The 1993 Ohio State Buckeyes

Big Daddy.

Welcome back to my semi-regular series reviewing the Buckeye Football seasons from 1990 to present. The Millennial Era. I’m an old millennial, so, ipso facto, etc.

Season Recap: The Bucks start the season pretty much where they left off the year before, ranked 18th. We take down Rice and then #12 Washington at home (Washington finishes the season 7-4 and unranked). We crush Pitt in Pittsburg, then crush Northwestern and we’re feeling really good about ourselves, now ranked #6. Four more consecutive victories, including ranked MSU and Penn State. 8-0 and Ranked 3rd in the country we
head to Madison and TIE those fuckers 14-14. And then a win vs. Indiana.

Michigan: #5 OSU heads up to Ann Arbor for UNRANKED Michigan and… we get fucking smoked 28-0. Coop is now 0-5-1 against these jerkbags and we end up tied for the Big 10 Championship. The team up north had started the year ranked 3rd, but losses to unranked MSU and Illinois messed that up. But they got their shit together the last few games, finishing 19/21. Their combined score over their last 4 wins to close out the season – 153 to 24. One great stat from the Michigan game: Bret Powers threw 6 passes and all were complete! One hiccup though – 3 of them were caught by the other team. Fuckin Bret Powers – he’s not even a real person. Check out this old-timey box score of the game.

Bowl: Win vs. BYU in the Holiday Bowl. 28-21. Raymont Harris goes for 235 yards and we finish the season ranked 10/11. BYU had the ball at the OSU 6 yard line with 32 seconds left and their guy dropped an easy TD on 3rd down. Then on 4th down, the same dude was wide open and their QB missed him.

Awards: For Big Daddy Wilkinson:

• Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year, Big Ten Co-Defensive Player of the Year (along with Dana Howard from Illinois),
• Bill Willis Trophy.

• All Big 10 – Greg Smith (DL), Steve Tovar (LB), Roger Harper (DB), Wilkinson
• All American – Joey Galloway, Korey Stringer, Dan Wilkinson (consensus)

Quarterbacks: Bobby Hoying threw 8 TD’s and 8 INT’s. A completely made up person named Bret Powers threw 7 TD’s and 6 INT’s. Bobby threw 3x as many passes. Powers had a higher completion % and passer rating. Should I look up Bret Powers? I really don’t think he’s real. OK fine. Apparently he was a transfer from Arizona State. Weird.

Running Backs: Raymont Harris was the clear rushing leader with over 1300 yards and 12 TD’s. By’not’e has almost 500 yards and 4 TD’s. That guy Jeff Cothran is still doing stuff with 200 yards rushing and 200 receiving. Eddie George again was fairly limited in his carries but had solid YPC and scored 3 TD’s.

WR/TE: Joey Galloway had 11 TD’s and no other player had more than 1 reception for a touchdown. 1 each for Jeff Cothran, Buster Tillman, Dimitrious Stanley, and Eric Moss. That was Moss’s only catch on the year.

Other Offense – This team was basically Raymont Harris and Joey Galloway but had huge dudes that would star for the bucks later on and then move to the NFL, first among them, Stanley Jackson. Just kidding. Terry Glenn, Eddie George, Bobby Hoying, Dimitrious Stanley. They got very few touches but a ton of talent was sitting there. And Korey Stringer, God rest his soul, would go on to be one of our great O Lineman.

Defensive Line: Dan Wilkinson was awesome, obviously, but this team had an insane amount of young guys that would turn out to be huge figures in the next few years for the Buckeyes and also for the next 25+ years in college and the NFL.

• Mike Vrabel (Patriots, Assistant under Fickell/Urban, now head coach of Tennesee Titans),
• Fickell (Longtime OSU assistant, interim coach (the filling in the Tressel/Urban Sandwich, now Cincinnati U head coach who’s being discussed for bigger jobs… he turned down Michigan St and is apparently a hot name in the NFL’s annual tradition of hiring unproven white guys),
• Greg Bellisari, Matt Finkes, Rob Kelly (big parts of the defense for the next few years)
• Obie Stillwell (local pre-game personality and bow tie aficionado).

Drafted:

Big Daddy Wilkinson

• 1st pick in the draft at Defensive Tackle to the Bengals. Dan played thirteen seasons for the Bengals, Washington Pro Football Team, Lions, and Dolphins. 195 games, 388 tackles, 54.5 sacks (tied for 158th all time), and his one career TD is an awesome one, from RacialSlur.com (not the actual site name… The Washington Racial Slurs. Maybe that can be their new name. Somebody get Dan Snyder on the blower):
  • One of the more humorous scenes in (Racial Slur)’s history took place in the course of a 48-22 win over the Chicago Bears. Burly defensive tackle Dan Wilkinson intercepted a Shane Matthews pass and raced 88 yards down the sidelines for a TD. Never known for his foot speed, Wilkinson could have handed the ball off to a member of his blocking convoy, which included Darrell Green, the fastest man on the team. But the 6-4, 340 pound “Big Daddy” chose to hold on to his interception as he lumbered down the sidelines and into the end zone.
• From Dayton, Wilkinson, who is the second-youngest of 11 kids, went to Dayton Dunbar before becoming an all-world college football player. He ran a 4.72 40 yard dash WHILE WEIGHING 315 POUNDS in pre-draft workouts.

Jeff Cothran – 66th pick, a fullback, also to the Bengals. Cothran played in 39 games over 3 seasons, all for the Bengals. Career totals: 76 touches for 308 total yards and 2 TD’s.

Raymont Harris – 114 th pick to the Bears. Harris played in the NFL for 6 seasons – 2500 career rushing yards, 700 receiving yards, 17 TDs. His best season was 1997 for the bears – over 1000 yards, 10 TDs. Injuries shortened his career and he was out of the league by 2001. He’s been part of the OSU Athletic Dept since 2010. According to the Dept Directory – he’s Director of Development – “Responsible for major gifts for all athletic priorities, including endowments and capital projects.” And, according to Wikipedia – “Before coming to the Department of Athletics, Harris served as Assistant Director of Development for the Fisher College of Business. In his time at Fisher, Harris oversaw their annual fund, managed the Fisher shareholders, and worked to develop the Fisher Commons.” Good stuff there.

Jason Winrow – 186th pick at Guard – New York Giants. Winrow played exclusively on practice squads 1994-1996 and never played in a regular season NFL game. He died in 2012 at age 41 at his home in Westerville OH. Quite a lovely article after his death. Seems like he was an interesting guy. His twitter profile read: Sexiest offensive lineman in NCAA history, college football radio & TV analyst. Half man. Half amazing.

Butler By’not’e, 212th pick to the Broncos. My guy! First of all, the apostrophes in his name should be like this: B’ynote’. OSU misspelled it and it never got corrected. Sorry Butler! I’ve been thinking your name was spelled the other way for almost 30 years. Butler played in 16 NFL games in his career, exclusively as a kick returner, for the Broncos and Panthers. 42 returns, the longest one 41 yards, no TD’s. He also played professionally for the Barcelona Dragons, Orlando Predators, NY/NJ Hitmen, and Colorado Crush. Post athletic career, B’ynote’ was briefly on the Big 10 Network. He’s an ordained reverend in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and started a ministry, Nu Nazion. Oh and he’s a webpage designer. What! But, most importantly, he was on the buckeyes 4×400 relay team that set a national record. Now we’re talking.

1992

-Eric