Seth's 50 Centers

Before the Ohio State football season, Brian and I compared the difference between a team that is expected to challenge for a national title, like the 2006 Buckeyes, and a team that is looking to work in new players, like this season’s squad.

We both agreed that while having a dominate team that wins every game and has playmakers — Ted Ginn, Anthony Gonzalez, Antonio Pittman and Heisman winner Troy Smith on offense — isn’t something to sneeze at, part of the fun of being a die-hard junkie is watching guys develop.

Seeing if Chris Wells could really take over for Pittman at running back was going to be fun. Figuring things out at quarterback, with Todd Boeckman being an old, yet untested commodity, would be interesting. Finding out if Brian Robiskie, Brian Hartline and Ray Small could make big plays that we came to expect out of the receiver position over the past few years would be exciting, too.

What about the defense? It was the side of the ball that had the most experience, but most of the starting front line would be gone. Just how good would freshman Cameron Heywood, aka this year’s nominee for the Greg Oden is really 46 years old award, be?

Can Donald Washington get the job done as a starting corner, or will he simply go up in smoke? Sorry…

We had heard all offseason about freshman corner Eugene Clifford and how he would take the secondary by storm, but that’s what we heard about J’amario O’Neal, right? So, who was this Chimdi Chekwa that was on the field from Day 1?

Long story short, it was going to be a fun season, even if the baby Bucks lost a game or two, or even three, just so it wasn’t a three-game losing streak like the ’04 OSU squad suffered. That was the last time this team went through any kind of overall rebuilding, so there was some worry, but again, seeing these young guys come through was going to be fun.

Then they went and won almost every game, didn’t they? Expectations nationally seemed to be that of greatness as if no one moved on from last year’s 12-1 team, so suddenly there we were in the BCS title game again with the reputation of an entire league hanging in the balance.

Don’t get me wrong, winning the game over LSU would’ve been preferred, and I’ve been in the dumps since they lost, but I can’t help but think about how great this team played when most programs would’ve taken another two or three years just to challenge for a league crown, let alone a national title.

Illinois comes to mind in that area. The Illini won the league in 2001 and went to a BCS bowl, but quarterback Kurt Kitner and several other good players graduated from that team and they were terrible for several years. Now, Ron Zook took them back to the BCS this season, and upset the Buckeyes, but Rashard Mendenhall has announced that he’s going pro early, and only time will tell if they can remain at or near the top of the conference.

At the end of the day the ’07 Buckeyes were a team to be proud of, and while Boeckman needs to improve a ton, or they need to go another direction at QB, and I think the coaching staff needs to rethink the way they line up the defense against good teams, it was an excellent building block toward next year.

Now, how many of our juniors can we convince to stay on?

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