Today is National Letter of Intent Signing Day! I use initial caps, because for college football fans, it’s a Big Day. The recruiting wars are finally ended, and the fans of each school count up the number of two-star, three-star, four-star, and five-star athletes who will be joining their teams. By all accounts, Ohio State, its head coach Urban Meyer, and his hard-working assistants did pretty well this year. Ezekiel Elliott, whose announcement that he will become a Buckeye is shown here, is one of the more heralded members of the Ohio State class.
When I think of National Letter of Intent Day, however, I think of kids, and their parents. A high school student who is a stud athlete is still a high school student. They may run faster, and bench press more, and catch footballs better than your ordinary kids, but deep down they are the same mass of raging hormones that you find in every kid of that age. They are making a huge decision that could have tremendous, long-term consequences for their lives — and they and their parents are hoping that they make the right decision. It’s a huge, emotional matter for any high school student about to go away from home to college. Just imagine what it must be like for a kid who not only is leaving the cocoon of their family, but moving into new territory where their every move will be scrutinized and deconstructed by rabid college football fans.
So, on this National Letter of Intent Signing Day, I want to welcome all of the young men who have committed to come to The Ohio State University — but I especially want to welcome their parents to the family that is Buckeye Nation.
I also want to make this pledge to those parents: no matter how high the athletic stakes, how big the game, or how colossal the blunder, I will always strive to remember that we are talking about young people here. I will try to bear in mind that everyone makes mistakes, that we all have committed youthful indiscretions that we regret, and that people can mature and grow and shouldn’t be forever defined by a single, ill-advised decision. I will always seek to give your kids the benefit of the doubt, just as I would hope that other parents would do with my kids. I suspect I’m not alone in this, so please remember that, for every fan who goes over the top there are dozens, if not hundreds, who support your youngster and wish only the best for him.
Welcome to Buckeye Nation!
Alabama crushed unbeaten Notre Dame last night, 42-14. The game wasn’t that close. Alabama has won three of the last four national championships. Add the championships won by LSU, Florida, and Auburn — all of the SEC — and you have an amazing record of success. The truth is that, right now, the SEC teams are better.
Getting back to number 1 has been a long, rough road for the Fighting Irish. Since the early ’90s, the once-vaunted program has fallen on very hard times — hiring coaches who just didn’t fit with the school and its mighty traditions, who somehow couldn’t recruit athletes to the school that boasts of Knute Rockne, The Four Horsemen, “Win one for the Gipper,” Touchdown Jesus, and Rudy as part of its football lore, and who led the team down the road to irrelevancy. But now, Notre Dame is back, rising to the top behind a defense that is the best in the land at preventing opponents from scoring. The Golden Domers have one more game to go — next Saturday, against the USC Trojans — and if they win, they will play in the BCS National Championship game.
The Buckeyes clearly need work on offense and defense. Under new coach Urban Meyer, the offense is trying to become multi-dimensional. Braxton Miller has improved his passing technique and his accuracy — although his decision-making could use more maturity — and the receiving corps is better. The offense still seems one-dimensional, however, because it revolves so much around Miller’s arm and legs. He was the leading rusher, by far, carrying the ball 27 times. I don’t think that’s sustainable. With the injury to Carlos Hyde the lack of experienced depth in the backfield became painfully apparent. The offensive line didn’t have a great game, either. There were too many penalties, and Ohio State isn’t going to win many games in which it has three turnovers. Defensively, the Buckeyes still give up too many big plays for my taste, and the team has struggled, so far at least, to put consistent pressure on the opposing quarterback. In short, there is improvement to be made on both sides of the ball.
For starters, Penn State will have to pay a $60 million fine — representing one year of revenue from its football program — to external programs aimed at preventing child sexual abuse or helping the victims of such abuse. The NCAA also barred Penn State’s football program from bowl games for five years, cut Penn State’s available scholarships for four years, and vacated all of Penn State’s many football wins since 1998. The latter penalty means that Joe Paterno will not be officially recognized as the winningest coach in college football history.
For those of you not hip-deep in college football recruiting news, breathless updates, and rankings from recruiting “gurus,” tomorrow is the day when high school seniors sign letters that confirm where they will go to college. College football fans love the day because they can forget about last year and focus on the new members of their favorite teams — usually knowing nothing about the kid except the “rating” they’ve gotten from “ratings services” and, perhaps, a video of carefully selected high school highlights that can be found on YouTube. And then, after the signing is done, there will be disputes about which school recruited the best class. During the off-season, college football fans thrive on that kind of mindless argument.
It’s not just because Coach Meyer has been an extremely successful coach, although that is certainly part of it. He’s won everywhere he’s been, from Bowling Green to Utah to Florida. He knows how to build a program and how to recruit and then coach talented athletes. But for Ohio State fans, it is more than that. We want someone who understands what Ohio State means. We want someone who grew up in Ohio, who lived and died with the Buckeyes, who got their first coaching job at Ohio State. Urban Meyer has all of those qualities.
We’ll see how Coach Meyer performs as Ohio State’s coach; you never know how things will go. But I was encouraged by what he said at his news conference this afternoon, about wanting to make the state proud of its flagship university and its football team. And, more importantly, I was encouraged because Coach Meyer’s very decision to come back to Ohio State, when he could have had any job in the country, shows he feels the importance of Ohio State football in his gut, just like everyone else in Buckeye Nation does. This won’t be a job for him, it will be a passion and a crusade. He won’t rest until Ohio State football is as good as he can possibly make it.
Fittingly, Nebraska’s first game is also a big game, and one that should give them a proper Big Ten welcome. The undefeated, eighth-ranked Huskers travel to Camp Randall Stadium to take on the unbeaten Wisconsin Badgers, who sit at number 7 in the polls. For a visiting team, Camp Randall is one of the toughest venues in the Big Ten, with the distinctive traditions found in many Big Ten stadiums. Nebraska will have to endure the taunts of the Wisconsin faithful and then, when the third quarter ends, feel the field shake when the stadium rocks and the student section hops to House of Pain’s Jump Around.
Bear with me on this. A Scotch Egg, for those who have not sampled this awesome culinary masterpiece, consists of 
Toledo has a strong record of knocking off teams from the power conferences. Big Ten fans will remember that Toledo has beaten Michigan, Penn State, Minnesota, and Purdue in recent years, and the Rockets also have toppled Colorado, Kansas, and Cincinnati. The Rockets have a quick, multi-faceted offense that can put points on the board. Their quarterbacks, Austin Dantin and Terrance Owens, both provide a pass or run option. They have a solid running back in Adonis Thomas, and a corps of receivers led by Eric Page, who caught 99 passes last year — 99! — and Bernard Reedy, who had two touchdown catches last week. Tomorrow’s game will be a challenge for the Buckeyes’ defense.
A few days ago 
committed to sign their letter of intent. However, there are always a few holdouts who announce their decision on National Signing Day, usually by picking among the caps of competing teams and putting on the hat of the winning school. As a result, evaluation of recruiting success or failure becomes perversely skewed to the holdouts. Fans of schools like Ohio State, which already has “verbals” from more than 20 excellent athletes, will focus on the holdouts and feel let down if their team doesn’t land one, when they should be focused less on the prima donnas and more on the corps of fine players who long ago agreed to be part of their school’s program.
