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Game Thread #1 tOSU at Washington, Sat. Sept. 27th, 3:30 ET, CBS

Not suggesting you should be worried, but that just sounds like blind hope. People on here downplay just how challenging it is to travel to play on the west coast. Add in intense crowd noise and a young team with no road experience, and this game is nothing to scoff at. Getting off to a fast start is crucial
Absolutely agree with both you and Jax. It's definitely not one to be taken lightly and while Day's downplayed the Oregon game as the reason for going out on Thursday I think it's a good sign that at least someone learned that lesson. His statement that they need to treat it like a playoff game is at least a good sign that he's not going to pucker up and lose it. We'll see, of course, but if allowed to play, I don't think this game is too big for this squad.
 
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THE SITUATIONAL: At the Water's Edge​

By Ramzy Nasrallah on September 24, 2025 at 1:15 pm @ramzy
Sept 15, 2007; Seattle, WA, USA; Ohio State Buckeye wide receiver Brian Hartline (9) lunges past Washington Husky cornerback Roy Lewis (28) for the endzone to score on a 36-yard touchdown reception in the fourth quarter of the Buckeyes' 33-14 victory over the Huskies at Husky Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

© Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
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It's been said that there are two Americas.
They're philosophically irreconcilable and resentful about it. One America is trying to figure out if the picture above was created by artificial intelligence. The other took a moment to examine it before recognizing the Buckeye in the photo as Brian Hartline, and the photo authentic.
Without recognizing who he was, this America could tell by the inferior shoulder piping on the OSU jersey that this game took place either prior to 1988 or since 2005 (it's from 2007). The other America thinks the current shoulder piping is perfectly fine - along with the condition of Ohio Stadium's slit turf, Paul Keels' mid-game narcolepsy and that Caamp song. Maybe. Both Americas are prolific generalizers.
One America is selectively trusting and will Need to Do its Own Research to determine if that's really Hartline, who scored a touchdown as that photo was being snapped. Laurinaitis picked up some YAC himself in that game, which is always impressive when you're a linebacker. Both Americas appreciate college football highlights, especially if their team is performing well in them:

It's been 18 years since these teams played each other. One America pronounces Ohio State's Saturday opponent as Washington. The other America inserts an R between the A and S. My late father-in-law used to do this with Warshington, warshing machine, warshtub, warsher - wash simply wasn't in his vocabulary. Warsh isn't in mine. Great guy. Two Americas.
You could inform one America that Iowa scored 38 points last week and they would refuse to believe it. The other America would think that actually sounds light, and the real conspiracy is why Caitlin Clark didn't have that many points by herself. Refs, maybe?
Clark plays for the Indiana Fever now and is out for the current WNBA season with a bone bruise, but that's not enough to stop her. She is an American, not an American't. Neither America subscribes to excuses, and damn it - our shared stubbornness in the face of irrefutable facts is something we should all rally around.
Despite so many philosophical roadblocks, there's still so much more than unites us than divides us. We can even agree there are far more than just two Americas. There's North, Central, South, the Beautiful, Captain, Ferrera and Coming to - just to name a few.
One bye week down with another still lurking. This week, it's Warshington. Let's get Situational.

 
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Do the Buckguys know how to play Uno?

I get the visual he's going for but that's not how it works.

They’re playing the black people way. It’s fine, I can say it. I’m black lol.

Black people rules say you can stack the draw 2’s and draw 4’s. So he’s gonna throw down those 3 draw 4’s and say the color is yellow and then Uno out with the draw 2.

It’s wrong as hell, but it’s fun.
 
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They’re playing the black people way. It’s fine, I can say it. I’m black lol.

Black people rules say you can stack the draw 2’s and draw 4’s. So he’s gonna throw down those 3 draw 4’s and say the color is yellow and then Uno out with the draw 2.

It’s wrong as hell, but it’s fun.
Ok, would you now teach us to play Spades in case one of us gets invited to the cookout?
 
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They’re playing the black people way. It’s fine, I can say it. I’m black lol.

Black people rules say you can stack the draw 2’s and draw 4’s. So he’s gonna throw down those 3 draw 4’s and say the color is yellow and then Uno out with the draw 2.

It’s wrong as hell, but it’s fun.
I am also black. And you are VERY correct. I thought those rules were implied in the picture, but I shouldn't have assumed everyone plays by the same rules. Because this is literally a perfect scenario in my eyes :lol:

Ok, would you now teach us to play Spades in case one of us gets invited to the cookout?
We got you bro
 
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It's strange to me that the betting line has moved from opening at Ohio State -14 or -13.5 to Ohio State - 8.5 or 8 without there having been major injury news or a weather report showing lots of rain or wind (it's expected to be partly cloudy and mild with modest wind at game time). The same thing happened for the first two games, albeit to a less glaring extent. Maybe Vegas is just being super-aggressive, even compared to past years, in setting opening lines favoring Ohio State because they can get lots of action at a bad price from our huge fan base and at a good price for otherwise leery non-OSU bettors or maybe somebody's spilling bad information somewhere to drive the lines down. I hope it's just Portnoy dropping huge losing bets on Ohio State's opponents, but I'm sure that would be too awesome to be true.

Normally I'm very leery of being too optimistic when a line moves like this, but in this case, I'm not.
 
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It's strange to me that the betting line has moved from opening at Ohio State -14 or -13.5 to Ohio State - 8.5 or 8 without there having been major injury news or a weather report showing lots of rain or wind (it's expected to be partly cloudy and mild with modest wind at game time). The same thing happened for the first two games, albeit to a less glaring extent. Maybe Vegas is just being super-aggressive, even compared to past years, in setting opening lines favoring Ohio State because they can get lots of action at a bad price from our huge fan base and at a good price for otherwise leery non-OSU bettors or maybe somebody's spilling bad information somewhere to drive the lines down. I hope it's just Portnoy dropping huge losing bets on Ohio State's opponents, but I'm sure that would be too awesome to be true.

Normally I'm very leery of being too optimistic when a line moves like this, but in this case, I'm not.

It's moved down to -7.5 in most places.

With a big public money team like OSU, opening the spread high and then adjusting down won't help really because most public money bets late. Only the sharps tend to jump on weak lines early.

This one got hammered down. Breaking through 10 is a big tell. The only thing that makes sense at all is they took some serious sharp money north of 10 and moved it down for that reason.

Now, sometimes syndicates will play the game where they hit one side of a number to give that signal of sharp money so the books will move the line down and then they go 2x or more on the better number but again, OSU being such a big public team negates that. That type of thing is usually done (allegedly) on smaller, less liquid market type games.

Could be a lot of noise signaling nothing but a line dropping from -13 to -7.5 is something worth being aware of. I would not feel super comfortable if I held an OSU -13 ticket right now.
 
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The only thing that makes sense at all is they took some serious sharp money north of 10 and moved it down for that reason.
That does make sense, although it's certainly not a comforting explanation at all. Still, even 7.5 for a true road game with a first-time road start for Sayin is quite a few points in terms of being confident about coming out with a W. I still think the Buckeyes are going to kill them, which is probably a bad sign.
 
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It's moved down to -7.5 in most places.

With a big public money team like OSU, opening the spread high and then adjusting down won't help really because most public money bets late. Only the sharps tend to jump on weak lines early.

This one got hammered down. Breaking through 10 is a big tell. The only thing that makes sense at all is they took some serious sharp money north of 10 and moved it down for that reason.

Now, sometimes syndicates will play the game where they hit one side of a number to give that signal of sharp money so the books will move the line down and then they go 2x or more on the better number but again, OSU being such a big public team negates that. That type of thing is usually done (allegedly) on smaller, less liquid market type games.

Could be a lot of noise signaling nothing but a line dropping from -13 to -7.5 is something worth being aware of. I would not feel super comfortable if I held an OSU -13 ticket right now.
I had to google "sharp money" to understand this post. Learning what that means, I gotta ask: IF professional or highly successful bettors bet at >10, then why would the line move down? I'm not following at all. Care to enlighten one ignorant of this betting science?
 
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I’ve been to 2 OSU vs Washington games at Husky Stadium. Lost one. Won one. When the Huskies are winning, It is much louder than you would think for 70,000 fans. So is Autzen. Probably because they have overhead roofs for half the stadium due to the frequency of rain in the Pacific Northwest.
But neither are as loud as PSU or even Michigan (after the renovations completed in 2019….and with a contender)
 
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I had to google "sharp money" to understand this post. Learning what that means, I gotta ask: IF professional or highly successful bettors bet at >10, then why would the line move down? I'm not following at all. Care to enlighten one ignorant of this betting science?
Because they don’t want more sharp action piling in on it. The fact that they bought it at 10 ot more tells you they think it’s mispriced.

So you move it down now to get all the casual bettors that follow and see OSU as less than 10 points as “easy money” and they come pouring in thinking it’s a bargain.

Lines are all about the books having a “real number” and then using market psychology to get action moving. Balanced action if possible but unbalanced if they think they are getting the best of it.

This line move looks like the books real number told them OSU by 11-14. So they hung it out there just short of 14 to see what the market does and the guys they pay attention to snapped it up hard enough til they dropped it through 10 (a key number in football betting). They kept dropping it to get the right spot where casual money started buying tickets heavy enough to balance the action.

Just a guess of course and it doesn’t mean sharps are always right but, more than likely, someone who does this for a living thought UW by more than 10 was a smart bet. Likewise, this might mean that a whole bunch of average joe bettors bought in thinking OSU laying less than 10 is a good bet.

We shall see
 
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