Reflections of suckitude

The following are short blurbs culled/compiled from actual quotes of mine from various e-mail conversations I've had with various people this morning in the wake of the BCS Championship Big Ten Massacre:

• Last night's championship game is an example of the main reason why I will never ever EVER shell out something like $3,000 to go to the Super Bowl for the Browns or a national title game for the Wolverines. Because, being the pessimist (read: Cleveland Fan) that I am, I will always be assuming in the back of my mind that my team will get shellacked. I would have hated to have spent $3000+ to go to last night's game and see my team get thrashed like that.


• I'm certainly not going to say that I'm sad that I don't have to listen to OSU fans taunt me about another championship, but at the same time I had a vested interest in that game for the fact that now everyone's going to say that the Big 10 is soft and overrated (which, maybe it actually is).


• I think the media repeatedly giving Florida no shot definitely contributed to their domination, but OSU never made *any* adjustments and their offensive line was just too slow. They looked like the Browns' offensive line out there.


• The worst part is definitely the validation it gives to Urban Meyer, which I think is largely undeserved. Sure, he won the game. But this is also the guy who in on his third school in six years, which tells me he's only looking out for himself. And, when you're up by 20 with 8 minutes to go and you fucking go for it on 4th and goal, and then you're up by 27 with time winding down, and you go for 4th down AGAIN, you have no class. People can say what they want about Tressel and his performance last night: he never pulls that bush-league crap and embarrasses the other team. I know the SEC people felt slighted all year (and Meyer especially did), but to take it so personally as to try to embarrass the other team on national TV is reprehensible.


• Re: Troy Smith, I know that he's not as bad a player as he looked last night, but I also know his offensive line did nothing to help him out. It doesn't matter if you have Tom Brady back there: if he doesn't have time to throw or even to let his routes develop, he's going to look bad. I think last night's game is probably my "exhibit A" about thinking it wouldn't be the best thing for the Browns to use a high pick on Troy: last night showed that bad offensive line play will make ANY quarterback look like Charlie Frye.


• And really, in Troy's defense, you take your fastest and favorite receiver out of the game plan, it's going to mess up not only the timing, but also the ability to do the things you're used to doing. Ginn going out probably hurt the offense more than any of us knows, and they just never seemed to recover from it. The fact that he got hurt in a celebration dogpile after scoring the opening touchdown makes it only that much more painful (and Browns-like).


• As for the defense, I hate to say it, but I think the USC/UM game and last night's game exposed the Big Ten for being as slow as it is. Both UM and OSU played soft coverage, looking afraid to get beat by superior athletes. For UM, it resulted with Booty picking them apart; for OSU, it resulted in Florida taking all of the short routes. The problem is that both teams--normally sure tackling teams--tackled poorly in their games. Whether that's a factor of USC and Florida being "better" teams than they were used to playing, I don't know. It certainly was uncharacteristic of both defenses. OSU looked so afraid of getting torched on a deep pass (from Chris Leak?!?) that they were willing to give up 5 yard crossing patterns all night... that ended up going for 10 yard gains. It also opened up all of that sweepy-optiony crap that Florida runs. When you run a jailbreak screen to one side and all of the DBs are playing 10 yards off, well that makes it pretty easy to get 10 yards picked up. I guess I just didn't understand why the defense didn't abandon that when they saw it was getting them killed. Sooner or later, you have to realize that your plan isn't working and try something else.

All in all, a very disappointing display from Ohio State, and really from the big two of the Big Ten. It's unfortunate, because neither team played anywhere close to the caliber it had been playing all season. Is that because of the layoffs (44 and 51 days)? Who knows? I would like to have seen the two games played with the teams in mid-season peak form, or for the teams to play a home-and-home. I'm just disappointed and frustrated that the next eight months will be all about how bad the Big Ten is, and about how great Urban Meyer is.