The Weakness?
A perceived weakness in this years Ohio State football is the Secondary. The loss of the starting safeties, Kurt Coleman and Anderson Russell, are significant losses for the defense, but I don't really think it is reason to panic at all. Their replacements will be Jermale Hines and Orhian Johnson. Jermale Hines looked really good playing nickel-back(not the shitty band,) and even started several times at safety in the place of Russell last season. Johnson is more of a question mark, because he had little playing time last year. He did start a game against Indiana, but of course you don't really learn much from ones performance against Indiana. While there is a lot unknown about Johnson, he was a big time recruit and a great athlete and should be able to fill the role quite nicely. Plus, if these guys don't work out, The Buckeyes have been pulling in 5-star DB prospects like made the past few seasons, so someone will be able to play the position and pay it well.
At Corner Back, The Buckeyes are returning their starters in Devone Torrance and Chimdi Chekwa. I think both of them where pretty impressive last season. They should be among the best in the conference this year and are not really a major concern.
The best thing the Secondary has going for it though is that Ohio State has one of the best Defensive Lines in the country.
Conference Expansion
I don't understand how the Big 12 went from viable to non-viable to viable so quickly. Ok, I do understand that Texas makes it viable, but the conference seemed to hold itself together by whoring itself to Texas. I don't really see what is keeping the other nine schools from bolting. I get that they will get more money(if things go according to plan,) but they could also end up trapped in a non-viable conference where Texas eats up nearly all the pie.
Conference expansion isn't going to stop, because the Big 12 stayed together. It seems to me that the schools besides Texas that decided to stay may have screwed themselves majorly.
Thanks for reading and I'd appreciate comments
-Michael
Have you heard anything about a Big 10 championship game and/or dividing the conference into two divisions (like East and West)?
ReplyDeleteHere's the best I've found about divisions: http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/13430/bt-divisions-likely-decided-by-late-august
ReplyDeleteEast/West seems to be the only way that's logical for dividing the conference geographically. It does seem a bit unbalanced though since Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan would all be in the same division, but seems unavoidable because they can't split Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State doesn't belong in a western division seeing how it is the furthest east of the schools by far.
Of course they don't have to divide it geographically. Honestly, it's not like any of the Athletic Departments in the Big 10 will struggle with travel costs.