\n Good morning, Eleven Warriors readers. <\/p>\n
\n\tThis Skull Session comes to you while I\u2019m on vacation. While I poured my heart and soul into these words, my heart and soul will not be here on Monday or Tuesday to respond to comments I\u2019m sure will be full of praise for my spectacular work.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019ll miss you all today and tomorrow.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tSee you Wednesday.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tUntil then, have a good week!\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00a0HEARTBREAKING: <\/strong>The worst people you know just did something really smart<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n\tI hate giving Michigan credit. It physically pains me. But the Wolverines made an incredible investment in OpenAI<\/a>, putting $20 million into one of the AI lab\u2019s earliest fundraising rounds, according to exhibits from the Elon Musk\u2013Sam Altman litigation.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThat investment could end up making Michigan an absurd amount of money.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThe documents don\u2019t fully explain the terms of the stake, but Michigan reportedly set a \u201ctarget redemption amount\u201d of $2 billion. It\u2019s also unclear how the school would use that kind of windfall, but if Dusty May and Kyle Whittingham ever get access to some of that cash, Ross Bjork better start investing in whatever comes after AI.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0THINK BIGGER, WORLDWIDE LEADER. <\/a><\/strong>ESPN\u2019s Jake Trotter <\/a>named Jeremiah Smith as Ohio State\u2019s top awards candidate for 2026, selecting the star wide receiver as his frontrunner for the Biletnikoff Award.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\tDespite being arguably the best wide receiver in college football the past two years, Smith has yet to win the Biletnikoff, given to the nation’s most outstanding player at the position. In 2024, he shattered school freshman receiving records, then hauled in a memorable game-clinching catch late in the national championship victory over Notre Dame. Last year, Smith caught 87 passes for 1,243 yards and 12 touchdowns despite battling a lower-body injury late in the regular season that forced him to miss a game and a half. As long as he can stay healthy, Smith will be the favorite to finish his illustrious Ohio State career with the Biletnikoff before heading to the NFL.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n\tThis was a slam-dunk selection \u2014 and I don\u2019t blame Trotter for making it \u2014 but I almost wish he\u2019d gone bolder. Smith should be one of the favorites not only for the Biletnikoff, but for the Heisman Trophy, too. The Heisman is supposed to honor the best player in college football, not simply the best quarterback. Smith is the face of the sport right now, and if any non-quarterback is going to hoist the stiff-arm trophy in 2026, it\u2019ll be him.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0HE’S A HERO. AND HIS NAME IS JEFF. <\/strong>As part of its “Being Brutus” series, the Columbus Dispatch profiled Jeff Moody<\/a>, the Ohio State senior from Fredericktown who added his own page to the greatest rivalry in sport when he X’d out one of the Ms in Michigan Stadium’s end zones last November.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tIt’s an incredibly fun read; be sure to check it out.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT. <\/strong>Jim Lachey may be the only former Ohio State football player to have a relationship with the late Woody Hayes, the late Earl Bruce, John Cooper, Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer and Ryan Day. So during the latest 12th Warrior Happy Hour, I asked him what made \u2014 or makes \u2014 each of those coaches special.\n<\/p>\n \n\tLachey didn\u2019t say much about Hayes. He didn\u2019t need to. We all know how great he was.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWell, certainly, Woody was a great recruiter and a great motivator. There\u2019s no one like him,\u201d Lachey said.\n<\/p>\n \n\tHe had more to offer when discussing his head coach Bruce, whom Lachey called \u201ca great playcaller\u201d who put his players in a position to \u201cdominate\u201d their opponents.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think when I look at Earl Bruce, Earl was a great playcaller,\u201d Lachey said. \u201cHe really had the ability to find the matchups and work them in your favor. He was always asking, \u2018Do you got this guy? Do you got this guy?\u2019 Whether it was a wide receiver, the tight end, the center, the left guard, the tackle, he wanted to know where the matchups were. If we could win those matchups, he would come up with a play that we could go out and dominate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tLachey became Ohio State football\u2019s radio color commentator in 1997, which allowed him to develop a relationship with Cooper. That relationship has grown substantially nearly three decades later, as Cooper has frequently joined Lachey on 97.1 The Fan\u2019s Buckeye Roundtable on Mondays during the fall.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think Coach Cooper was obviously a great recruiter \u2014 probably a little bit more of a CEO-type coach,\u201d he said. \u201cBut talking defense with Coach Cooper, he understands that side of the ball very, very well, and if you understand defense, you understand what the offense is trying to do to you. He was a great recruiter and, I think, had a pretty good outlook on attracting guys to come here to Ohio State.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tLachey was very complimentary of Tressel, calling him \u201cthe whole package\u201d as a coach who cared about developing his players on and off the field.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cCoach Tress, he had the whole package. Just a student of the game and (was able) to understand maybe the politics outside of the room, too, a little bit. He could make sure that he was getting the best out of each and every guy. He was almost like a professor-type coach, where he wanted you to be a great player but he also wanted you to be a great person. Some coaches are just worried about you as a football player, but I think he was worried about that whole package with his players. He certainly was able to prove that here at Ohio State.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tLachey had nothing but great things to say about Meyer. Well, other than his decision to give the ball to Braxton Miller, not Carlos Hyde, at the end of the 2013 Big Ten Championship Game.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cUrban, what can you say about him? Great motivator. He had everybody in that building working 24\/7 towards a common goal. He was able to bring out the best in each and every guy all the time. You could just see it being around him, how they respected him and how they sometimes just wanted to stay out of his way because he could be a guy that you didn\u2019t want to PO and you wanted to keep him on your side. To see his Secret Sauce was pretty cool here at Ohio State. He was big in big games. The only thing I can say bad about Urban was that Big Ten Championship Game against Michigan State, and we had Carlos Hyde, but we ended up running Braxton on an option. We probably should have ran behind our left side of the offensive line there, Jack Mewhort, and pick up a first down. I think that was 23-24 straight wins, and then we ended up losing that first game with him. He was incredible.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tLachey sees Day as a blend of Tressel and Meyer, calling Day \u201ca great human being\u201d who cares about the whole player while having the program compete for national championships every year.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAnd then seeing Ryan underneath on (Meyer\u2019s) staff, being a first-year head coach and what he\u2019s been able to accomplish,\u201d Lachey said. \u201cHe\u2019s had our team in it almost every year, so he\u2019s been incredible. To see the type of person he is, just a great human being, to see him grow from an assistant coach to now head coach, and the respect he has across the country has been fabulous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tBuckeye Nation has been blessed with some great head coaches. I\u2019d love to have Day in Columbus for as long as he wants, but if he ever decides to leave \u2014 for whatever reason \u2014 I\u2019m confident his replacement would be one of the nation\u2019s best.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0SONG OF THE DAY.<\/strong> “Carry On Wayward Son” – Kansas.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0RIP TO MIKE GURR. <\/strong>Gurr, 48, passed Thursday in Hamilton, Ohio<\/a>. The four-year Ohio State letter winner arrived in Columbus as a tight end, but found his way to offensive guard, earning starts and becoming a key component of the late 1990s Buckeye offensive lines.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0CUT TO THE CHASE. <\/strong>Nick Saban wants to see a universal college football salary cap<\/a>\u2026\u00a0It was a gorgeous day for Commencement in Columbus<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Carnell Tate, Will Kacmarek, and Luke Montgomery all walked<\/a>\u2026 A belated happy 100th birthday<\/a> to Sir David Attenborough\u2026 Speaking of, here are the three largest rat gangs<\/a> in Columbus\u2026 Humans will literally compete at anything<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning, Eleven Warriors readers. This Skull Session comes to you while I\u2019m on vacation. While I poured…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":788492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-788491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116555372904111030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n