I haven’t quite sorted through all my feelings from the semifinal loss to Georgia.
We’ll, that’s a little dramatic. We had a great shot at a title and missed it. A few things went awry at the end. Georgia is good, what are you gonna do? It was a good excuse to drink 17 beers and a little champagne and yell at the TV and skip all the ball dropping Times Square New Year’s Eve shenanigans. Plus my kids stayed up and got to see dad drunk and demoralized. A win-win!
(Gus Johnson Voice) C….J…. Strooouuuud
CJ ended up with a pretty solid Buckeye career. His two bowl games combined might be the best… ever?
2021 – 573 yards and 6 TDs vs Utah in the Rose Bowl. A wild and crazy win with his two first-round pick wide receivers just chillin on the sideline (to be clear, it was CLEARLY the correct decision by Olave and Wilson to prep for the draft and make millions).
2022 – 348 yards and 4 TDs and no picks vs eventual champ in the national semifinal, losing 42-41.
I’m not going to do the research, but let’s just say that’s the best 2-game bowl career anyone’s ever had. And yes I know about the 2 games Joey B played on the way to a title.
Anyway – In just 2 seasons as a starter, he threw 85 TDs, good enough for 2nd in Buckeye history. 22 ahead of Justin Fields, but 29 behind JT Barrett. 2nd in completions, 5th in attempts. 2nd in completion percentage behind Dwayne Haskins (among players who threw a lot of passes). 2nd in yards, 1st in yards per attempt… you get the idea. He was very good.
CJ seems like he should go pretty high in the draft and guarantee himself $30 million. He will go… 4th to the Indianapolis Colts. Hopefully the Colts get a real coach and send Jeff Saturday back to doing whatever he was doing. 4 straight Super Bowl wins guaranteed baby!
Let’s also do a wide receiver recap.
Marvin Harrison Jr was recognized by most as one of the top couple wideouts in the country. 77 catches and 14 TDs and 1200 yards is pretty good! Last year Jaxon Smith-Njigba had a great season as the third option behind two first round picks. 1600 yards! He was still great, but defenses had to pick their poison. Helping Marvelous Marv in a similar fashion was Emeka Egbuka who had over 1000 yards and 10 TDs. Marvin had more circus catches and maybe a higher degree of difficulty, but Egbuka was excellent. Both will be back next season so hopefully we have a QB! JSN only had 5 catches all season due to terrible injury luck and is still projected to go in the top ~15 or so in next years draft, guaranteeing him maybe 15-20 million bucks. Not bad!
Look Ahead
Away games of note next year: Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Michigan. Whoever (whomever?) ends up as our QB has 3 warmups before heading to Notre Dame Sept 23, 2023. Coach Marcus Freeman had his dudes playing well by the end of the season and it will be a hostile environment, as they say.
The word on the street is that CJ thought pretty hard about returning for one more year. If you can make a small fortune in college on a sweet NIL deal, you might stay unless you’re projected super high in the draft. That money still wins for now. Kyle McCord has the inside track at QB. He’s played a bit and also happens to have played high school football with a guy named Marvin Harrison Jr.
All our wide receivers are back. All our running backs are back. 2nd year of the vaunted Jim Knowles defense…? It all depends on the QB. Let’s go!!
Gambling!
If you live in the great state of Ohio, you may have seen a few (thousand) ads for the gambling that is now legal. Various online sports books are offering incentives to join up so that you will get into it and then lose a lot of money. I have no idea how solvent these companies will be long-term, but it’s fairly simple to sign up and make some money.
I played it pretty safe. I didn’t do any of the “risk free bet up to $1000“ offers. I have found these sites to be more or less on the up and up, but depositing a large amount of money into one seems like a recipe to get addicted to gambling (or somehow losing it because of some weird fine print). I just signed up for a few of the sign on bonuses and scattered some bets. Some required a 10 or 20 dollar deposit, so I did those. But I wasn’t required to bet that money. Results below!
– DraftKings – $200 sign on bonus (4×50). $10 deposit required. Cashed out: $77.29.
– BetMGM – $200 sign on bonus (4×50). $10 deposit required. Cashed out: $170.00.
– FanDuel – $100 sign on bonus (4×25). Cashed out: $71.54.
– Caesar’s Sportsbook – $100 sign on bonus (1×100). I have no idea if I screwed this up or not and if I actually could have split that across multiple bets. I bet all $100 of those dollars that the Dallas Mavericks would come back to win a game vs the terrible Houston Rockets. They were down 15 but storming back. The Mavs won, so my live-bet paid +210. $20 deposit, so I cashed out $230.00.
– Tipico – $150 sign on bonus (6×25). Cashed out a terrible 47.31.
Sometimes I bet one book against the other, so I was pretty much guaranteed a few wins. Anyway – I signed up for $750 in bonuses, deposited $40 of my own funds and cashed out $596.14 for a profit of $556.14. Let’s say I spent about 10 hours on this, so 56$/hr was worth it. In the long run, we’ll see if they sell my data destroy my life. I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you have some understanding of spreads, moneylines, parlays, teases, etc.
Wow great job Eric you did a post!!
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