Ohio State considered going independent to play 2020 season. Ramifications?
Did not see this discussed yet.
"In response to a public records requests, Ohio State produced documents — obtained by 247Sports’ Patrick Murphy and Chris Hummer — that show e-mails and text messages regarding the COVID-19 landscape from leaders in the Buckeyes program."
And some serious thought was made towards going independent for 2020, at least in football.
Would that be feasible? What would the ramifications have been for big ten? Or would the conference grovel and take them back regardless?
There wasn't serious consideration. The incoming president sent one text to Gene Smith, Gene said we are looking into our contracts to see if it's possible. Then said no, we can't do it. It was one of many avenues they explored to try to have a season. I know it wasn't discussed here, but there is some lengthy discussion about all of the communication in August on the OSU sites.
That sounds like serious consideration to me.
I'm not going to link it because people won't like it, but they released the entire timeline and conversations between Smith and Johnson. At 8:04 am on 8/12 Johnson sent Smith a text asking if they can go independent. By 2:50 pm Smith replied to Johnson saying we cannot go independent. That was the end of it. So if you consider 6.5 hours over the course of 2 months fighting for a season "serious consideration", I guess so in loose terms.
Yeah, I'm sure questions were asked out of diligence but unlike Nebraska OSU was smart enough to not make that initial efforts public and wage a war in the media about it.
From a pragmatic standpoint I'd assume a lot of schools looked at how hard it would be to go independent for a year.
No shit, and Nebraska got roasted for even thinking about it. Let's see how OSU gets treated.
Nebraska made a stupid public campaign announcing their intentions like they were going to strong arm the conference. OSU checked contracts for 6 hours and said no. Why would they get roasted like Nebraska did?
Nebraska wanted to play Tennessee Chattanooga when the Wisconsin game got cancelled. Everything else was rumor and speculation. OSU considered going independant when they thought the season was going to be cancelled. That's a big difference my friend.
They talked about it for 6 hours and squashed it. They talked about like 50 other scenarios as well. You are trying to make something out of nothing. Nebraska was publicly saying we want to play and are going to play no matter how we get there. OSU had an incoming president send one text, the AD said we are checking contracts, and 6.5 hours later said nope, we aren't doing it.
Again, you can make something out of nothing if you want. Whatever makes you feel better, my friend.
The fact that people are making FOI request seems like someone is making something out of it. You protest too much. You sound like a Buckeye apologist. F#ck Ohio St.
Apparently you don't understand how common FOI requests are. It's peak offseason, this was the perfect filler. And it was done by a lot of OSU sports media. Not every FOI request means scandal.
I'm not a Buckeye apologist, I'll be the first to tell them to take their medicine when they are in the wrong. But I'll also be the first to point out absurdity, which any insinuation that OSU did anything even remotely wrong here is. Keep reading, your comrades on here will probably tell you the same.
They looked into it. They gave it a serious thought. If it wasn't for the financial downside because of contrats who knows.
As it turned out -- likely due to various contracts -- the Scarlet and Gray couldn't simply depart from its conference status for one year, but in a text message between Gene Smith and possibly new Ohio State president Kristina Johnson -- the receiver of the texts is not identified -- Smith says he was "trying to understand our contracts and if we can play independent this year." Smith follows that message by saying he "just challenged the league on it," and eventually, after speaking with Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, "we cannot play this fall."
This wasn't a couple GA's sitting by the pool talking about what if, this was the President talking to the AD who looked into the possibility. It wasn't dismissed after a phone call. They did their due diligence, and came to the conclusion it wasn't financially feasible.
Thanks for providing information I already know. I specifically stated it was Johnson and Smith, not some GA's. They did their due diligence, just like every other scenario they spent time on. They spent a grand total of 6.5 hours on this scenario, from beginning to end haha. This message board conversation is lasting longer than the entire time it was introduced and squashed.
What do you think should happen? B1G kick them out because they looked into playing football an alternate way for an extended morning? Hell your own coach was walking with the people chanting they wanted to play football.
“…your own coach…”? Who is your coach? Ryan Day? If you are a Buckeye, you should come clean because you absolutely are acting as an apologist for OSU by excusing President Johnson’s and Gene Smith’s overtures to unnamed individual(s) to make an end-run around conference rules, no matter how trivial or sincere the effort was.
They are going to LOVE the new President seeing she was the one to ask if going independent would work, OSU puts football first for sure.
Yeah, it seems like a savvy, low-stakes way to create a positive first impression amongst the donors and cooler poopers.
She better, otherwise Ryan Day might fire her!
Until Day does what Tressel and Meyer did and win a national title, he will be slotted between Cooper and them. That means he doesn't have immunity yet.
At the time, I had no idea the osu president was brand new on the job. I can't imagine walking into a job that big, in the middle of a pandemic, with, literally dozens of issues from keeping students safe to figuring out classes to stemming tuition drain to losing international students to EVERYTHING ELSE on the academic side of the house, and one of the first things on her plate was to inquire about the football team going rogue? That's mind-blowing. With presidents like that dotting the NCAA landscape, it's no wonder whats-his-name got re-named king of the NCAA. I know Schlissel took a lot of grief for some of the decisions he made, but at least he wasn't mulling stabbing the rest of the Big 10 in the back for the possibility of playing for a championship (insert jokes).
Shock-surprise headline: Covid Caused Craziness
This isn't craziness. This is understanding the options available. A text message exchange that quickly dies (and less than one business day is EXTREMELY quickly) is not even approaching serious.
We can complain about several things regarding OSU, but this isn't one of those things.
How's it feel to be an asshole, Neidermayer
Not sure why you're getting negged. I personally loved the Animal House reference.
How's it feel to be an independent, Schoenstein??
I'm not one to shake my fist at anonymous negs, I find it hilarious when even some mods try to call out -1's that they have no hope of identifying.
I have a doozy of an animal house reference for the next time we get a 2* commit.
/what do I win???
That's not it! Delta related.
Are you going to create a gif of when they're doing the slideshow of who to give bids to and then just embed the recruit's face over Flounder's? I'm legitimately curious now.
Double points if you launch into an Otter-esque monologue on calling out certain posters afterwards for ripping on the kid. "You had a face like a pepperoni pizza. And Maizen here.....well everyone thought that Maizen was brain-damaged."
This would be EXCELLENT!
You nailed it. Sure this Giudice is a real zero, that's true. At one point, Hotel Putingrad was so obnoxious, the seniors used to beat him up once a week.
Our little secret.
"My advice to you is to start drinking heavily"
We did talk about this last year, I remember several threads about it. The general consensus was that contract law would have prohibitively kept any such thing from happening for years. But mostly we mocked them for being so haughty and full of themselves for thinking they're better than everyone else (which is very on-brand for Michigan!).
Nonetheless, had OSU gone its own way and played games anyway, I believe the B1G would've hemmed, hawed, and harrumphed it's way to assessing a fine and letting them back in. The fine would have sounded like a big number to us mortals, but would have been chump change to an AD like OSU. The terms probably would have been pretty decent to OSU, also. Can't have the milk cow escape the barn! And we would have - again - complained about the 'special' treatment OSU receives from the Conference...
You're absolutely correct. This was discussed quite a bit here.
Yes, I aside from how difficult this would have been for osu the short term benefit would have had long term damage to the conference with Osu and would absolutely have lost it's standing in the conference. Most feel that osu runs the conference and gets all the preferential treatment possible and that would have been out the window for a very long time.
I was thinking the same thing that this was discussed in threads last year because OSU was wanting to play a season no matter what.
I agree that the powers that be would have let them play on their own and come back with no repercussions because there are no consequences anymore especially in college sports.
I'm shocked that one of the best football teams in the country was exploring all of it's options to play football. What is this world coming to?
Appreciate the level headed take, truly. I remember an article outlining a B1G call between the AD directors.. on which Gene Smith stated, "We've got a CFP contender here".. which, despite the ass-whooping Alabama put on us, was exactly true. In hindsight the B1G really fucked up, between waffling back and forth about a season, poor communication, scheduling, etc. Kevin Warren and many of the institutional presidents (Schlissel included), really put the conference in a bad spot... not surprised at all that OSU explored every option they could. I know there are a lot of hot-takes about Harbaugh on this blog, but I applaud the guy for sticking up for his players and fighting for a season, especially because he was directly going against Schlissel's vote to cancel the season.
Can they just go independent permanently? Its pretty damn obvious that they have outgrown the rest of the Big Ten and completely left it behind.
I would not mind them going independent so Michigan would actually have a legitimate chance to get to Indy. Much less win the Big Ten. I wouldn't even mind them remaining on the schedule and we take our annual ass kicking. As long as its an OOC ass kicking that can be more or less forgiven as long as you just win the conference at the end of the season.
They'll come back to Earth. Every program does. In the early aughts USC had outgrown the Pac 10. In the 90's Nebraska had outgrown the Big 8/12. Alabama has currently outgrown the SEC, as they did in the Bear Bryant era, only to spend the following 25 years essentially in the wilderness (for Alabama the wilderness still get them 1 NC among an otherwise miserable 25 years). Florida spent it's Spurrier years having outgrown the SEC. Let's not even speak of FSU's utter dominance of the ACC. Where are they now? OSU's had a great run. But they'll come back to Earth. I doubt Day can carry on year after year at the level of probably the best (or close 2nd best) coach of the last 30 years. Unless he is the 2nd coming of Orban Meyer in every aspect of coaching, from evaluation to recruiting to development, to coaching hires, to game day, it will catch up little by little and average out.
Fuck ohio state
Dear OSU:
Dunno about any ramifications, whatever
But I'd like to see Ohio State go beyond independence and join the NFL. No more playing school, just straight up football played by guys receiving a legitimate paycheck. They can play against Urban Meyer and see how enjoyable that is.
It's time, Gene Smith. Leave the lolNCAA behind and fulfill your program's destiny.
First, nothing wrong with them reviewing contracts and circumstances to review options.
Second, LOL at Ohio State facing consequences for anything.
Ramifications if they were independent... Probably Big Ten changes rules so they can still play in Big Ten Championship game.
Ramifications for coaches and school officials doing everything they could in order to preserve the opportunity for their players to actually play football? If anything this is a feather in their cap when it comes to recruiting and their commitment to student athletes. I shudder to think about what would happen if similar information comes to light from the Michigan side. Reports indicate that our administration was far from being as supportive of our players.
Sometimes when I'm really pissed off at work I consider quitting and living on a boat. I might even text someone about it. It always passes by the end of the day. That has about as much relevance as OSU considering playing independent in 2020.
This is interesting.
It reminds me of the time when I considered dating Kate Upton!
Really wish the Big Ten had not caved and OSU had to eat a shit sandwich for a season. What a joke.
I can't say that I blame them. The Big Ten's early decision to completely cancel the season was pants-on-head retarded, and the manner in which they chose to resume was almost as dumb.
I’m sure the B1G will get right on punishing the institution it can least afford to alienate
I mean, yeah, fuck Ohio State, but I don't see the issue here. They had a championship-caliber team and were probably looking at any way possible to play enough games / get enough exposure to be sure to be selected for the CFP. It probably served to put some pressure on the conference to make the decision they made as well.
I wish our AD would fight for Michigan football with the conference, too. Maybe it would even up the biased crossover scheduling.