Tag: Big Ten football

James Franklin Extended at Penn State: Who’d You Rather?

Since taking the Penn State job in 2014 he’s returned the Nittany Lions to glory, winning the Big Ten in 2016 before falling in the Rose Bowl to USC. What about Kelly?

News came down Friday that Penn State head football coach James Franklin has been extended through 2025, putting an end to rumors he’d end up at Florida State.

That got me wondering about where Brian Kelly ranks in terms of all college football coaches.

If Saban is the GOAT and Dabo Swinney is the next best thing going, how far down would you have to go in order to find Brian Kelly?

James Franklin took a program that was awful before and has again turned south since his departure into a pretty respectable team in his time at Vanderbilt.

Since taking the Penn State job in 2014 he’s returned the Nittany Lions to glory, winning the Big Ten in 2016 before falling in the Rose Bowl to USC.

He’s gone 55-23 overall since 2014 but 44-11 in his four years Penn State has played without any scholarship restrictions.

Residing in the Big Ten East is no simple life as Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan sit in your division and provide top-tier competition on an annual basis (OK, perhaps not Michigan State).

It gets me wondering though, which coach would you rather have if I were to give five years with each at the helm?

Brian Kelly took advantage of a generous schedule by year-three and had Notre Dame playing in (and getting blown out in) the national championship his third year on campus. Year-nine saw Kelly take Notre Dame to the College Football Playoff where eventual national champion Clemson routed them, 30-3.

Franklin has won at Penn State and in his first year without scholarship restrictions won the Big Ten. However, he hasn’t done so again and despite having a top-ten team this season, is yet to get back to that second Rose Bowl appearance.

I’m curious which coach you’d rather have going forward.

Brian Kelly appears to have an elite recruiting class taking shape for 2021, 11 years into his run.

Franklin again won ten games in one of college football’s best divisions and seems to have Penn State on a level they haven’t been at with any consistency since the nineties.

It’s a tough to make a choice and both coaches bring plenty of off-the-field drama with them.

But gun to my head, Kelly has shown an ability to hire quality assistants on the regular who often take head jobs elsewhere and find the next up-and-comer in the coaching ranks regularly.

That’s something Franklin is yet to show, as he has watched only Joe Moorhead leave, taking the Mississippi State job previous to 2018.

Although a longer tenure, Kelly has seen Chuck Martin, Matt LaFleur, Butch Jones, Bob Diaco and Autry Denson take head jobs elsewhere after being his assistants at various points the last decade or so.

The ability to hire quality assistants is so important to me and if Kelly keeps seeing assistants get head-jobs, it must mean he’s doing something right.

James Franklin is a very good college football coach and worthy of every dime he gets from Penn State.

But even if you complain about Brian Kelly on the regular, would you take Franklin over him given the chance?

At very worst that question is harder than you’d like to admit while truthfully, Kelly’s resume at Notre Dame is incredibly-difficult to compete with unless you’ve actually won a national championship.

Franklin’s extension at Penn State and the desire of other premier programs to hire him should make you appreciate Brian Kelly as a coach a bit more, even if you’re not entirely in love with him.

Ohio State vs. Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game: How and where to watch and listen

Do you want to watch the Big Ten Championship Game between Ohio State and Wisconsin but don’t know where to find it. We have what you need.

It’s time to go out and try to get some more hardware to put in the trophy case at the Woody.

If you feel like you’ve seen this movie before, you’re not alone. Ohio State blew the doors off Wisconsin the first time around, but the Badgers are now back for more after finding a way to win the Big Ten West.

The two now meet in Indianapolis for one of them to be crowned the Big Ten football champion of 2019. Ohio State is the heavy favorite, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy.

If you’re planning on watching the game (that’s why you’re here right?) but aren’t sure where or how to find it, we have all the information you need. We have the television network, time, where you can stream it, and even radio information if you plan on listening in to the smooth voice of Paul Keels.

Just click through to the next page and we have all the information you need.

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Next … television, radio, streaming, game time, and venue

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Ohio State defensive end Chase Young wins Chicago Tribune Silver Football Award

Ohio State defensive end Chase Young has won the Chicago Tribune’s Silver Football Award that recognizes the best player in the Big Ten.

Ohio State defensive end Chase Young has been awarded the Chicago Tribune’s prestigious Silver Football Award that goes to the best football player in the Big Ten annually. It has been handed out annually since 1924 and is a result of a vote by all of the Big Ten head coaches.

Young is still up for a slew of national awards after already taking home the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and Defensive Lineman of the Year earlier this week. With 16.5 sacks on the season, and highlight after highlight of dominating moments so far in 2019, Young is still a finalist for the Walter Camp, Bronko Nagurski, Bednarik, Maxwell, and Ted Hendricks Awards.

By winning the 2019 Silver Football Award, Young adds to a run of six of the last eight awards going to Ohio State.

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Here’s a complete listing of all the Buckeye players that have taken home the Silver Football:

Ohio State Silver Football Award Winners

  • 2019 – DE Chase Young
  • 2018 – QB Dwayne Haskins
  • 2016 – QB J.T. Barrett
  • 2015 – RB Ezekiel Elliott
  • 2013 – QB Braxton Miller
  • 2012 – QB Braxton Miller
  • 2006 – QB Troy Smith
  • 1998 – QB Joe Germaine
  • 1996 – OT Orlando Pace
  • 1995 – RB Eddie George
  • 1984 – RB Keith Byars
  • 1981 – QB Art Schlichter
  • 1975 – QB Cornelius Greene
  • 1974 – RB Archie Griffin
  • 1973 – RB Archie Griffin
  • 1955 – HB Howard Cassady
  • 1950 – HB Vic Janowicz
  • 1945 – FB Ollie Cline
  • 1944 – HB Les Horvath
  • 1941 – FB Jack Graf
  • 1930 – E Wes Fesler

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Ohio State vs. Wisconsin Big Ten Championship Game preview: 5 reasons the Buckeyes win

Ohio State handled Wisconsin pretty handily the first time around, now it has to beat the Badgers one more time in the Big Ten Championship.

The first one was so nice, they’re playing it twice.

Ohio State outlasted and outmanned the Wisconsin Badgers the first time around 38-7, and now it’s tasked with beating them again in the Big Ten Championship Game Saturday. They say it’s hard to beat a good team twice in one season, but the reality is, we’ve not really seen that in the Big Ten, or with the Buckeyes for that matter.

Either way, Wisconsin does have one of the best running backs in the country, a physical brand, and the culture to pick itself off the proverbial mat to try and make this one a game this time. Oh, and there’s a championship and trophy on the line, so getting up to play this one shouldn’t be an issue.

Here’s five reasons the Buckeyes win Saturday in Indianapolis

Deep and wide

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Ohio State football: The three key players needed in the postseason

Ohio State has made it this far on the backs of three dynamic players. It’ll need those three to still come up big in the postseason.

Ohio State beat Michigan to continue its dominance against that team up north. It finished an undefeated regular season and now has a chance to win consecutive Big Ten Championships. Is it realistic that this could end in a picturesque season? Imagine Ryan Day hoisting the trophy alongside Dobbins, Fields, and Young. Here are three reasons why Ohio State could win it all this year which boils down to the three best players on Ohio State’s team. 

JK Dobbins

On the offensive side, it comes down to the ability to run the ball to open up the passing game. With Dobbins being one of only two players in Ohio State history to run for the 4,000 yards during his career, he’s been a beast. In fact, based on history, when Dobbins runs for two touchdowns and 140 yards, the Buckeyes normally win. 

While he’s been an unstoppable force in almost every game this year, it will be critical that he continues to eat up the defense with his rushing ability to create passing opportunities for Justin Fields and the passing game.

Chase Young

Young has lived up to expectations this year. So much so that he’s in the conversation for the Heisman as a defensive player. With his ability to pressure the quarterback, it has limited the time and space opposing quarterbacks have had. In the Michigan game, he didn’t statistically show out, but a lot of it factored into him being constantly double and tripled teamed. But he still took on multiple players, which allowed for others along the D-line to get into the backfield. 

Coming down the stretch, if Chase Young continues his dominance and continues to be a game-wrecker in the backfield it’ll allow OSU to slow down teams like LSU and Clemson since they have mobile quarterbacks.

Justin Fields 

At the helm of it all is Justin Fields. He has more than met expectations after the departure of Dwayne Haskins last season. So far this year Justin Fields has been incredible with his decision making with just one interception all year. He does have a tendency to hold onto the ball a little too long at times, but that’s just nitpicking at this point.

His ability to continue and make plays with a bum leg bears watching, but he’s been a warrior so far. For Ohio State to meet its ultimate goal of winning a national championship, he has to still provide that threat on the ground.

So far Field’s youth has not been in question and he has handled the big stage incredibly well. It will be interesting to see how the end of the season finishes. Maybe, just maybe, it will end with Ohio State hoisting a large trophy in New Orleans.

Championship week NCAA football 2019 expert picks and predictions

It’s college football championship week and we’ve got your predictions against the spread and straight up.

We’ve made it this far on our journey and it’s time to change gears just a wee-bit. We’ve been picking every Big Ten football game collectively as a staff here at Buckeyes Wire and Mark Russell has been beating the pants off everyone.

But it’s not over.

We’re changing gears a bit before all the bowls and taking the time to pick all the major championship games that’ll be coming to a television set or streaming device near you this weekend and keeping track as well. So, off we go.

A a reminder, if there’s an *next to the pick, that means the team will win, but not cover. Also, we get our odds from BetMGM.

INSTRUCTIONS: Make your pick against the spread. For example …
– If you think Ohio State will win -3.5 over Michigan: OSU
– If you think Ohio State will win outright: OSU
– If you think Ohio State will win, but NOT cover: OSU*
– If there’s a tie, George Washington settles it via the ‘ole quarter coin-flip.

Before we get going with all the picks, here’s the standings so far at the end of the regular season …

RESULTS SO FAR

@PhilHarrisonBW: 136-34 SU, 80-90 ATS
@yesh222: 128-42 SU, 93-77 ATS
@MarkRussell1975: 134-36 SU, 98-72 ATS
@BrentReeves: 131-39 SU, 90-80 ATS
@SirBrockNetter: 133-37 SU, 82-88 ATS
@JaxFryburger: 133-37 SU, 90-80 ATS
CONSENSUS PICK: 135-35 SU, 99-71 ATS

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Next … Power Five Championship Games

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Ohio State defensive end Chase Young takes home two Big Ten awards

Ohio State defensive end Chase Young took home two major Big Ten defensive player awards on Tuesday.

This will probably come as no surprise to anyone reading this, but Ohio State defensive end Chase Young was named the Big Ten’s Nagurski-Woodwon Defensive Player of the Year, as well as the Smith-Brown Defensive Lineman of the Year for 2019.

Young finished what can only be considered as one of the most dominant defensive years of any player in the Big Ten ever. He set the all-time single-season sack record at Ohio State with 16.5 sacks. That leads the country, as does his tackles for loss (2.0 per game), and sack yards (117).

All of that by the way came while missing two complete games and sitting out some of the tail-end of other blowout ones.

Young adds to Ohio State’s conference leading total number of Defensive Players of the Year (1), and Defensive Linemen of the Year (12) awards.

Well-deserved by Young. He’ll next be in action this Saturday in the Big Ten Championship Game against Wisconsin.

Big Ten Championship Game: Wisconsin is part of a B1G trinity

Reflections on the Wisconsin Badgers’ sixth appearance in the Big Ten Championship Game.

Minnesota is in the rearview mirror. Let’s now move to the Big Ten Championship Game this upcoming Saturday against Ohio State. We have plenty of time to unpack numerous angles related to this contest. Let’s start with some aspects of Big Ten Championship Game history at the end of the first decade for this standalone event, which began in 2011.

It is fitting that Wisconsin and Michigan State played in the first Big Ten Championship Game, with Ohio State stuck for one season between the end of the Jim Tressel era and the beginning of the Urban Meyer era. Ohio State’s 2011 mess and its 2012 lack of eligibility for postseason play are why the Badgers have the most Big Ten Championship Game appearances at the end of the decade, with six. A 6 of 9 “shooting line” is 67 percent from the field, so to speak. That will do. It speaks to Wisconsin’s consistency and dependability as a program.

The surprise is not that Wisconsin has been consistent. It was consistent in the late 1990s. It was consistent in the several seasons immediately preceding the 2011 campaign, the first year with a Big Ten Championship Game. Wisconsin has generally been a 10-win program over the past two decades, with a brief period of drift in the early 2000s and an occasional ho-hum season (such as 2018 for Paul Chryst) in which a lot of things went wrong.

No, the surprise is not that Wisconsin has been consistent, or that Michigan State and Ohio State have also made multiple return trips to the Big Ten Championship Game in this decade, which is about to end. The surprise is that no one else in this conference has been particularly consistent at the higher end of performance.

Yes, Penn State has become fairly strong in recent seasons, and the Nittany Lions could become the team which makes an upward move among the Big Ten’s best teams in the 2020s. Yes, Michigan has not been terrible; its biggest sin under Jim Harbaugh is that it can’t match the juggernaut Urban assembled, and Ryan Day sustained this year, at Ohio State. Nevertheless, Michigan has not been relentlessly consistent in the way it used to be under Lloyd Carr. Yes, Minnesota could become the fresh new face in the top tier of the Big Ten in the coming decade.

Yet, all of them haven’t truly maintained a regular annual home in the top tier of the Big Ten. The first nine seasons of divisional play and a Big Ten Championship Game reveal that Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ohio State are the ONLY three programs to make the Big Ten title game more than once.

Does that surprise you? Maybe the current pecking order in the Big Ten — with a second Wisconsin-Ohio State B1G championship showdown in three seasons — casts that statement in a different light. Maybe it is so expected that Ohio State and Wisconsin will win their respective divisions that the above fact doesn’t resonate very strongly. Fair enough.

Yet, I ask you to pause for a moment. Just absorb this question and what it means: In 2011, when the first Big Ten Championship Game was played, were you prepared to think that Michigan would not play in ANY of the first nine B1G title games?

Were you prepared to think that Nebraska would play in only one, and go seven years (and counting) without so much as a division title? Were you prepared to think after 2015 that Iowa would not get back to this game in the remainder of the decade?

The fact that we have had nine Big Ten title games (including this upcoming 2019 edition) means that 18 berths in the Big Ten Championship Game have been allotted in the past nine seasons. The leaderboard looks like this:

  • Wisconsin, 6 berths
  • Ohio State, 5
  • Michigan State, 3
  • Nebraska, Iowa, Penn State, and Northwestern, all with 1 apiece

The top two aren’t surprising at all, and in 2012, Ohio State would have qualified had it been eligible. The surprise is how few Big Ten programs have returned to Indy… and Michigan State, after so many strong seasons, is a program in decline, with Mark Dantonio’s career seemingly out of gas.

Wisconsin and Ohio State, it can reasonably be argued, are not only the two most reliable programs in the Big Ten; they might be the ONLY reliable programs in this conference.

Big Ten football power rankings after week 14: The writing is on the wall

The regular season is over and most teams are locked into the Big Ten football power rankings for 2019. There’s a change near the top.

All the regular season games are now complete in the Big Ten, and only two teams have a conference game left. That would be the Big Ten Championship game of course, and there are two familiar combatants.

Ohio State and Wisconsin are the two teams that have reached Indy the most, so off we go again. It’s a little zany because the Buckeyes blew the doors off the Badgers earlier this year, so there’s that. Make of it what you will. Either way, it’s a chance to get some more hardware so both teams will put the pads and helmets on and perform feats of athletic endeavors in Lucas Oil Stadium.

Meanwhile, the rest of the conference is done aside from those nine teams that are going bowling. But that won’t likely change the destiny of what’s been written in stone almost for this 2019 season.

Here’s the final power rankings for the regular season.

14. Rutgers – (Last week 14)

The season is mercifully over, and now the Scarlet Knights can begin the Greg Schiano era — again. There’s a ton of wood to chop folks.

13. Maryland – (Last week 13)

The season is mercifully over, and now the Mike Locksley era can continue. They’re all out of wood folks.

12. Northwestern – (Last week 12)

Yup. The season is mercifully over and now Pat Fitzgerald can quite being so salty towards the media. Where the heck did this pile of turds season come from anyway?

11. Nebraska – (Last week 11)

You guessed it. The season is mercifully over and now Scott Frost and company can start the promotional train on being the darkhorse to win the Big Ten West again. Boy was everyone wrong on that one.

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Big Ten Football 2019 Bowl Projections, College Football Playoff picks after week 14

The regular season is over and Big Ten bowl and College Football Playoff matchups are as clear as ever. Here’s a projection post week 14.

The Big Ten has a rich, rich history in historical bowl games, and the expectations are set for that to continue in 2019. Here at Buckeyes Wire, we’re keeping with tradition and giving you a peek at where we think all the teams in the conference will end up when all the dust settles on the season.

We reassess after each week of games and project based on what we’ve seen. And now that the regular season is over, we have had some wholesale chances and have a better idea of where all the teams are going.

Keep in mind that the Big Ten is extremely heavy at the top and this all depends on where the College Football Playoff Rankings shake out. For instance, the Rose Bowl will likely take the next highest rated Big Ten team, but that’s not a given — it is not contractually bound to do so. With that in mind though, it’ll be tight between Wisconsin, Penn State and Minnesota in the final call.

This thing has changed throughout the course of the season, and it still can depending on any chaos that emerges in the conference championship games. So stay tuned.

Also, keep in mind that these scenarios are very complicated with projecting when there’s not enough teams from certain conferences with tie-ins, and the agreements with bowls to not repeat the same program over a certain time-frame if at all possible.

Here’s a look at the projections now after the finish of the regular season.

Quick Lane Bowl

Thursday, December 26
8:00 ET, ESPN
Ford Field, Detroit, MI
ACC vs. Big Ten

Projection: North Carolina vs. Michigan State

New Era Pinstripe Bowl

Friday, December 27
3:20 ET, ESPN
Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY
ACC vs. Big Ten

Projection: Boston College vs. Illinois

San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl

Friday, December 27
8:00 ET, FS1
SDCCU Stadium, San Diego, CA
Big Ten vs. Pac-12

Projection: Michigan vs. USC

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