The State Of Our Open Threads: After Ohio State

You know, for many years, this particular edition of "The State Of Our Open Threads" was more or less an autopsy of the frustration and discontent all of us felt, but for the last few years, this has been a far more pleasant experience, particularly when you wake up on the Sunday following the Ohio State game and realize that another year of gloating belongs to us and not them. 

That is not to say that the Ohio State has never mattered or been at the center of our Big Ten football thoughts. I shall preview an upcoming work - "The History Of Fuck" - below. These are the average fucks given per game for Big Ten East opponents in the Harbaugh era to date, and the hierarchy is quite clear, as you might expect. We invest much more, even as fans, in this game than in others, even if it isn't, as it was this year, the highest "fuck" producer, if you will. 

 

"Fuck" is, of course, just a word, but it is an evocative one generally. Still, if we confine the discussion to just 2023, Ohio State was actually not where we gave the most fucks:

That honor, at least in the regular season, belongs to Penn State. now, because of various external quirks this time around, that's actually quite understandable. After all, that was the first game of Harbaugh's conference-imposed suspension. Even so, 410 fucks was what we managed yesterday, and that is a fairly impressive total, especially in the last few years.

I say that, but it is also true that past Ohio State games within the confines of this study figure heavily in the most prolific games when it comes to fucks given. For example, we game 810 during the 2016 game (I wonder why), and 785 during the 2017 game (for well-remembered reasons also). 

We should also mention shits given - we gave 97 of them yesterday. That is down quite a bit from Maryland, as you can see above, where we gave a season high of 154. In the past, "fuck" and "shit" did correspond somewhat, but this year, they are completely decoupled from one another. Hoping for another season like that so I can look at the shift.

We do other things with these numbers, as you know, so let's shift gears and talk about the overall mood of the place, which has been comparatively stable over the course of the season, and particularly when compared to earlier in the Harbaugh years. 

There were 3,354 posts at the moment the clock hit zero and we were officially 12-0, against 1,176 instances of tracked words, which made for an efficiency rating of 2.85. This is significantly down from the 2.2-2.3-ish numbers of previous weeks were we were slightly on edge, finding ourselves without our head coach and facing this game with growing trepidation, at least about some things. As it turns out, if you look at the conference schedule depicted about, we sort of end as we begin. Rutgers produced a 2.83, and we spent considerable time in that general neighborhood of "comfortable" throughout the regular season. This is the quietest we've been in a long time, relatively speaking.

Talk of "defense" and "offense" has tracked like this all year: 

In years past, one of these would far outpace the other at some point, usually by the middle of the conference schedule, but this time, we've discussed them at relatively the same rate, which is an interesting shift. Much of that has to do with the team having a fairly firm identity and the drawbacks being relatively known and stable and the lack of any real surprises. Of course, also performance. That's the big one. They all share in the effort which has now produced a 12-0 result. "Defense" edged out "offense" in the thread yesterday, as you may have guessed or even assumed. We did have trouble stopping them when perhaps we should have, after all. 

We haven't talked a lot about "fire" and "suck" this season, mostly because they aren't performing the same cathartic function that they did in the past. There was a time when we really wanted various people fired, and some things did in fact suck, but particularly in the last two seasons, we've found more positive, humorous ways to use them, as well as the standard ones, such as when we want the Tony Petitti and the Big Ten fired, and the officials suck. There is always that. 

Traditionally, "fire" would start slow and creep up as the season progressed. "Suck" would fluctuate violently depending on the game. This season, well, they sort of do that, but again, for different reasons, and it is fairly unusual for a sharp drop to occur at the OSU date point. In years past, this has been the climax for both of these words. Not this year, however, which is refreshing. 

We talked about Harbaugh mentions last week as well:

This is more or less what I think one would have predicted considering the Big Ten / NCAA drama. The stream of news began in the run-up to Michigan State, then accelerated towards Purdue, then the suspension before Penn State. Then, a precipitous drop, because at that point, on the day of the game, it was Sherrone Moore's team. I probably should have kept numbers on Moore references, but it was only for a few games and it's a lot of work to collect this data as it is without adding spot words, as some have asked over the years. 

Normalized values also add to the story a little bit:

This is just the back half of the season, but the season before Penn State looks more or less the same. That is to say, the last three games, blew the top off the season averages for just about every tracked word. We went on quite the ride - by 2023 standards - in the last three weeks and still came out of that stretch 3-0. Sometimes, I think the ride was in our heads, and the team had it covered the whole time. We only realize that after the fact, I think. 

So, there it is. Twelve games of "The State Of Our open Threads" with the postseason now upon us. I will do this for the postseason, but it won't be quite as extensive as those game tend to produce odd results and the focus really is the regular season grind. 

I hope you've enjoyed the 2023 editions of this though. Since there is now sufficient data, there will be some retrospectives coming, such as "The History Of Fuck".