2002 College Football Season Thread [R]

oakydoaks · Nov 19, 2002

people are bashing Ohio State, but the fact is they are jealousy of the position Ohio State put themselves. Well, too bad, you had your chances (OU, UGA, ND, etc.) and you lost.

soc4life · Dec 14, 2002

CrewDust · Dec 17, 2002

Chris Rix has been suspended from the Sugar Bowl for not taking an exam.

CrewStadium227 · Jan 4, 2003

I'll re-visit my comments from a few months back..

Originally posted by CrewStadium227
I'll ring in with an Ohio State perspective.

I noticed that a lot of the national publications are saying that the Big Ten is down this year, and are picking the Buckeyes to win the conference.
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And they continued to say it. Until the conference went 5-2 in Bowls, including the National Championship.

I saw an interesting article made up of the opinions of writers in newspapers in the Great Lakes region. No one was picking OSU. I saw UofM, MSU, and Wisconsin picked as winners.

Generally, the regional writers have a better feel for what's going on. OSU is over-rated at #13.

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Wrong...Thankfully

The defense will be really good, but the weak spot is at cornerback. That means that they could play great all year, but they're bound to give up some big plays from time to time.

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I guess I didn't foresee the rise of Chris Gamble, and I underestimated the play of Dustin Fox. Ohio State was great at taking away the big play, and fantastic in the red zone.

The offense is going to be pretty poor. The OL is patch-work. The QB is "adequate". They're starting true freshmen at TB and FB. The receivers are the same unspectacular bunch from last year.

So the team is going to rely on defense to win all of its games. I don't think they'll be able to do that consistently enough to win the conference. I won't be surprised if they lose one of their non-conference games (either Texas Tech, or Washington State).

As a life-long fan and an alum, I hope I'm wrong about all of this.

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The OL turned out to be surprisingly deep, with Freshmen Sims and Mangold contributing a lot down the stretch. The freshman TB turned out to be O.K. too!

And make no mistake about Craig Krenzel had as much to do with winning as the defense did. This guy was incredible in the clutch. He's not the most talented QB in Ohio State history, but he might be the greatest.

Its interesting to note that in John Cooper's second year a lot of national writers (Beano Cook among them) were picking OSU to win the MNC, even though the team was coming off a mediocre year. In Jim Tressel's second year, we see the same pattern repeating (though to a lesser degree).
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But Cooper started out with a cupboard that was prerry bare. OSU fans should give the old coach his due on this great season. 18 starters were his recruits.