2007 Ohio State Football Season Preview

S1 YOUNGSTOWN STATE Win

S8 AKRON Win

S15 Washington Win

S22 NORTHWESTERN Win

S29 Minnesota Win

O6 Purdue Win

O13 KENT Win

O20 MICHIGAN STATE Win

O27 Penn State Loss

N3 WISCONSIN Loss

N10 ILLINOIS Win

N17 Michigan Win

Listen up, Buckeye fans: the first seven games of the season are so friggin' meaningless you might as well subscribe for season game tickets to Blue Jackets game this winter and then invest in a scalped ticket for the Wisconsin game, because this is the cup-cake schedule to end all cup-schedules. It's also proof that Notre Dame is an easy target for whenever they schedule games against the Armed Forces, because would you see people make the same jokes for Ohio State playing Kent? Nooooooooooooooooooo.

(I mean, seriously, Ohio State versus fucking Kent! In the middle of the season! And you wonder why the Big Ten doesn't have a bye week.)

I tease, OSU fans. I'm a fan myself, now that I owe the school money for a few years. It just so happens that while the odds of making a BCS bowl appearance for the third straight year are great, the odds of winning the Big Ten conference again are not. The main reason? Not Michigan, actually: in my mind, it's John Stocco and PJ Hill of Wisconsin. You remember the Badgers as the team that got screwed out of a BCS appearance thanks to the "no more than two teams from the same conference rule" and the "Notre Dame is allegedly better than you rule" (although as this link will prove, their regular season schedule last year was just as cupcake as OSU's is this year). Wisconsin-OSU has all the makings of a great, gritty Midwestern college football game, with the exception that the Buckeyes will lack a quarterback who knows what the hell he's doing for the first time in quite a while (Did Bobby Hoying know what he was doing when he played? Any research done on that?)

Yes, the QB question at Ohio State is probably more anxiety-filled than at Notre Dame; I didn't attend the spring game this past season, but from I heard from friends, the quarterbacks were playing like "who wants it the least" instead of "who wants it the most." The two guys most likely to battle it out (and I'm sure you'll see plenty from both these guys in the Youngstown State/Akron games lol) are Todd Boeckman and Rob Schoenhoft, with Boeckman slightly older and thus likely to see a bit more action starting out. I like Schoenhoft because he's a St. X guy (my HS alma mater...by the way, Mike Odioso, if you happen to ever read this, fuck you, and that's from the heart), but he seems so, uh, big, and...clumsy...like, an anti-Troy Smith.

Well, then again, everything at QB is gonna be anti-Troy Smith this year, with the exception of his playing against Florida. You might see that duplicated this year.

Everything else for Ohio State? Fine. Running backs? Fine. Defense? Fine. Cheerleaders? Drunk. Chances of rioting? Very good when we beat Michigan. And ohhhhh, are we beating Michigan. Have to! They've become the pre-2004 Red Sox in the Jim Tressel Era.

Bold prediction to top all bold predictions: OSU goes 10-2, proceeds to Fiesta Bowl and beats the Irish again (who, as you remember, are destined to go 8-3 because I said so), and I get made fun of for six additional months. The cycle of college football repeats itself.