If you’re a sports fan, you’ve likely had a couple screws knocked loose during the duration of your fanhood. There’s no shame in that, to be honest. We’ve all had our moments experiencing the wrong end of a buzzer beater, last second touchdown drive or ninth inning meltdown. And if clicking those links set off a chain reaction that led to you pissing your pants in rage, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

On a personal level, I’ve experienced so much heart break over the years that I’ve gone a little... sideways in my thinking. The highs and lows of my sports life go beyond the cliche comparison of a “roller coaster” -- it’s more like being strapped to the bird Ray Lewis rode in his Old Spice commercials and racing through the deep, winding corners of Bernie Kosar’s mind... blindfolded. The human brain wasn’t made to handle the pressures I’ve put on it, and that has resulted in... well, this:

The Split Personality Round Table will be a weekly column where I let my split personalities argue about sports topics. During the college football season -- I will argue about Ohio State football. During the offseason, I will write about whatever sets my personalities off.

It’s a healthy way for me to get my condition out in the open -- where I can let the optimist in me argue with the pessimist. Each personality will have a profile that you can click on and read about -- kind of like a psychotic baseball card where you can look at a picture, stats, history, etc...

You’re probably just as eager as I am to get this started, so let’s stop procrastinating. I know that somewhere, my therapist is both excited and terrified right now.

Read more...

- Saturday, September 3, 2011

- Ohio Stadium - Columbus, OH

- 12:00 p.m. (ET)

- TV: ESPN, ESPN3  -


The Akron Zips provide the opposition for Luke Fickell’s head coaching debut at Ohio State on Saturday, as the Buckeyes will finally put their tumultuous off-season behind them with a noon kickoff at the Horseshoe. 18th-ranked Ohio State will take the field for the opener without six nine players who are serving suspensions, and without the man in the sweater-vest who led them to seven Big Ten titles and a national championship.

Fickell said it himself at his introductory press conference...Ohio State football is bigger than any one coach...and one of his primary themes for this team has been “moving forward”. But none of that will remove the specter of Jim Tressel from this football game. Maybe that presence will diminish as the season goes along, but for this one Ohio Stadium Saturday at least, The Vest will be there in spirit.

Read more...

For some people summer- with its beautiful weather, cookouts, outdoor activities and lazy afternoons, can’t possibly overstay its welcome. But for college football summer can’t end soon enough. During the long, hot summer of 2011 the game was repeatedly rocked with one unsavory piece of business after another. From Miami to Honolulu and all points in between, seemingly no corner of the college football world was spared from the litany of arrests and investigations that made this summer one of the darkest in the long history of this great, flawed game.

The list of malfeasances is long and all-too distinguished:

May 5: Having proven it can play football with the big boys, Boise State proves it can bend rules with them too. Chris Peterson’s program- as well as those of men’s and women’s track and tennis- is dinged with self-imposed cuts in scholarships over the next two years after an investigation uncovers a pattern of minor violations, notably the arrangement of cheap meals and hotel reservations for prospective Bronco football recruits. No word on whether the reduction in scholarships will lead to a corresponding reduction in late hits and cheap shots delivered by Boise players on the friendly blue turf of Bronco Stadium.

May 18: Harvey Updyke Jr., a 62-year old Alabama fan, is indicted by a grand jury on four felony and two misdemeanor counts related to the deliberate poisoning of the venerable oak trees at Auburn’s famed Toomer’s Corner. The 130-year old oaks were given a lethal dose of the herbicide Spike 80DF. Updyke gives a leg up to authorities by calling into Paul Finebaum’s radio show and bragging about the crime, claiming he poisoned the trees a week after Auburn’s Iron Bowl victory over the Tide at the end of the 2010 season. Though calling himself simply “Al from Daleville,” Updyke’s true identity is revealed shortly afterward. I’ll now pat myself on the back for resisting a cheap joke about the intelligence of SEC football fans.

Read more...

It’s Game Week in Columbus, and while the expectations for the Ohio State football team have occasionally been higher than they are this year, never has the end of the off-season been a more welcome sight. Later this week I’ll be back with a preview of the OSU-Akron game, and before you know it, it’ll be Thanksgiving and the Buckeyes will be putting it to the Wolverines all over again. So let’s hurry.

We’ve spent considerable time and thousands of words in this column during the spring and summer talking about who will play where for the 2011 Buckeyes... on offense and on defense...plus a look at how the new-look Big Ten shapes up. In other words...serving up plenty of opportunities to be proven wrong by events as the season unfolds. It’s a given that during the course of the season there will be surprises...unforeseen events and developments, injuries...disappointments...upsets...

If you’ll forgive a brief foray into Rumsfeldese, those things are the “unknown unknowns”.....the things we don’t even know that we don’t know. It’s next to impossible though, to write a column about them. As with any sports season about to begin, a number of key questions present themselves as the “known unknowns”. That is to say, the things we know that we don’t know. And the upcoming Ohio State football season appears to have a bunch of them.

Read more...