particular, and Penn State's return to relevance will make it tougher to get Ron Daynes out of that region.

I love how the Bedford kids talk about Chambers and Evans with such reverence, hopefully Jefferson can keep the tradition going.

As for tomorrow’s games, I have low hopes, but that’s okay. We ought to be a significant underdog, whether PJ plays or not, and have a chance to pull a stunner. My sense is that we will overachieve and play just well enough to lose by single digits. There’s nothing wrong with Ohio State, but the fact that they’re the clear-cut #1 nationally is more a reflection of college football’s dearth of elite teams than a reflection of their dominance. Last year’s OSU team would beat this year’s by 20.

Prediction: Ohio State 20, Wisconsin 16

Schwalbach's Big Ten Network rant

Just got this email from my good buddy Schwib, who encouraged me to share his frustrations with the Big Ten Network with my legion of readers. This is especially timely given tomorrow's placement of the Wisconsin-Ohio State game on BTN.

Warning: Rant Commencing

Not that you care because you get the BTN, but this is UW’s response to the whole fiasco: http://www.uwbadgers.com/sport_news/gs/headlines/story.html?sportid=200&storyid=12050 That’s a pretty strong response whether it’s all posturing or not. I also find it interesting that they’ve gotten so much feedback about this that they felt the reason to respond. It’s only going to get worse as the basketball season approaches.

I still cannot believe that the Big Ten is being so pig-headed about this. While I generally don’t side with cable companies on anything, I do here. I understand that the BTN was set up to help drive revenue, exposure and increase cachet. If that’s your goal, why wouldn’t you want to try and get it everywhere you can, increase the value and then try to negotiate for better placement? The spiteful part of me wants to see this whole thing go down in flames.

Also, what about those schools in the B10 that don’t have as much opportunity to get national coverage on ESPN, ABC, etc.? I can imagine they’re getting even less out of this whole deal than they were before.

I find it ridiculous that I am being forced to consider changing my service provider because of this. Dish and DirectTV must be really enjoying this. I’ve written the BTN to voice my displeasure multiple times and have yet to get a response. Big surprise. I’m just glad Toohey lives five minutes away and has DirectTV.

OK, rant over.

What do you think? I have a hard time weighing in definitively on the matter, sicne I've had BTN from Day One (DirecTV). But in a nutshell, I agree with Schwib. BTN shouldn't be demanding the same accommodations as ESPN or its ilk, even in Big Ten country.

Hopefully for the rest of you this situation is resolved by hoops season - don't want to miss that UW-Edgewood game coming up.

Finer Things Club

I have a confession to make: I co-founded a Finer Things Club at work three months ago. It is so much fun, we talk about paintings, novels, classical music, etc., and drink tea. Then the cool people around here give us bubbler rides and atomic wedgies.

Really though, how funny was that? Does anyone else have something like that in their workplace? The closest thing we have at KP is a group of people who get together and play a game called Cineplexity, which as far as I can tell is about movie trivia and planning for the next game of Cineplexity. Best line of the night, from Oscar: “Aside from having sex with men, the Finer Things Club is the gayest thing about me.”

Pretty good episode, not side splitting, but kept me grinning from end to end. (That’s what she said!)

-Good for Karen landing regional manager of the Utica branch. She’s a smart cookie and deserves it. That whole poaching Stanley plotline was interesting, as was Michael’s conversation with her. “OK then … wait Karen, one more thing. Can you transfer me to one of your salespeople? Your best one?”

-Michael talking to the Utica salesperson: “No, I fired them (the Stamford holdovers), and you’re next! … So what do you say?”

-Loved the homage to Ferris Bueller. For being such an iconic movie for people our age, it’s surprising we don’t see more of those. From the start I was thinking what Stanley ended up saying: “How is you sleeping at your desk better than you not being here?”

-Michael to Stanley: “Mo’ money, mo’ problems – you of all people should know that, Stanley.”

-Dwight: “I think I cut my penis on the can.”

-Phyllis on why she used the break room microwave to make popcorn: “Someone needs to clean (the microwave in the kitchen), it smells like popcorn.”

-Dwight: “The eyes are the groin of the head.” To which Jana replies “That’s so true!” How does she know that?

Michael to Stanley: “Fly away sweet little bird, fly away and be free.”

Michael over the walkie-talkie to Jim, about Karen: “Just climb on top of her and think of Stanley.”

Lastly, for the second straight week we see evidence of other members of the office finding themselves annoyed by Jim. To reiterate, love Jim, obviously think he’s the coolest guy there and want to see him pimp everyone else, but it’s only realistic that not everyone would love him and what he does. The final credits scene where the guys bury him on Angela’s Ashes was humbling, and he deserved it.

And check out this shirt I found on aintitcool.com, commemorating Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race For The Cure.

Speaking of Sports Illustrated ...

This afternoon Will passed along to several of us a really good article from Slate. It's a long read, but worth the time if you've ever been an SI reader or just like sports writing.

Link

I had thought about writing about SI when I read that it had hired Dan Patrick and let Rick Reilly go, a move that the story chronicles well. I wasn't really into reading Reilly's stories about golf and other vaguely sports-related inspirations, but replacing him with Dan Patrick? The guy's been nothing but Chris Berman Lite for the past 10 years, too caught up in self-branding to contribute meaningfully to the sports conversation. My other complaints about SI:

-Golf Plus takes up way too much space. I like golf, like reading about golf, and understand the motivation for attracting advertisers that follow golf's high-income fan base. But way too many pages for what is still a niche sport.

-Hate SI Players. If I wanted to get tips on how to exercise my core - and who doesn't? - I'd read Men's Health, not look to SI for how Todd Heap or Mike Modano do it. The section reads like something a college newspaper would produce.

-Too much NFL. Granted, it's the biggest thing going in American sports right now, but do we really need long glorified game stories - even if they're in-depth, well-done, and go beyond that game - every week? The space, and the covers taken up by this unmemorable coverage would be better spent on enterprise stories that SI has done so well for so long. What would you rather read: a 16-page Gary Smith story or what LaDainian Tomlinson thinks about Phillip Rivers while eating swordfish at a trendy San Diego restaurant in September?

To a larger point that is made in the story, SI doing game coverage in a print weekly magazine is absurd, even if they put a great spin on it. Leave gamers for newspapers and websites, give us enterprise and commentary.

-Steve Rushin consistently pissed me off, but then I stopped reading him, and then he left the magazine. Yes, you're married to the most overrated women's basketball player of all time, we know, move on. (That's Rebecca Lobo, WNBA haters)

Ultimately, the story infers that SI has fallen victim to the ESPNization of sports media, and I agree. In a larger sense, both have fallen victim to the cult of celebrity worship and lowest common denominator publishing that pervades American society, like making Dwyane Wade Sportsman of the Year last year over someone far more deserving like Roger Federer.

And that's too bad, because not everybody wants to read who Faith Hill would prefer to quarterback a fourth quarter drive (Brett Favre or Vince Young). We'd rather read more stories about how the Celtics traded for KG, or Stewart Mandel and Luke Winn on college sports.

There's still good stuff coming from SI, it's just not always in their pages, or easy to find.

The story references a book called The Franchise, written by Michael MacCambridge, which I read about six years ago. I literally couldn't put it down, stayed up all night reading it. It is absolutely inspirational to anyone who loves sports writing, and really pushed me to read more Dan Jenkins. Just like many organizations, SI can look on those glory days and remember them fondly, but will have a tough time recreating them in the 21st century. The thing is, we don't expect that level of excellence - just something better than the fluff that has invaded the pages in the last decade.

Trinity copies the Tri-Lams

Schwib and Will mentioned this earlier in the week, but it wasn't until I saw it mentioned in SI that I went to YouTube to get a look at the Mississippi Miracle that happened over the weekend. If you haven't watched it yet, take a look.



All you can say is Wow. I thought it was pretty cool that we could pull off something like 5-6 laterals in a 7-on-7 game, or that Stanford could pull off what they did in '82. But this is 1,000 times better.

Great job by the announcer keeping track of who had the ball, that was harder to follow than the first Mission Impossible.

OK, OK, I hear you!

The crowd has spoken.

From the fast and furious comments to my last two posts, it appears that writing about the NBA accounts for more Z's than the Croatian national team. So tonight we'll return to the bread and butter: Badgers (Flowers' return and Ohio recruiting) and The Office (I recently read that Scranton is hosting an event celebrating the show - who else is going?)