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Game Thread Game One: #1 Ohio State 35, Northern Illinois 12 (9/2/06)

Sportswriters are not necessarily unbiased opinions...and what about the ones who say you will lose by 40? Are those opinions also "unbiased" and just as valid?

You support your team and think they will stay close...a lot of people around here will not follow that line of thought. Nothing is going to change one or the other except the final score on the board when the game is over.
Show me some publication that say we will lose by 40.


You won't find one.
 
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The point in my original post was that NIU fans aren't the only ones that think NIU can stay close.

However some of you want jump over anything and say NO NIU sucks, they don't have a chance, yada yada yada.

Well I never said that, I was actually defending your right to your position. But if you want to jump on people who do that, go right ahead...there just won't be many of them then.
 
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MililaniBuckeye said:
We were up 34-0 on Miami (Oh) in our opener last year, and despite emptying the bench in the fourth we won by 20. Unlike JT's first five years, we have a powerhouse offense right out of the gate.

P.S. Disregard this post if you were being sarcastic...
I think we beat them comfortably, but to say they'd be lucky to be within 21 points (or 18 if you want to get technical :p) is a tiny stretch.

You also gotta factor in Tress not wanting to show Texas much.
 
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I think we beat them comfortably, but to say they'd be lucky to be within 21 points (or 18 if you want to get technical :p) is a tiny stretch.

You also gotta factor in Tress not wanting to show Texas much.

Uh, 34-14 is a 20-point difference, not 18. And the Miami game was the game before Texas last year, too...
 
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MililaniBuckeye said:
Uh, 34-14 is a 20-point difference, not 18. And the Miami game was the game before Texas last year, too...
Uh, 3 TDs is 18 points.

And I wouldn't say Miami was lucky to be there. They played their game, we won easily without really trying all that much with a backup QB. I think we can blow out NIU, but I don't think that will be the goal. They won't have to be lucky to be within 3 TDs.
 
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Normally when somebody says 3 TDs they mean 21 points. Don't need to get so technical.

Mili, I don't why you keep bringing the Miami game up. We are two totally different teams. I'd put good money down that we are a much better team this year, then they were last year.

Btw we were up 28-7 on Miami last year.
You may have been up 28-7 but from CFN's game summary it sounds like Miami was in the game until the very end...
CFN said:
Oct. 5
Northern Illinois 38 ... Miami 27
Garrett Wolfe scored two first half touchdowns and Sam Hurd scored on touchdown passes from 60 and 36 yards out as Northern Illinois jumped out to a big lead and then held on. Miami scored first on a two-yard Brandon Murphy run, and then NIU went on a 28-0 run to end the first half. Miami owned the second half with two touchdown pass to Martin Nance and two Todd Soderquist field goals, but a 23-yard Chris Nendick field goal with just under two minutes to play put the game away.
http://www.collegefootballnews.com/mac/2005_Pages/Northern_Illinois.htm
Meanwhile, both of Miami's TD's against Ohio State were meaningless from the standpoint that they were scored late and had no influance in the end outcome.
CFN said:
Sept. 3
Ohio State 34 ... Miami Univ. 14
Ohio State jumped out to a 34-0 lead broken open by 26-yard interception return for a touchdown by Donte Whitner and a 42 yard touchdown pass to Ted Ginn Jr.. Santonio Holmes opened the scoring with a 20-yard scoring grab. Miami was able to manage two oh-by-the-way touchdowns with a two-yard Jimmy Calhoun touchdown run and a 35-yard Ryne Robinson touchdown catch. Ohio State's defense held the RedHawks to 49 rushing yards.
http://www.collegefootballnews.com/Big_Ten/2005_Pages/Ohio_State.htm
In other words, your 21 point lead vanished into a game Miami could have won, our 34 point lead stood as a blowout.
 
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I would posit that it is easier to hit the big time now than it was back then. The 85 scholarship limit has left a lot of kids out there for everyone else. Though it is WAY too simple to say something like "Why do some many good Ohio kids play in the MAC now? Because OSU can only take 85" there is some level of truth to it. Look at all of the "big-name" programs that can fall from grace and then quickly bounce back...PSU, Oklahoma, USC, LSU was terrible in DiNardo's last year or two...and look at the "no-names" that have made big splashes recently...Utah, Louisville has joined the Big East, Biose State, Fresno, TCU...hell, Central Florida was 0-11 two years ago and went to a bowl, South Florida didn't even have a program several yearsa go and they're in the Big East now, Rutgers made a bowl, Iowa was 1-10 seemingly forever...it can be done now, easier than back then in my view.

I don't know the details behind some of those moves so I don't know if the situation is the same. It's true that the MAC gets a few recruits because the Big 10 teams can only take so many. That still leaves most of the top recruits at the Big 10 schools. They have 11 guys that were near the top in their respective states in high school, and a team like NIU will have 1 or 2 guys like that, and a few that surprise everybody. That still leaves us outgunned on paper, like many of you have pointed out. And Iowa didn't "become big time". They were a bad team in a good conference for a while and then got better relative to the other teams in the Big 10. Likewise, NIU was very bad in the MAC and recently became one of the top teams. In today's times of budget shortages, spending that much money on football basically at the expense of academics is not going to happen, not in Illinois. And the MAC gets very little money from bowl games. Central Florida almost certainly would not have gone to a bowl game if they were in the MAC, it's only because the CUSA has more bowl games.
 
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