This has been everywhere today–just like Pauly’s mom–but as an Ohio State alum, I feel compelled to weigh in. First of all, I never swam in Mirror Lake, because they hadn’t renovated that area of campus before I graduated. They hadn’t drained the lake, paved the bottom of it and rebuilt the walls around it until after I had blown that pop stand, so it’s not so much of a “tradition” as it is an indulgence. Secondly, who exactly was dying to enjoy an outdoor bathhouse on campus? What, the Short North wasn’t within walking distance? And finally, is it that hard to just hold it for another half-hour? But hey, school spirit! Just find your own ride home.

Even though Jim Tressel’s torso is well-insulated on game day, it hasn’t stopped members of his team from being paranoid about a flu outbreak, so he’s taught his team a way to shake hands that will surely be embraced by overrated underachievers everywhere.

Jim Tressel said, “S’happening,” today.[..] The slang was in reference to the “elbow bumps,” actually more like forearm bumps, that the Ohio State training staff is recommending Ohio State football players employ in place of handshakes as the Buckeyes hope to prevent passing the flu through the team.[..]

OSU punter Jon Thoma was sick for Saturday’s game against Toledo, but Tressel didn’t know if that had been identified as a strain of H1N1 flu. There are no other reports of sick Ohio State players at the moment. via.

Tressel also endorses pulling out after sex, which is great if you’re ever in, you know, a woman’s presence. I don’t see what the big deal about that is. As long as you finish before they wake up, they really don’t seem to care.

Dr. Saturday has assembled their latest takedown of Ohio State’s performance against Southern Cal, and it is as impressively executed as it is empirically damning of the state of the Jim Tressel regime at Ohio State. For the second time in as many years, The 105,000+ that packed Ohio Stadium last Saturday were betrayed by Tressel’s predictable game-planning and his steadfast refusal to let Terrelle Pryor play like the quarterbacking phenom we all knew he was going to be.

Pryor was not coached to make a bootleg fake at all. Instead, he would hand the ball off to the running back and, as if he was Dan Marino, stand there and watch the play. How insane is that? You take your most talented runner, and ask him to hand it off and then stand there to ensure that the defense knows it need not worry about him? And not worry about him they did; OSU’s power plays were overwhelmed with Trojan defenders. The bootleg fake is one of the keys to making the power stuff go; that’s why the zone-read stuff was invented, to better control that backside defender. Quarterbacks from Fran Tarkenton to Joe Montana — guys with sensible coaching — paved the way for this for years. via.

It’s hard to dump on a guy with five national championships in Division I, until you realize that his team simply gave away a game that could have put them at No. 2 in the polls and, ergo, a fourth BCS title game (de facto or otherwise) in seven years. With Michigan and Tate Forcier rolling after beating Notre Dame last week, Tressel will have to start pulling rabbits out of his ass if he expects to win in Ann Arbor this year. And not those conservative, Power-I running rabbits, either.

While everyone in Bristol lines up to suck off a true freshman that went 3-for-5 on the team’s only true scoring drive of the night, Joe McKnight is getting snubbed out of his props for bailing out his team by earning half of his total yards during Southern Cal’s fourth-quarter rally against Ohio State in Columbus Saturday. The junior running back had two disappointing seasons as the heir apparent to another overrated Man of Troy–Reggie Bush–and yet nobody seemed to be paying attention when McKnight finally delivered in the clutch.

McKnight’s numbers were modest against Ohio State, 105 yards from scrimmage on 18 touches. But here are the numbers that count: On USC’s 14-play, 86-yard, game-winning drive, McKnight touched the ball six times and gained 53 yards, then caught a pass and scored a 2-point conversion.

“We knew from the start they’d get the ball to McKnight,” Ohio State linebacker Austin Spitler said. “We did a good job the whole game on him but we just didn’t get it done at the end.” via.

I don’t know when a 100-yard game became “modest” but be that as it may, if you will, so to speak. Everyone seemed so pleased that the game wasn’t a total blowout, but the truth is that if Jim Tressel wasn’t so hell-bent on playing Tressel-ball and Terrelle Pryor wasn’t so busy mastering the “fade-away incompletion,” Ohio State would have won that game. Now we have to hear about Matt Barkley being compared to Joe Montana…at least until they soil the bed against Washington next week.

Jim Tressel and his Ohio State Buckeyes are about 36 hours away from the beating of a lifetime at the hands of Southern Cal and their true freshman quarterback. But seriously, the Men of Troy recruit so well, I wonder how they would do if they suited up their backups and let them play a full Pac-10 schedule. How would that team finish? Fifth? Better than fifth?

Anyway, here’s Tressel talking about how Terrelle Pryor wrote “MIKE VICK” on his eye black last week (a la Tim Tebow’s “JOHN 3:16″). Sometimes pissing off white people is a little too easy. But coach yammers on for minutes on end and makes absolutely no point whatsoever. Look forward to more eloquence Saturday night after Tressel tries to explain how he let Pete Carroll out of Columbus with a win. via.

Former US Senator, former US Navy fighter pilot and current old guy John Glenn will dot the I in the Ohio State marching band’s renown Script Ohio formation tomorrow when the Buckeyes play the US Naval Academy.

Only a handful of non-band members have dotted the “i,” including comedian Bob Hope and golfer Jack Nicklaus.

Legendary Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes dotted the ‘i’ a few years before he died in 1988 and called it one of the highlights of his public life.

Glenn, 88, said he was surprised when he received the invitation. “It’s a a great honor,” he said Thursday from his home near Washington, D.C. “We’ll have a lot of fun.”

I thought this was pretty awesome, and then I realized that he was dotting the I with his wife. I guess that’s cute. I mean, Glenn orbited the earth. What did she ever do. It’s not like she was cooking him dinner while she was up there. I’m sure he got out of the rocket upon his return to Earth and she was like “Why didn’t you call? I was worried sick!” Sheesh. Women.