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2025 Cotton Bowl: #2 tOSU vs #10 Miami-FL, Wed 12/31 7:30 ET at JerryWorld

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heisman said:
You can possibly apply that to an individual action or occurrence, but if OSU was the better prepared team in 1996, a slip would have never mattered. Football is like life. If you set goals in life, and execute daily on the steps required to achieve those goals, you’re going to live your best possible life. If you go through life aimlessly, you believe in the boogeyman of luck. :sneaky:
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Shit goes wrong all the time in life no matter how prepared you are, but if you keep grinding you will make your way. Just don't give up and more and more opportunities will come your way

Right now we are down to a 1 and done situation. So there are no do overs left. Luck has cost a ton of the best teams in sports to not win the championship. I still like our odds of going back to back, but bad luck is still out there to fuck that up.
 
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Jaxbuck said:
It goes back to the simple truth of every out come being skill + luck = outcome.

Look at the odds of giving up points. Greater when on defense than on offense, right? The luck element of the outcome is higher than when on offense.

Choosing a path that creates more opportunity for the opponent (defense) is a flawed strategy. It can work out and people think it’s ok, but it was the wrong approach no matter the outcome.

To use the casino analogy a different way; Offense in football is like playing poker. If you have a skill advantage you want to play as many hands as possible. Your skill will win out. BUT in football you have to play defense and that is like having to stop playing poker and go over to play roulette. You can even be the house and get better odds if you have an elite defense but sooner or later, some stupid fucking tourist is going to hit on red 27 and you are going to have to pay.

You want to stay at the poker table as much as you can and stay away from the roulette table in the process.
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But barring special teams scores and turnovers, each team is going to get the same, or very close to the same, number of offensive possessions. So, except situationally (e.g., trying to score with no time left for the opponent's offense at the end of the half or a game), I wouldn't think that tempo matters much. You're going to be on defense for roughly half of the possessions in most games no matter how fast or slow you play. Given that base level of equality, what a team should want to do is whatever maximizes the expected points per possession when on offense and minimizes the expected points per possession when on defense.

IMBSO, where Ohio State has often left meat on the bone in this regard is in poor starting offensive field possession resulting from lousy punt fielding/returning, poor defensive field position resulting from often mediocre punting, and, as great as the defense has been this year, in not forcing many turnovers or causing much "havoc" (e.g., in many circumstances, getting a sack on an opponent's 3d and 12 seems worth a fair amount more to me in terms of expected points on the next offensive possession than giving up 9 yards even if both results get the defense off the field). Of course, forcing "havoc" with blitzes creates risk, which is why being able to get great pressure on the opposing QB with a four man rush is, to me, a huge key to success. I'd also submit that trying harder to block punts might be something worth pursuing.
 
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Jaxbuck said:
To use the casino analogy a different way; Offense in football is like playing poker. If you have a skill advantage you want to play as many hands as possible. Your skill will win out. BUT in football you have to play defense and that is like having to stop playing poker and go over to play roulette. You can even be the house and get better odds if you have an elite defense but sooner or later, some stupid fucking tourist is going to hit on red 27 and you are going to have to pay.

You want to stay at the poker table as much as you can and stay away from the roulette table in the process.
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I was once in a casino in San Juan, PR and I was only playing red 27 at a roulette table. The damn number actually hit 3 straight times, but this stupid fucking tourist took away his chips after the first hit. :lol:
 
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Jagdaddy said:
But barring special teams scores and turnovers, each team is going to get the same, or very close to the same, number of offensive possessions. So, except situationally (e.g., trying to score with no time left for the opponent's offense at the end of the half or a game), I wouldn't think that tempo matters much. You're going to be on defense for roughly half of the possessions in most games no matter how fast or slow you play. Given that base level of equality, what a team should want to do is whatever maximizes the expected points per possession when on offense and minimizes the expected points per possession when on defense.

IMBSO, where Ohio State has often left meat on the bone in this regard is in poor starting offensive field possession resulting from lousy punt fielding/returning, poor defensive field position resulting from often mediocre punting, and, as great as the defense has been this year, in not forcing many turnovers or causing much "havoc" (e.g., in many circumstances, getting a sack on an opponent's 3d and 12 seems worth a fair amount more to me in terms of expected points on the next offensive possession than giving up 9 yards even if both results get the defense off the field). Of course, forcing "havoc" with blitzes creates risk, which is why being able to get great pressure on the opposing QB with a four man rush is, to me, a huge key to success. I'd also submit that trying harder to block punts might be something worth pursuing.
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Yes. We are talking about the margins here at but if you can limit the opponent and get the split to say 10 for you and only 8 for them then you are better served to take that approach.

The point is simply about choosing a strategy that gives say an extra 1-2% to your opponent and away from you.

Why would anyone do that? The answer is obviously they don’t know they are doing it.

On the Havoc and bad field position points, totally agree but that’s a different conversation.
 
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heisman said:
You can possibly apply that to an individual action or occurrence, but if OSU was the better prepared team in 1996, a slip would have never mattered. Football is like life. If you set goals in life, and execute daily on the steps required to achieve those goals, you’re going to live your best possible life. If you go through life aimlessly, you believe in the boogeyman of luck. :sneaky:
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that’s true as a life philosophy but you don’t get that luxury in a game

A game has a finite amount of chances because of its arbitrary end point. If one goes wildly against you it can break you before your preparation allows random variance to balance out.

It isn’t a philosophical morality thing, it’s odds and math.
 
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Seen on FB:
"Heads up if you go to the game. Remember that if the Miami band says give me an M yell O as loud as you can. We did that in Tempe in 2003 and it was amazing as we spelled out Ohio when they were asking their fans to spell Miami. Go Bucks!"

Lol, I had never that.
 
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Interesting nugget picked up from Austin Ward at On3. The CFP playoff committee requires that participating teams, hold a pregame press conference that makes available the offensive and defensive coordinators for each team. Failure to comply results in fines. Ohio State is holding their press conferences today. The lineup provided by Ohio State yesterday has Matt Patricia leading the defensive press conference. However, Ohio State has listed that Ryan Day and not Hartline will be speaking at the offensive press conference. Implication being that Ryan Day will be calling plays going forward.

If true, I think I like it.
 
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Jaxbuck said:
that’s true as a life philosophy but you don’t get that luxury in a game

A game has a finite amount of chances because of its arbitrary end point. If one goes wildly against you it can break you before your preparation allows random variance to balance out.

It isn’t a philosophical morality thing, it’s odds and math.
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Ask the “Miracle on Ice“ crew if they got lucky. Make sure to wear a helmet when you ask. :lol: Every one of those guys has been crazy successful at life as well. I simply don’t believe in the concept of luck, as you’re defining/describing it. I’m probably the dum-dum, but I definitely appreciate the conversation.
 
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Underrated aspect of the game is the matchup of the super fans:
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Big Nut
versus
Whatever this Ohio State fan’s name is
 
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MGMT said:
I hope Day and Sayin spent a lot of time watching the offensive film from the IU game because Bain is game wrecker by all accounts. If Sayin isn’t getting rid of the ball quickly and decisively it’s going to be a huge issue and I think we will see a similar outing to IU.

Give me some fucking screens and intermediate routes. You have all the offensive talent in the world, let them make plays. I’m going to be screaming and the policy will likely get dispatched to my residence if every pass play called is a long developing deep routes off play action. Get the fucking ball out.

I’m very confident in Patricia mitigating Toney and confusing Beck.
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I don’t know about screens. Watching live it looked like A&M attempted about 20 screens at around 2 YPA. I’m not sure if that is an A&M tendency, but both teams tried them repeatedly for little success.
 
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