If the last few weeks in college football news have taught one lesson, it’s that things don’t stay the same. If they’ve taught another, it’s that the 1970s were a long, long time ago.
Ohio State claims eight national championships in the sport of football, and while there’s always quibbling with those, how many were split and how many were unanimous, those debates are irrelevant here. The point is that while they claim eight, six of those came in 1970 and before. Only in 2002 and in 2014 have the Buckeyes won it all within the last fifty years.
This is still an impressive feat. The number of college football programs with multiple titles since 1970 is—if we limit this to a reasonable list of awarders, inclusive of the AP, the Coaches Poll, the FWAA, and the formal Bowl Coalition and BCS and College Football Playoff systems—is thirteen. Thirteen programs have won multiple legitimate national championships in the last fifty years or so. Ohio State has been one of college football’s thirteen best programs in this modern era. It is, though, near the bottom of those thirteen. Of the thirteen, eleven have three or more. The Buckeyes are one of just seven programs with multiple titles since 2000, but that’s a smaller sample. Take a wider view, and Ohio State’s relative success lessens. It’s a slight distinction, but the difference is there.
Gene Smith announced today that this will be his final year as the athletic director at Ohio State. After roughly two decades, the athletic director who sits atop one of three college football programs annually capable of challenging for the national championship is moving on. That’s a big transition.
It’s possible Ohio State will be fine. It’s probable, in fact. Of those thirteen programs who’ve won the multiple titles since 1970, Nebraska and Miami are the ones who’ve fallen the farthest in recent years, and those two aren’t the worst floor. More importantly, they’re outliers. The others keep remaining somewhere in the vicinity of the national championship picture. Besides Nebraska and Miami, only USC, Florida, and Penn State have failed to make a College Football Playoff, and all three of those programs have spent considerable time in the top ten within recent memory. Ohio State will not fall off a cliff under whoever succeeds Gene Smith.
Ohio State might, though, take a step backwards, and given where they stand in the broader college football picture—they’ve only won one title in the playoff era and they’ve only made the national championship game one other time—that could be conspicuous, especially at a time when the Big Ten is probably improving at the top through the addition of USC. Whoever takes over Gene Smith’s job will inherit a great situation, but also one with little margin for error. Had Ohio State not played its best game in years to nearly take down Georgia this past New Year’s Eve, had USC not been steamrolled by Utah in the Pac-12 Championship to allow Ohio State that opportunity, one of the biggest questions entering this season would be the job security of a man who’s lost only six times in his four years as Ohio State’s head coach, with two of those six losses coming to the respective season’s national champion.
The standards at Ohio State are high.
They were high once at Nebraska too.
The 31 football seasons between Woody Hayes’s last championship and Jim Tressel’s first (and only) were not bad for Ohio State. They went to the Rose Bowl seven times. They went to three Sugar Bowls. But across Earle Bruce’s final season and John Cooper’s thirteen years at the helm, Ohio State only finished with one loss and zero ties twice. That’s Michigan State and Iowa territory, and it’s not too long ago.
Ohio State used to have a recruiting advantage thanks to its locale. Ohio was a talent-rich state. So was Pennsylvania next door. Neither is bad for recruiting now, but there’s a reason less than half of Ohio State’s 2023 class (and only one of its seven top-100 recruits) hail from Ohio. The talent balance—or at least the perception of the talent balance—has shifted. It’s unlikely perception is shifting in the direction of inaccuracy. ESPN ran the numbers in January on which states have contributed the most players to its top 300 over 2023 and over the last five years, and Ohio didn’t make the top five. Alabama is into the mix, with one explanation being that cultural and economic differences are combining with shifts in population numbers to tilt the talent seesaw to the south. (Florida, Texas, and Georgia finished first, second, and third. California was fourth.) Ohio isn’t only recruiting in the south more because it wants to be able to compete with SEC teams in the playoff. It’s recruiting there because it has to. This can work—Ohio State isn’t recruiting poorly, and it’s unlikely that changes anytime soon—but it’s harder to do than recruiting in-state or in the state next door. Simultaneously, Michigan has begun to learn it can use Ohio State’s preference for slightness over speed against the Bucks. Last year was closer than the final score looked, but in the snow in Ann Arbor in 2021, Michigan’s offensive line made Ohio State’s front seven look like children. For a while there, Ohio State’s biggest obstacle was its focus—its propensity to lay one egg once a year and make the loss so bad it took them out of the playoff entirely. The problem is harder now. It’s more integral. Ohio State is fighting a two-front war—needing speed to beat the SEC champion and strength to knock Michigan back into place. Now, they’ll have to do it with turnover within the athletic department.
Doubts about staying power in the sport’s top three are a good problem for a college football program to have, especially doubts as hypothetical as these. But Gene Smith has only seen two seasons with single-digit Buckeye wins, and one of those was the Covid year. He’s been more a constant than the head coach.
Who Was Gambling and Who Is Hurt?
Hunter Dekkers is in legal and eligibility trouble. We know that because Story County named him in the gambling report. Jirehl Brock, Jake Remsburg, and Isaiah Lee also aren’t practicing for Iowa State right now, though, with Matt Campbell confirming as much about the latter two after confirming it about Brock late last week. Why are those three out? We don’t know.
It’s possible this is injury-related. Brock and Remsburg both dealt with significant injuries last year. But with the gambling situation ongoing, it’s possible Iowa State is going to be without four starters to open the year all because of dumb decisions. Not great.
Bahamas Biliew
In happier Cyclone news, the basketball programs are out on their international tours, with the men playing three games in the Bahamas and the women playing I believe the same number in Italy. The thing we watch these for is to get some idea of rotations and such, but the more exciting piece on the men’s side is getting a glimpse of Omaha Biliew, the incoming freshman who’s showing up in the first round of NBA mock drafts. Honestly? We didn’t learn much new, but it’s fun to see him dunk. It’s a reminder that we have him. Overall, there’s a lot of upside with this team.
On the practical side, the bracket’s out for the ESPN Events Invitational, the tournament the men’s team is playing in over Thanksgiving weekend down in Orlando. Iowa State opens against VCU. Boise State and Virginia Tech are also on ISU’s side of the bracket, with Penn State, Texas A&M, Florida Atlantic, and Butler across the way. That makes the chalkiest outcome an Iowa State matchup with A&M or FAU in the championship. Wouldn’t mind that at all.
It’s Better to See Your Hitters Get Hurt
Rays ace Shane McClanahan is expected to be out for the rest of the season, and perhaps for much of next year as well. Ronald Acuña Jr. had x-rays last night on his elbow after a hit by pitch, but they came back clean.
With the trade deadline in the rearview, injuries are an even bigger deal than they were last month, with no option to restock from anywhere other than the bench and the minor leagues. For the Rays, McClanahan will be backfilled by a mix of options, ranging from Zach Eflin or Tyler Glasnow in Game 1 of their first playoff series to Aaron Civale in Game 3 to Zack Littell in Game 4 to perhaps Taj Bradley or bullpen games on the fifth day in the regular season rotation. When constructing a roster, the possibility of injuries is nebulous and vague. By this point in the year, it’s become very real. There are these one-to-one connections. The “replacement” in wins above replacement becomes a real person, not a hypothetical baseline 27th man.
With that, here are the thirteen players expected by FanGraphs Depth Charts to be most valuable over the rest of the regular season and their projected rest of season WAR. We’ve grouped them by team.
- Anaheim: Shohei Ohtani (2.5)
- Atlanta: Acuña (2.0)
- Los Angeles: Mookie Betts (1.9), Freddie Freeman (1.5)
- New York – AL: Aaron Judge (1.8)
- San Diego: Juan Soto (1.7), Fernando Tatís Jr. (1.6)
- Texas: Corey Seager (1.6)
- Cleveland: José Ramírez (1.6)
- Houston: Yordan Alvarez (1.6)
- Philadelphia: Zack Wheeler (1.5)
- Tampa Bay: Wander Franco (1.5)
- New York – NL: Francisco Lindor (1.5)
These thirteen—from Ohtani to Lindor—are the most indispensable players still standing, on paper. But. As we said: This is all above a hypothetical baseline 27th man. In reality, it’s different between players. If, God forbid, Acuña’s x-rays had shown a break, Atlanta would be about two wins worse on paper the rest of the way, or roughly six wins worse as a team when extrapolated over a full season (to give some perspective on how it’d affect the playoffs). There isn’t much on Atlanta’s roster beyond the starting nine. The Dodgers, on the other hand, have more depth. Slide Mookie Betts out of the lineup, God forbid, and it’s still bad, but the damage is less. Chris Taylor and Miguel Rojas and Kike Hernández are all above replacement level on paper, as are David Peralta and Jason Heyward and James Outman, the other half of the platoon. The impact would be much closer to just one win from here, or three to four wins extrapolated over a full year. In other words, Acuña is far more important to his team’s continued success than Mookie Betts is to his own team’s despite the two being nearly equivalent in total value as players.
Where this is leading us is that in most cases, starting pitchers are really the ones you don’t want to lose. Take the example of Zack Wheeler, the only pitcher-only on the list. If the Phillies were to, God forbid, lose Wheeler for the year, the impact would be small at first. Over the rest of the regular season, they’d be less than one win worse. In the playoffs, though, it would get bad, and it would get bad fast. We’re going to use the full-season extrapolation here, multiplying each projected WAR by four like we did with those above. We’re then going to multiply the projected season-long difference by five for each game, because in these Depth Charts projections, starting pitchers only pitch once every five days, as they do in real life. For a single game, then, the impact is five times bigger.
In Game 1 of this hypothetical Wheeler-less world, the Phillies would be four wins worse of a team—Nola’s expected to amass 0.2 fewer WAR the rest of the year than Wheeler, that’s a 0.8-win difference over a full season, over one game that makes the Phillies 4.0 wins worse as a team—a 91-win team rather than the 95-win team they’d be if Zack Wheeler pitched every single day.
In Game 2, the Phillies would become ten wins worse than their baseline selves, the same math from Wheeler vs. Nola but now applied to Nola vs. Ranger Suárez. In Game 3, it would go back to a four-win difference, the gap between Suárez and Taijuan Walker on paper equivalent to that between Wheeler and Nola. In Game 4, it would drop to two wins. If a series went four games, then, the Phillies would be about five wins worse of a team. For the Phillies specifically, this is enough to take them to sub-.500 on paper. Wheeler is not as impactful as Mookie Betts over the course of a full season. But in a playoff series, his absence would mean more.
Acuña’s still, behind Ohtani, the player whose absence would be greatest. This is largely because of Atlanta’s lack of depth, though. It’s an anomaly. In most of the league, your best starting pitchers are the guys you need the most.
Kyle Hendricks Is Throwing Strikes
The biggest difference between Kyle Hendricks’s underlying numbers this year and those of last year? He’s walking almost 50% fewer batters. His walks per 9 innings last season were 2.56. This year, they’re 1.33, and the innings sample size is nearly equivalent. Add in that he’s also allowing fewer home runs, and there’s a clear explanation for why he’s been so much more effective: He’s putting the ball where he wants to put it. He’s not striking out nearly as many batters—he hasn’t struck out this few per inning since 2014—but strikeouts were never the point with him. By limiting walks and homers to this degree, he’s doing enough that he doesn’t need to strike many guys out, especially with Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner and Cody Bellinger behind him up the middle.
Speaking of those three, they’re up the middle again tonight, with Seiya Suzuki back into the lineup instead of Mike Tauchman and Patrick Wisdom spelling Nick Madrigal as the Cubs go for the series win in Queens. The Reds lost their day game, but the Brewers won theirs, meaning the Cubs could put a full game of space between themselves and Cincinnati heading into the off-day but can only keep the gap behind Milwaukee to 1.5 games. With the Reds, Brewers, and Marlins all also off tomorrow, a win would mean the Cubs will enter Friday’s game in playoff position regardless of what happens elsewhere tomorrow.
David Peterson’s on the mound for New York. He isn’t having a very good season, but his FIP and xERA are much better than his ERA. They’re close to Hendricks’s numbers. In other words? The work’s cut out for the Cubs. This Mets group is still a very good roster, even if the product on the field has been rough. Hopefully it’s a little less tense than last night by the time Tauchman inevitably finds his way onto the field.
