Tress is an honorable man, but I don’t believe FOR ONE SECOND his passive formulation that the play simply comes down from upstairs and he simply passes it along, having nothing to do with the play-CALLING other than a veto every once in a while – that’s the kind of Senator-speak I was referring to before. One of the reasons I don’t believe it is that the last couple years, most of what we hear from him about the process has come in the context of being asked about what the hell is WRONG with the offense, play-calling, etc. – he’s a loyal guy and he’s not about to throw Bollman (or anybody else, including himself, of course) under the bus in public. Whatever the nuts and bolts of the process are, Tressel is definitely running it, which is to say COORDINATING it (contrast this with the defense, where he pretty much totally leaves Heacock alone to do as he will).

This is all as you would expect, given his playing/assistant coaching career. And everybody knows that as long as Tressel’s around, Ohio State is going to have a BASICALLY conservative, ball-control-and-field-position-based overall offensive approach (with flexibility; see 2006). But that doesn’t have to mean plodding, boring, and totally conventional – there’s room for attitude and aggressiveness. I don’t think anybody wants Tress to turn into Steve “IN THE 2ND QUARTER, I WILL CALL A TRICK PLAY” Spurrier; what most of us are hoping/asking for is something, ANYTHING to break up the vanilla, self-defeatingly risk-averse Tressel-Bollman feedback loop. Hopefully Uecker can provide that, and – more importantly – maybe it’s a sign that Tressel understands the problem ITSELF rather than just liking Uecker in particular.

(ed. note – “Fifty Yard Touchdown” and “Steve ‘IN THE 2ND QUARTER, I WILL CALL A TRICK PLAY’ Spurrier” shamelessly stolen from EDSBS)

Oh and Seth4Bucks…………..

I-O……..

Give mustache rides?

Maybe somebody can help me out with something: isn’t the primary responsibility of an Offensive Coordinator to game-plan and call plays? Leaving aside his OL coaching duties, what exactly has Bollman been doing all this time? Everything I’ve ever heard from Tressel on the subject is basically meaningless Senator-speak. But Tressel calls the plays, right? As in, makes the final decision about which play gets called? So even if Bollman is presenting Tress with options, is that necessarily a task that’s commensurate with his title? I really don’t know the answers to these questions, so can anybody with any knowledge, or even just third-hand “inside info”, tell me: aside from coaching the offensive line, what exactly does Bollman do?

O-H!