Ohio State's Sustained Excellence is Underappreciated

An article in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer pointed out the apparent ongoing resentment directed at the Ohio State Buckeyes football team, mostly by the media, but also by college football fans around the country.

I don’t get that.

The rationale is that the Buckeyes are typically overrated. They beat fair to average teams. They lose to top-tier teams. And so on, and so forth, blah, blah, blah.

Except, dear critics, answer me this: Other than USC, which has far outpaced any college program for the last decade, name me a school that has consistently outperformed Ohio State in recent years.

You can’t, because there isn’t one.

Remember when all this overrated talk started, back when, somehow, the Buckeyes topped the darling Miami Hurricanes to win the national championship? That was at the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, and I guess the nerve of Ohio State to actually topple “The U” was more than the whiners could take. Since then the Buckeyes have been the target of the college football world’s wrath.

OK, let’s look at where things stand.

Here are Ohio State’s final BCS rankings for the last seven years, beginning with 2001, the year they went on to win the national title: 2 – 5 – 25 – 4 – 1 – 1 – 10. Six out of those seven years, they were ranked in the top ten, and their only slip was the 25th place ranking in 2004.

Skipping over USC for the moment, the only other team who can boast similar numbers for the past seven years is Oklahoma: 7 – 1 – 2 – 23 – 10 – 4 – 1. The Sooners, like the Buckeyes, slipped to 23 one year, but have remained in the top ten otherwise, including two #1 rankings – just like Ohio State.

And that’s it. For the past seven years, USC, Ohio State and Oklahoma have been the most consistently high-performing teams in the nation.

Florida won a title two years ago, and is back in the championship game this season. But the Gators finished out of the top ten five of the past seven years. LSU, mighty winners a year ago, didn’t even make the top 25 this year, and was nowhere to be found in the top ten four of the last seven seasons.

Miami, Michigan and Notre Dame? O, how the mighty have fallen. Georgia? Not bad, but their best finish – third – came seven years ago. Texas was strong this year, and won the championship three years ago with Vince Young, but followed that up with two 19th place finishes in a row. They’re similar to Georgia – strong, but not consistently elite.

Oregon? Oregon State? Auburn? Tennessee? Please.

Which brings us back to our point. Yes, the Buckeyes were a disappointment in two consecutive national championship games. You can’t change that. The games were embarrassing. But they didn’t negate the fact that Ohio State was there, and has been at or near the top for this entire decade.

The fact is, Jim Tressel has run a superb program during his eight years at the helm, and is one of the top college coaches in the land. His game plans against Florida and LSU in the last two national championship games left much to be desired, but his overall record of 83-18 at Ohio State speaks for itself – including four Big Ten championships and a 7-1 record against archrival Michigan, which elevates him to near god-like status among the Buckeye faithful.

Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, but the notion that the Ohio State Buckeyes are consistently overrated is ignorant of the facts, plain and simple.

Random Thoughts as December Dawns

Limping to the Finish

The Browns have shot this season all to you-know-where. No news there. It was sad to see Brady Quinn sidelined for the year with a broken finger, just when he was getting the chance to play. It was just as sad to see Derek Anderson go down with a season-ending knee injury in Sunday’s loss to Indianapolis. That some fans jeered as he was helped off the field is distasteful, but then, Browns fans are so frustrated and fed up after 10 years of mostly blatant ineptitude that some of their wrath is bound to be misdirected. It was reminiscent of several years ago when Tim Couch left a game to similar derision, a scenario that was the beginning of the end of Couch’s run in Cleveland.

That said, I was struck by something Anderson said after the game. When asked if we might see Josh Cribbs at quarterback, Anderson responded with a jeer of his own and said anybody who thinks that would have to be “on crack.” You don’t put a receiver at quarterback, he said tersely.

And I thought, why not? First of all, he was a quarterback all the way through his playing days at Kent State. Furthermore, we’re talking about the one guy on the entire roster who consistently, week in and week out, makes plays. Every kickoff or punt return is cause for excitement when the ball is in Cribbs’ hands. Every opposing kickoff or punt return is cause for excitement when Cribbs has a shot at making the tackle -- which, more often than not, he does.

When the Browns started this long downward spiral, Cribbs was one of two players (Jamal Lewis being the other) who dared to say what others only thought: That perhaps some players were guilty of quitting. He later apologized, sort of, because it was the politically correct thing to do, but his words carried weight because, well, he never quits. This on a roster with too many people who seemed to be going through the motions.

This week Cribbs was quoted as saying yes, he could play quarterback, because he did it all his life before the NFL. He admitted it probably wouldn’t happen, but the point was made. “I want the ball in my hands,” he said.

So do the rest of us. I understand turning to Ken Dorsey to steer the sinking ship and I wish him well, but I couldn’t disagree with Anderson more when it comes to Cribbs. If you ask me, if there were 22 guys with number 16 on their jerseys, or at least number 16’s heart in their bodies, this franchise would be a lot better off.


On the Cavaliers…

Earlier this year I bemoaned the presence of Ben Wallace in the Cavs’ starting lineup, because of his age and his offensive shortcomings. It’s early, and the long season could yet take its toll, but I’m happy to admit that, thus far, Big Ben has made me eat those words.

The Cavs are playing championship caliber basketball, and Wallace is a big part of their success. His defensive intensity and rebounding prowess have helped fuel their recent run. I was concerned that perhaps he’d lost the one aspect of his game that had made him so formidable -- that being his intensity. My concern was misplaced. He’s been a one-man wrecking crew at times, and his teammates have picked up on it. That’s leadership, and I tip my cap to him.

Momentum is a funny thing in sports. As miserable as the Browns’ performances have been -- and as much as one lousy game fuels another -- the Cavs’ performances have been dominant. Players are feeding off of one another, and Mike Brown is doing a remarkable job of getting people their minutes.

Give credit to LeBron James on that count. His minutes per game are finally down to a reasonable level, and he’s not complaining at all. He’s getting much-needed rest because the Cavaliers are simply overpowering most of their opponents, and he’s not needed in the fourth quarter of many of those games. As his minutes decline, Brown can spread them among the Cavs’ bench players, and everybody’s happy. You get the sense that LeBron is less interested in accumulating personal stats than he is in getting the ring, and when your leader exhibits that approach, the rest of the team will follow.

Mo Williams and Delonte West are quickly becoming one of the best guard tandems in the league. And Zydrunas Ilgauskas just keeps rolling along, giving other teams fits with his offensive rebounding and outside shooting. Meanwhile, the bench is the deepest it’s been in years -- maybe ever -- and continues to make meaningful contributions night in and night out.

This team is good. Very, very good. I’m already looking forward to May and June.


High school football

I was treated, along with the rest of our town in North Canton, Ohio, to a remarkable season by the Hoover High School football team. The Vikings defied most preseason forecasts by losing just one game in the regular season, winning the Federal League title with a perfect 7-0 league mark, and going on to three straight playoff wins and a regional title.

That’s where it ended, of course, as the Vikings ran into the buzz saw that was Cleveland St. Ignatius in the state semifinals. The Wildcats went on to win the state championship in Division I, but Hoover’s overachieving roster will go down as one of the best teams in school history.

St. Ignatius is to be applauded, but I was struck during the postseason by all the talk of their 10 state championships in the last 20 years. I was reminded of a column last May by Bob Dyer of the Akron Beacon Journal, in which he wrote of the disproportionate advantage that parochial and private schools have over public schools in athletic competition. The stats that he cited were undeniable.

The playing field isn’t level by any means when it comes to private and public schools in Ohio. It’s not the private schools’ fault, of course. But, on the whole, it’s tough for public schools to reach the highest rung on the ladder on a consistent basis. A look at St. Ignatius’ web site reveals that it’s run more like a college than a high school, complete with a sophisticated advancement office that is only too happy to share information about annual gifts, capital gifts, and planned giving. Families pay tuition for their children to attend there. Even the web site suffix, “.edu,” is the one typically used by colleges and universities.

The two schools featured in the Ohio Division I championship game -- Cincinnati Elder being the other -- are both private, all-boys schools. And, unfettered as they are by geographic restraints, they welcome any student who can make the daily drive to their often glittering campuses -- and who can afford their rather hefty tuition fees.

Before Hoover’s game with St. Ignatius, Viking coach Don Hertler put it as politely, and plainly, as it can be put: “They’ve got kids probably from five counties, and we’ve got them probably from five neighborhoods.”

Officials from the Ohio High School Athletic Association acknowledge the disparity, but also lament the complexities involved in operating separate tournaments for public and private schools. I can understand their dilemma, but anyone who saw the St. Ignatius-Hoover semifinal and didn’t come away scratching their head over the issue just wasn’t paying attention.

Again, it’s not St. Ignatius’s fault. The system is what it is. But schools like Hoover only get so far every so often. Perhaps they can find some consolation in the fact that, among public schools in Ohio, they were one of the top two -- the other being the Pickerington Central Tigers, who were a perfect 13-0 before losing to Cincinnati Elder in the other state semifinal game.

Hoover’s football team wasn’t the only one of the school’s squads to make it so far this fall. The girls cross country team, a remarkable collection of talented runners from a small town of 15,000 people, was edged out at the state meet by the perennial powerhouse team from Magnificat High School in Rocky River, a suburb of Cleveland.

Magnificat was nowhere to be found in the boys’ race. That’s because it’s a private, all-girls school.

I checked their web site, too. They have five people in their advancement office.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And so it goes.

In Praise of Phil Dawson

The Browns outlasted the Buffalo Bills Monday night, but that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about Phil Dawson.

Had he kicked for the Browns in just about any other era, he’d be thought of among the team’s all-time greats.

For one, he’d have scored a lot more points. The poor guy had only 53 in the offensively challenged season of 1999, the year the Browns returned to the NFL. He kicked just eight field goals the entire year, and only 23 extra points. Not a lot of opportunities, there.

There would be another season of offensive woe in 2000 before Dawson and the team began to climb out of the abyss, culminating in last year’s 10-6 turnaround (or tease, depending on how you look at it), during which Dawson tallied 120 points -- a respectable total in anybody’s book.

Could you imagine if he’d been kicking for those Browns juggernaut teams of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s?

As it is, Dawson has totaled 852 points in his 9-plus seasons, and one has to believe he’d be well over 1,000 by now had he teed it up for the Browns of eras past.

But it’s a look inside the numbers that is startling.

Dawson has connected on 83 percent of his career field goal attempts. Eighty-three percent! Hall of Famer Lou Groza (left), known as “The Toe,” connected on just 58 percent of his attempts in 17 glory-filled seasons. Don Cockroft, Groza’s successor who spent 13 years with the team, connected on 66 percent.

Breakdowns by yardage aren’t available for Groza’s era, but a comparison of Cockroft and Dawson is even more telling. Including last night’s game winning 56-yard field goal -- a career best -- Dawson has made 10 of 14 career attempts beyond the 50 yard line, a 77 percent success rate. Cockroft? Try 3-of-19, for 16 percent.

This is not to take anything away from Cockroft (left), who doubled as the team’s punter for most of his career. But that’s a stunning disparity. It’s just as significant in the 40-49 yard category, where Dawson has connected 68 percent of the time, to Cockroft’s 52 percent.

Last night’s win over Buffalo illustrated perhaps as much as any game in recent memory why Dawson is so valuable to this team. He was 5-for-5 on field goal attempts. Add in the two extra points and he had 17 of the Browns’ 29 points. Without his steady foot, the game would have been lost.

Dawson is the only remaining player from the 1999 roster and has quietly defined excellence for a decade of seasons wearing the orange and brown. His field goal success rate is the fifth-best in NFL history.

Dawson has gotten stronger, and better, as he’s gotten older. He’s a seasoned veteran with ice in his veins, and quietly gets the job done week in and week out. In fact, there's hardly a time when Dawson comes out on the field when you don't think he's able to make the kick.

In my book, he’s already one of the all-time Cleveland greats. We should enjoy his work and appreciate him while we can.

Score Knew the Score - The Fans Came First

For a generation of Cleveland Indians fans, Herb Score is the voice they will always remember.

It wasn't a particularly mellow voice. He had a peculiar accent, one unlike any I've heard before or since. And he wasn't a polished announcer by any stretch of the imagination.

Instead, Herb came across as one of us, a fan, someone who was enjoying the games he was broadcasting, and who wanted us to enjoy them, too.

That was a pretty tall order during most of the three decades he sat in the Tribe's broadcast booth, first on television from 1964 to 1967, and then on the radio from 1968 to 1997. As Joe Tait, a former broadcast partner of Score's, once said, "Herb Score has seen more bad baseball than anybody."

Score died early Tuesday morning at his home in Rocky River, a suburb of Cleveland. He was 75. I remember when he was on TV, calling the games with Harry Jones; and his earliest days in the radio booth, with Bob Neal. He teamed with Tait in the mid-1970s, and they were the tandem calling the games when I left Ohio for the West Coast in '76.

So it was remarkable, to me, that Herb was still broadcasting the games more than 20 years later, when I moved back to Northeast Ohio in 1997. By then, the Indians were actually good. They had been to the World Series in 1995, losing to the Atlanta Braves. And they returned to the fall classic in that summer of '97, coming oh-so-close to winning it all before losing to the Florida Marlins (it still pains me to say that -- the Marlins?) in seven games.

The tributes began as soon as the news of Score's passing broke -- understandably so. Score was once a budding major league star, with the Indians in the late 1950s. It's been said that he was Sandy Koufax before Sandy Koufax came along -- meaning, of course, that he was the fireballing lefthander who was expected to take the baseball world by storm. But fate wasn't so kind. He was struck in the eye by a line drive off the bat of New York's Gil McDougal in May of 1957 (just a month before I was born), and his once promising career was derailed after that. Score never blamed the incident -- he insisted he encountered arm problems and was simply never the same.

Known for his humility, and his faith, Score jumped at the chance to give broadcasting a try in 1964, and it started a 34-year broadcasting career that became the stuff of legend in Cleveland lore.

Any of us who grew up as Indians fans in the 1960s. '70s, '80s and even '90s cut our teeth on Herb's descriptions of the games. They were simple, direct and free of fluff and bluster. He described what he was watching, to the best of his ability. If that ability was sometimes lacking, he more than made up for it with his knowledge of, love of, and respect for, the game.

Those descriptions of Indians games meant so much to us as fans because we couldn't just turn on the TV and see every game, every night. In those days, only occasional Indians games were televised on weekends, and then only if they were on the road. Home games could be heard only on the radio, and that's where Herb, and his long line of broadcast partners over a 30-year span, came in. We depended on them, and nobody came through quite like Herb.

Herb Score was a legend to multiple generations of Cleveland sports fans. He was already missed, having stepped away from the microphone after the 1997 season. Now, he'll be mourned, too.

The Bright Side of the Browns’ Latest Loss

Unbelievably, the Browns again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory Thursday night, stumbling through a miserable fourth quarter en route to a 34-30 loss to the Denver Broncos – their second straight shocking collapse at home.

Whatever. Dissect it all you want, wail and cry all you want, but today, I’m a pretty happy man. Because the Brady Quinn era has started, and not a moment too soon.

Nothing against Derek Anderson, who accomplished far more in the position than I ever expected, and actually turned in a memorable year in 2007. A Pro Bowl year, in fact. It earned him a hefty new contract, so let’s hold the tears for D.A. I suspect he may turn up as a starter somewhere else down the road, and if that happens I’ll be rooting for him to do well.

But Quinn not only looked sharp in his professional debut, he said things afterward that sounded like the words of a champion. To wit:

"I told everyone, this one is flat on me," Quinn said. "I know I am good enough that I can make a play at the end and win.”

Hear that, Braylon Edwards?

More Quinn: ''There was no doubt in my mind when I walked out there that we were going to score on every drive. If you don't think like that, you're not going to be successful.''

Imagine that.

And finally, commenting on two Phil Dawson field goals, Quinn said this: "The frustrating thing was coming away with field goals instead of touchdowns. Nothing against Phil Dawson, but we've got to get sevens there."

Think about that. Points weren’t enough. Only seven points would have made him happy. Making plays in the clutch, and scoring on every drive, is the only acceptable result.

When is the last time you heard a Cleveland quarterback talk that way?

And this is the guy that the Browns' brain trust left standing on the sidelines for 24 games?

I’ve been to the stadium to see the Browns twice in the last two years. Both times, during warm-ups, there was one quarterback who stood out in my mind: Brady Quinn. He moved like a leader and threw like he was born to do it. Tight spirals. Accurate throws. By comparison, Anderson, Ken Dorsey, and, last year, Charlie Frye, looked average at best.

Well, all that’s changed. Brady has arrived. Take heart, Browns fans.

Where Bad Shooting Happens

OK, back from another prolonged break. These things aren't planned, they just happen.

The Cavaliers opened the new season in ho-hum fashion Tuesday night in Boston, after another Oscar-worthy performance in the pregame ceremony by an over-the-top, tearful Paul "Where's my Wheelchair?" Pierce. Once things tipped off, it was more of the same on the part of the Cavs -- meaning bizzare-o offense, featuring a shocking unfamiliarity with the concept of shooting.

For one thing, you don't win a championship in today's NBA with an aging Ben Wallace in your starting lineup. It's tempting fate enough to field an aging Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who can at least still hold up his end. But Z and Ben, side-by-side?

In the opening minutes of last night's game, Wallace took a feed at the high post and started a dribble drive, when suddenly he looked lost and passed off, despite having a clear path to the hoop. C'mon, Ben, just lay it in, for crying out loud.

From there we were treated to an assortment of offensive hijinks by the Cavs, and the obligatory postgame CYA comments about how "we played well enough to win" and needed to "get stops" and "just didn't put the ball in the basket." Blah, blah, blah.

Professional basketball players who can't shoot are hypocrites. Give me a break. You make millions, have all the time you need during the offseason, and are provided with every amenity and comfort in palatial new practice facilities -- and you can't shoot a ball? It's criminal.

LeBron James is in his sixth season in the NBA. His physical talents are breathtaking. But if I'm an opposing team, I foul him repeatedly at the end of a close game. It's almost guaranteed that he'll brick nearly half of his free throws in those situations. He did it again down the stretch Tuesday night.

What is that?

Ridiculous, that's what. I'm in his corner, and I'm a Cavs fan all the way. But it's indefensible, not just on his part, but for any player at the professional level. Every year we hear from LeBron how he's more dedicated, he's stepped up his game, etc.

Prove it. Make the damn shots. That's all. Just make them.

"Basketball" is so named because the primary object is to put the ball in the basket. The secret to doing that is proper shot selection. If you're a lousy three-point shooter, lay off the three-pointers. If you're a lousy shooter, take a seat. But if you're a lousy free throw shooter, the only answer is to practice and practice and practice until you can't miss. And then you practice some more. (See: Larry Bird.)

I coached kids (at all age levels) for years, and regularly repeated a simple offensive philosophy: Take shots you can make, and make the shots you take.

Good grief. Not another year of this. Please.

Postseason Blues

Honestly, can we calm down a little?

The Dodgers swept the Cubs in the NLDS, finishing things off with a 3-1 victory Saturday. Fair enough. But what's with all the celebrating?

Teams roll out champagne, take curtain calls, and otherwise act like they've won the World Series when, obviously, they haven't. Haven't even won a pennant. Just a series. Still two more to win before they can claim the big prize.

So act like it. Shake hands, wave to the crowd, exchange a hug or two, and go shower up. Lots of business yet at hand.

Which brings me to another pet peeve. "Postseason" records. That's all well and good, but the notion that Manny Ramirez's postseason home run record is comparable to those of Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth is preposterous. Ramirez holds the all-time postseason record with 26 dingers, well ahead of Mantle's 18 or Ruth's 15 -- except theirs were all in the World Series. Every single one. How many World Series home runs does Ramirez have? Four.

No question, you have to get to the World Series to be able to hit home runs there, and Mantle and Ruth had the good fortune to play on powerful Yankee teams that seemingly made it every year. But that's part of the mystique. Theirs came on the biggest stage of all, under pressure like no other in baseball -- and, for their eras, like no other in sports.

Ramirez has hit 22 home runs in divisional and league championship series play, and that's impressive. But let's not lose perspective on what Mickey and the Babe did when they lived up to expectations and delivered time and time again to set the standard for World Series greatness.