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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Buckeye Defense Looks To Lead The Way

A lot has been said this season about the Buckeye offense, whether it's praise or criticism. One thing almost everyone has agreed upon this year is the Buckeye defense, also known as the "Silver Bullet" defense. However, I think a lot of fans have taken for granted how athletically gifted this defense is, playing in what many consider an athletically inept Big 10. That athleticism will be put to the test by an Oregon offense many experts consider to be among the best and fastest in the country.

How can Ohio State neutralize this potent Oregon offense? There are two perspectives to look at: the gameplan and the execution. Let's look at the gameplanning first. Generally, there are two types of defenses: read and react and aggressive. In Big 10 battles, Ohio State often has an athleticsm edge, and it allows defensive coordinator Jim Heacock to employ a read and react gameplan with a few blitz calls mixed in. However, against Oregon, it's important to not only blitz more often and employ a man-to-man secondary strategy, but to also include different defensive stunts and player movement.

What do I mean? When you watch Ohio State games, generally the defensive line rushes the quarterback or attacks the running back every play. To switch things up, Heacock should call linebacker stunts and have the defensive ends fall back into zone coverage. This is where Ohio State's defensive athleticism would comes into play. Spitler, Rolle, and Homan have all shown the ability this year to get to the quarterback, and Gibson and Heyward have shown the ability to make plays downfield. This would allow Heacock to blitz Rolle, Homan, or Spitler and drop Heyward or Gibson into zone. This would keep Oregon's offensive line scrambling to figure out where to protect and would also confuse Masoli on the option read play.

Execution. Even with the gameplan I outlined above, it wouldn't matter without execution from all 11 Buckeyes. If Gibson or Heyward is late getting back in zone or Spitler can't get to Masoli, then Oregon will be able to execute their gameplan effectively. The play of the secondary is extremely important when blitzing. If Chekwa and Torrence can play good press coverage it gives the linebackers and defensive line more time to attack Oregon. The most importation execution on the field for the Buckeyes Friday of any unit will be the linebackers. To negate the effectiveness of the option read, the linebacking corp will have to make correct reads on who has the football and play attacking football without allowing any broken tackles. In the last 3 Buckeye BCS bowl games, poor tackling has allowed too many big plays. LaMichael James and Jeremiah Masoli are incredibly successful at making tacklers miss, something that Spitler and Rolle both talked about during Ohio State's media day today. Spitler mentioned that the linebacking corp understands that the success of the Buckeye defensive gameplan revolves around the ability of them to make plays.

Oregon has shown all year that they have the ability to put up a lot of points, and if Ohio State wants to come back to Columbus as 2010 Rose Bowl champions, it will be the defense that needs to step up, like they have all year.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

BCS vs. Playoff

Let me start out by saying that I have never had a problem with the BCS as it currently stands. Most of the time it ends up getting it right and it is a much better system then we had before when everyone just went to their own bowl games. My fear with a playoff system is that it would dilute college football’s regular season which is the best in any sport. There have always been too many questions with a playoff system in my opinion. How many teams, where do they play, what about the bowl games, when would a playoff take place? I don’t like a four or eight team playoff because I still think you would have teams mad that they were left out. A sixteen game playoff would involve too many teams and dilute the regular season as it is in its current format.

Although I am not activity campaigning to change the BCS, I did come up with one idea for a playoff system that I would not mind seeing implemented. Before I get into what my idea is I should say that this system was designed as something that realistically could get approved, which means that you have to give perks to the power schools. So here’s my idea (and with all that build up I hope that you like it):

A 64 team college football playoff.

You have probably now stopped reading and think that I am crazy, but here me out. The NCAA basketball tournament is arguably the best post-season tournament in sports. Every March millions of people who know nothing about basketball fill out their brackets in office pools all across America. The tournament attracts sports fans like me who may only watch a few basketball games all year, but will make sure that they are on the couch for all the action.

In order to fit in the playoff and to make sure that the regular season does not lose too much meaning, the regular season would be reduced from twelve to nine games. Eight of these games would be conference games with one nonconference game. This would allow the regular season to remain significant because 8 of the 9 games would have a direct impact on the conference race. The regular season would start on Labor Day weekend and end nine weeks later (around the first week of November). There would then be one off week between the regular season and playoff. There would then be five weeks of playoff games played at campus sights, with a national championship game being played on New Year’s Day. The bowl games are completely gone.

The 64 teams would come from all Division 1-A conferences. The ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, and SEC would each qualify their top six teams. The Big East would qualify 4 teams. The MAC, Conference USA, WAC, Sun Belt, and Mountain West would each qualify 3 teams. That makes for 49 automatic qualifiers. The next group of teams to qualify would be any team left that has 7 wins. Navy, Notre Dame, and Army would need 6 wins to qualify. The previous year’s national champion would also automatically qualify if they had not already qualified. To fill out the remaining spots a BCS style ranking system would be used to rank all the teams and the highest ranked teams that have not already made the tournament would be put in.

The national championship game would rotate where it is held each year, much like the Super Bowl. The rest of the games would be played on campus. Home field advantage would first be given to conference champions. Second it would go to a team if they play in a stadium that can hold 80,000+ people. Then it would be based on who has the better record or who is ranked higher in the poll.

The playoff bracket would be selected by a committee of four members selected by the NCAA. The committee would have two new members every year and no member could serve for more than two years. When placing teams the committee would follow three basic rules; 1. Try to allow road teams to play in their region in the first and second round. 2. Avoid teams from the same conference meeting each other in the first and second round. 3. Avoid conference champions from meeting in the first and second round.

TV rights for the playoff would be decided by the NCAA, which would give payouts to teams based on how long they remain in the playoff, like they do for bowl games now. It would not matter where the game is played. (So a Notre Dame home playoff game would not be on NBC unless NBC bought the rights to the whole playoff.) For the first round games would be played on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with games starting at Noon, 3:30, 7:00, and 10:00 each day.

So there you go. I think that this plan would be great for college football and would have the best chance of getting approved over any other playoff system that I have seen. Like I said to start, I am not out to change the BCS just giving another option that would work.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Academic All-Big Ten

The Big Ten released the 2009-2010 Fall Academic All-Conference Team today and Ohio State leads all Big Ten schools with 95 student-athletes over seven different sports named to the team. The Buckeyes were followed closely by Indiana who had 93 student-athletes chosen. The 95 seems much more impressive when compared to Michigan’s 41 or Purdue’s 39.

The football team also leads all other Big Ten football teams with 31 players named Academic All-Big Ten. (In case you were wondering Michigan finished last with 10, they must have been to busy practicing to study.) To me this speaks volumes about Jim Tressel not only as a coach but also as a teacher, mentor, and a man. Coach Tressel does not focus his life solely on football and he does not think that his players should either. Some people may criticize this but to me this is why Jim Tressel is one of the best coaches in the country.

I have always valued character in sports more than anything else and would rather root for an athlete, team, or coach who has high moral character then root for someone just because they win. This gives us all another reason why we should be proud to be Buckeyes!