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The worst thing in sports is having hope when you weren't even expecting to have a chance. Going in, I honestly thought the Buckeyes would lose by ten or more. All I was hoping for was to not be embarrassed. Oh well, no shame in losing by one to the defending national champions, but I could have done without the gut-wrenching part.

My Buckeyes looking like they might be able to hang with Georgia.  Whatever, we're playing on house money.

4 minutes ago, Seadragon76 said:

That was the appetizer, by the way

 

Ohio State vs. Georgia is the main event and if it even comes close to the insanity that the Fiesta Bowl had, then it will be fun to watch.

Dawgs by 20. Put your money on it @DG_ThenNowForever.  I'd bet it myself, but sports betting in Ohio starts tomorrow.

Now Ohio State needs to win to make the championship game a match up between a team that lost its conference title game and a team that didn't even make its conference title game. That would be a perfect illustration of the absurdity of the current system.

16 minutes ago, Discrim said:

One thing I know from a lifetime of hating Michigan (which Vegas also seems to know if DG's any indication): there is no such thing as running up the score when it's them on the business end.  You do not call off the dogs, you bash their damn brains in, burn the corpse and ship the ashes to Abu Dhabi.  Ease up at all, and TCU is learning the hard way that in the blink of an eye, you'll go from routing them to "holy crap they caught up!"

 

Like so.

I don't think that's nearly harsh enough, but I get what you're saying.

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

Easier to win when the refs take points off the boards of your opponent.

Yeah, that was a really bad call that I'm totally fine with.

18 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

Mike Florio from Pro Football Talk believes that Jim Harbaugh's name will come up in the NFL coaching cycle again because he wants what his brother John has: a Super Bowl Championship.    He also believes that Jim Harbaugh will be the one college head coach who can easily make the transition to the NFL because of his prior success with the 49ers.  

 

Hopefully Jim Harbaugh knows who Aaron Donald and Deebo Samuel are.  

Jim Harbaugh is going to be the next coach of the Colts.

16 minutes ago, TrueYankee26 said:

TCU playing incredible ball. They really are the real deal!!

No one is enjoying watching Michigan faceplant more than I am, but there's still a lot of game to play.

3 hours ago, Sport said:

 

It's also very funny that McDaniels was the hot coach every team wanted for like a decade and it turns out he's somehow dumber now than he was when he used a first round pick on Tebow 12 years ago

Which doesn't seem possible, but here we are.

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

But do you pay a guy >$30M to contend for a division?  Maybe if it's a one or two year deal and they have a legit young franchise-type guy to bring along, but any further commitment to him would guarantee the same results as the Raiders have had.

I wouldn't because I think the Jets can be a playoff team without Derek Carr.

29 minutes ago, DoctorWhom said:

Jets, Commanders, maybe even Lions should be in on him. 

Would be great to see what Carr could do if he had a decent defense for once. 

The Jets could be a great fit. They have a good defense, good young receivers, and Breece Hall looked really good before he got hurt. Adding some stability at QB with Derek Carr might be enough to elevate the Jets to contending for the division.   

Washington could be an interesting landing spot for Carr, but I don't see him going there willingly.

Is Carr a significant upgrade over Jared Goff? I'd argue that he isn't. I can't see the Lions dumping a guy who already knows their system for a guy who's basically the same player but doesn't know their system.

6 minutes ago, leopard88 said:

 

Does Evel Knievel also count as sports?  Either way, add him to the list of cool stuff we lived through.

He counts in my book. Dude was jumping over rows of buses on a Harley 750.  To give people an idea of how crazy and incredible that was, imagine racing in the Indianapolis 500 in a pickup truck.

Evel is another example of you had to be there to fully understand how big a deal he was.

6 hours ago, BBTV said:

I recall BYU having a few too, but guys like Jim McMahon and one of the Detmers, not stars.

There was another QB who came from BYU. If memory serves, his name was Steve Young. Got drafted by the Bucs, but he signed a huge (at the time) deal with the USFL out of college. I don't know what happened to him after that.

45 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

That's "Douglass". And I am tickled at the mention as a fellow "old"!

 

Douglass's big season, 1972, is the first year that I remember clearly. Football had the Dolphins' perfect season, Garo Yepremian's comical pass attempt, the Immaculate Reception; in baseball, the sport that I followed most closely, we had the Willie Mays trade (the event that touched off my love of history), Gene Tenace's two home runs in his first two World Series at-bats, and also my first glimpse of the A's beautiful uniforms and equally beautiful mustaches.  In other sports, there were the Ali fight against Jerry Quarry, and Mark Spitz's gold medals at the Olympics (though I have no memory of the murders). There was also the presidential election. And the continuous memory of prime-time television begins that year, though I have dim memories of certain events before that, most notably of my older relatives watching The Ed Sullivan Show.

I thought it was Douglass, but I wasn't sure so I went with one S. We may be "olds", but we were there for a lot of cool stuff.

Those A's uniforms were like the Wizard of Oz going from B&W to color. They were all the rage in my neighborhood. I remember thinking it was cool that Gene Tenace's full name is Fury Gene Tenace. (he was born Fiori Gino Tenacci) My all-time favorite Cleveland Indian, Ray Fosse, would join the A's the following season. My Cleveland Browns lost to the undefeated Dolphins in the playoffs that season. Mark Spitz and his seven gold medals were showing up everywhere on TV. I knew something had gone terribly wrong at the Olympics, but I didn't understand what had happened.   Finally, the only way to fully understand just how big a star Ali was back then was to be there.

1 hour ago, Red Comet said:

Yeah, for a college of Alabama’s stature, it’s weird how many more of their quarterbacks are more like Brodie Croyle than a Joe Namath or Ken Stabler. Coincidentally, Namath and Stabler are the only two QBs in Canton who had more career INTs than TDs. Sure was a different era.

That's putting it mildly. Before 1978, DBs could basically beat the daylights out of a receiver for the entire play, D-lineman were allowed to slap the out of O-lineman's helmets, and just for fun, O-lineman weren't allowed to extend their arms when blocking.  Namath played his entire career under the old rules. Stabler's career was basically split between the old rules and the new rules. Point being, it was a little harder to be a 70% passer back in their day. If they played today the way they played in the 70's, I'd imagine the Steel Curtain would be in jail by week three.

1 hour ago, tBBP said:

I really can't think of a single other Ohio State QB who actually made it as a good or even half-decent starter in the NFL

The best (best being relative) NFL career by an Ohio State QB so far belongs to...drum roll...Mike Tomczak. I'd love to say that Justin Fields will hold that title some day, but right now he's basically just Bobby Douglas* 2.0.

Art Schlichter might have had a good career, but he was more interested in -ing up his life than he was in playing football.

*For those of you too young to know who Bobby Douglas is (considering how long ago he played, that's probably everyone but me, @oldschoolvikings, @leopard88, and @Ferdinand Cesarano) he was a running QB for the Bears back when I was 9 or 10 years old. If memory serves, he held the single season rushing record for QBs for a while. I want to say he came damned close to 1000 yards in a 14 game season.

Dallas vs. Tennessee

Arizona vs. Atlanta

Miami vs. New England

New Orleans vs. Philadelphia

Indianapolis vs. NY Giants

Carolina vs. Tampa Bay

Denver vs. Kansas City

Chicago vs. Detroit

Cleveland vs. Washington (The NFL does not want the Commandos in the playoffs. I expect highly suspect officiating in this one.)

Jacksonville vs. Houston

San Francisco vs. Las Vegas

NY Jets vs. Seattle

Minnesota vs. Green Bay

LA Rams vs. LA Chargers

Pittsburgh vs. Baltimore

Buffalo vs. Cincinnati

2 hours ago, tBBP said:

 

 

I'm glad I ain't the only one who sees that! I mean, they got Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, if things hold to present form one might can put Jalen Hurts up there one day...beyond that, who they got?? 

 

It actually befuddles me that such a football dynasty hasn't produced more dynastic quarterbacks over all that time...

If Jalen Hurts keeps playing like he is this season, he'll get there. Maybe Tua at some point, but I have a feeling all these concussions are going to cut his career short. I like watching the kid play, but I'd much rather see him shut it down for good than risk any further neurological damage. Lots of people are talking up Bryce Young and if he played anywhere else, I'd buy in, but he's an Alabama QB so I'm taking a wait and see approach.

It is odd that Alabama has put so many players in the NFL over the the years yet only a few of their QBs ever went on to do anything. It's like for every Ken Stabler or Joe Namath, there are 15 Richard Todds.

29 minutes ago, DoctorWhom said:

Mac Jones' problem is coaching. He looked like a steal last year.  

I'll clear a spot for him on my Mount Rushmore of Great NFL QBs from Alabama. There's plenty of room.

1 hour ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Jamarcus Russell is among the greatest busts in NFL history because of his contract and his poor play.

 

Zach Wilson has been benched indefinitely, not because of injury, but because of poor play AND his teammates hate his guts.

 

Are there any other recent draft comps for a guy who's both terrible and disliked like Zach Wilson?  2021 wasn't a great QB draft year (at least not yet), but clearly Mac Jones or Justin Fields would have been better choices. And the Jets probably could have traded down to get one of those guys.

Mac Jones being a better choice than Zach Wilson is like choosing to get hit by a car over getting hit by a bus. Either choice is going to end badly. It's just a matter of degree.

24 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Also, JJ Watt chose the wrong team post-Houston and should have gone elsewhere. I forget which teams he was considering, but Arizona seemed like the obviously wrong choice at the time if he was looking to win.

If memory serves, his options were kind of limited. It wasn't like teams were lining up to pay a bunch of money to a 9 year veteran D-Lineman with a history of injuries. I remember there was talk of him signing with the Browns and I thought it was a bad idea. He went to the team that was willing to pay what he wanted. Good for him.

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

I'm not totally sure that I agree with the Scott Mitchell / Matt Flynn comparisons,

It wasn't meant as a straight up statistical comparison. Flynn and Mitchell were just examples of other mediocre QBs who had some success in one city and nowhere else.

1 hour ago, Indigo said:

Not the most knowledgeable when it comes to NFL history, but has there ever been a bigger fluke than Nick Foles? 
And I’m not talking about a guy with one great year and then he disappears. I’m asking about a guy who has had major success with one team, then got multiple(!) chances elsewhere to replicate that and fails miserably.

I'd argue that Foles had "major" success for just a few games. The only reason he had that run in 2017 is because Carson Wentz was injured in week 14 of that season.  Foles isn't unusual. Remember Matt Flynn? Scott Mitchell? Kelly Holcomb? I'm sure there are many others.

1 hour ago, DoctorWhom said:

 I just can't understand how anyone can believe he's "The worst head coach ever"

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the technical term for this particular phenomenon is "differing opinions."

18 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Yeah, Urban Meyer is probably the worst NFL coach of all time.

 

Hackett will probably be a coordinator again someday. Meyer will never be in the NFL ever again; everyone knows better.

One would think, but this is the NFL we're talking about.