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| Jim Tressel got a good look at the Miami program back in the spring. AP |
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Ohio State
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Iowa
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Michigan
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Penn State
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Purdue
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Wisconsin
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Minnesota
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Illinois
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Michigan State
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Indiana
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Northwestern
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| 29.7 |
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Difference between Miami’s average scoring offense (41.9 points per game) and Ohio State’s scoring defense (12.2 points allowed per outing), the latter ranking No. 2 in the nation.
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“Certainly, it's a little different geography than what we thought a few weeks back.”
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Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz , following his team’s placement in the Orange Bowl this week -- that on the heels of the Hawkeyes celebrating a Big Ten title with roses at season’s end. |
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By Brian Hamilton, Special to CNNSI.com
Jim Tressel would be everyone’s unanimous Coach of the Year if his foresight was really, and not just coincidentally, this good. Because it was last spring that the Ohio State head coach traveled south to visit the practice of a fellow national heavyweight, to see how things were done, to observe and glean whatever might be useful to his program back in Columbus.
Little did Tressel know that, nine months later, visiting the Miami Hurricanes’ spring practice would turn out to be a scouting trip.
“I think it reinforces what you need to have to be a champion,” Tressel said this week of what he saw in South Florida. “You need to have excellent players, which they do. You need an excellent coaching staff, which they have. The tempo and balance of what they were doing was excellent.”
And now all Tressel and the Buckeyes have to do with their excellencies from Miami is, well, beat them. That is something the last 34 teams have not been able to do. On Jan. 3, in the Fiesta Bowl, Ohio State is next.
Oddsmakers have installed the Buckeyes as 13-point underdogs.
A 13-point underdog traditionally translates into English as, “Fat chance.”
“We’re the kind of team that’s going to prepare to play as well as we can whether we’re favored by 20 or underdogs by 20,” Buckeyes quarterback Craig Krenzel said. “We’re going to be prepared physically and mentally.”
The mental part, really, isn’t what the Buckeyes should be worried about. Frankly, if there’s another team that’s more mentally tough than them after what Ohio State went through in its 13-0 regular season, it would be surprising. There’s first the fact that the season began for the Buckeyes on Aug. 24. The last Saturday that the team didn’t play a football game was the week after that season opener against Texas Tech. Furthermore, it wasn’t like the end to this season was a romp in the park: There was a one-point win at Purdue that came down to a fourth-and-1 play in the fourth quarter; an overtime victory at Illinois that almost wasn’t, but for two much-discussed calls in the end zone; and a 14-9 come-from-behind victory against Michigan to end the year.
If there’s a team steely enough to wade into the eye of the Hurricanes and not get blown away as a matter of course, it’s the Buckeyes.
“We’ve just made the plays and worked hard as a team to be in the position we are in now -- and that’s 13-0 and playing in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship,” safety Mike Doss said.
The physical part, that’s another story. As much as Miami’s braggadocio has already discounted the Buckeyes’ talent level, compared to its own, it’s a valid point. Miami’s offense struck Tressel as he watched the Hurricanes’ season finale against Virginia Tech, and the game, in his mind, “magnifies how quick-strike they are.”
So the Buckeyes’ task is this: Eliminate the chances to strike, quick or not. Though Ohio State is No. 2 in the nation in scoring defense, allowing a fraction more than 12 points per game, the Buckeyes’ best defense will be its offense, particularly a ground game that should feature a healthy Maurice Clarett. For as long as Ohio State’s schedule was this year, Clarett will have had more than a month to heal that shoulder stinger before the Fiesta Bowl. If Miami is vulnerable at all to the run, the Buckeyes have to exploit the talent they have in that department to stand a chance.
Does Ohio State have a chance? Sure. Maybe. As good a chance as any that the last 34 teams have had. The talk as to whether or not the Buckeyes deserve the chance is moot. They’re 13-0. They’re here. They’re playing Miami.
“Coach Tressel always said if you want to be the champions,” Buckeyes defensive lineman Kenny Peterson said, “you have to play the champions.”
They got their wish, nine months in the making.
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It comes with the territory, Kirk Ferentz has to know by now. You resuscitate a program from the depths of despair and turn it into a BCS-bound juggernaut, and the calls are going to come.
It hasn’t turned into an all-out frenzy yet, and maybe that’s because Ferentz is sincere when he says that he doesn’t see any good reason to leave Iowa City. But already his name has been bandied about -- among several others -- in speculation as to whom UCLA might contact for its vacant head coaching spot. (Mike Riley has had talks with the Bruins and appears to be the leading candidate for now, according to published reports.)
And then there’s always the prospect of Ferentz returning to the NFL, from whence he came to rebuild the Hawkeyes’ sagging program. Put it this way: An 11-1 season, just a few years removed from a 1-10 campaign, is bound to turn some heads. Whether Ferentz will lock eyes with those heads remains to be seen.
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HOT:
Brad Banks
Iowa’s quarterback wins AP Player of the Year voting just 48 hours before the deadline for Heisman ballots -- is it enough to get him back on voters’ radars?
NOT:
Tradition
True, ushering in a playoff system could wipe out a Big Ten-Pac-10 Rose Bowl just as well as the BCS has for two years in a row. So the Granddaddy of Them All welcomes … Oklahoma?
HOT:
Big Ten bank accounts
Two teams in the BCS, as expected, makes each school’s bowl share a cool $1.9 million instead of the $1.45 million with just one BCS team a year ago.
NOT:
Michigan State’s future
As alluring as Marvin Lewis’ candidacy may be, the lack of a head coach is undoubtedly hindering the Spartans in the December recruiting period.
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All the Rose Bowl could do was choke on the papier-mache needed to construct parade floats when the Orange Bowl swooped in and scooped up the very two teams -- Iowa and USC -- that would constitute a traditional Big Ten-Pac-10 meeting in Pasadena. Instead, both are headed to Florida, where money and the arcane BCS rules system won out over, oh, decades and decades of history.
The thing about the BCS that many fail to realize is that maintaining tradition is not necessarily its charge: It’s getting the best two teams in the same bowl to play for the national championship. Everything after that is left to sometimes seedy negotiations and dollar-driven selection processes. Frankly, the BCS machinery, after setting up a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, doesn’t give a flying wahoo about the Rose Bowl’s traditions.
“We learned a lot about the BCS this year and the way it operates,” said Mitch Dorger, the CEO of the Tournament of Roses, after the selections were announced Sunday. “We didn't anticipate all the subtleties of the system.”
Something to anticipate in the future: If the Big Ten or Pac-10 gets a team in the national title game, anticipate the issue of Rose Bowl tradition to be a bit thorny.
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2003
Perhaps, by hook or by crooked calculation, the next regular season will usher in that Big Ten-Pac-10 Rose Bowl matchup we’ve missed for two years.
Travel agents in Iowa
Plenty of Hawkeyes backers purchased packages to Pasadena. It won’t be too hard to change flights, hotels and coasts … right? Riiiiiiiiiight.
Ohio State’s offense
As much as the Buckeyes' defense has its hands full, if Maurice Clarett and Co. can keep the Hurricanes off the field, that’s the best defense there is. |
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For your money’s worth, you know exactly what to watch: Purdue-Washington in the Sun Bowl. Kidding. As much as everyone wants to paint Iowa-USC as the BCS’s best and sexiest matchup, there’s only one for all the marbles. And that is the Fiesta Bowl, in which Ohio State faces the monumental task of taking down the pre-eminent college football program going today. Because it’s not just Miami. It’s a win streak that seems to stretch into ancient history, a second straight undefeated regular season, a team that takes pressure and sends it off the field on a stretcher. Not to mention that Ohio State is the first Big Ten team to make a BCS title game. Worth watching, indeed.
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Michigan State will find out soon whether or not Washington Redskins defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis wants to be the next Spartans coach, replacing the fired Bobby Williams. On a more universal note, the Lewis saga is another reminder that negotiation isn’t carried out in the media -- newspapers published stories Monday saying that Lewis did and did not have an offer, while other reports came out that Lewis did and did not tell the Redskins he was staying. … Minnesota didn’t waste much time turning the 2002 postseason into the 2003 preseason. The Gophers promoted linebackers coach Greg Hudson to defensive coordinator, made previous defensive coordinator Moe Ankney the assistant head coach and switched the positions of 10 different players -- four of which could have an immediate impact on Minnesota’s lineup for the Dec. 30 Music City Bowl. … One goal for Michigan in the Outback Bowl: Avoiding a four-loss season. “The difference between 9-4 and 10-3 is a big difference around here, and we know that,” quarterback John Navarre said. … In team voting, Ohio State’s Craig Krenzel and Chris Gamble were separated by one vote for the Buckeyes’ MVP award. In coaches’ voting, it was a dead heat. “I didn’t feel that we had any other choice but to have two MVPs,” Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel said. … John Kerr, Indiana’s leading tackler this season with 114 stops, has decided to transfer. It was not met with much understanding from Hoosiers coach Gerry DiNardo. “Based on my past experience, I do know this -- only team guys fit into rebuilding programs,” he said in a statement. … Wisconsin secondary coach Ron Cooper is Mississippi State’s new defensive coordinator, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that tight ends coach Paul Chryst could join a Mike Riley staff at UCLA if Riley gets the Bruins’ head coaching job.
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