Draw a few lines on a piece of paper, one from lower-left to upper-right (field-skewed goal line), then bisect that line with a vertical line (the plane of the goal line), then draw a football that almost touches the right side of vertical line, but is above the slanted (goal) line. The perspective shows a football that is past the painted goal line, but not quite reaching the plane of the goal line, given it’s vertical height from the ground. Conclusion: another TD gift from the Refs.

Bonus link: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/suicide_letter_full_of_simpsons

On Pryor: could it, just possibly, be the case that his being a little dinged up is a blessing in disguise? That it’s constrained him to take what’s there (like EVERYBODY has been screaming for him to do) rather than succumb to his natural tendency to try and do “too much”? I don’t know – this is pure conjecture on my part (which, along w/ hearsay, is a KIND of evidence – sorry, once I get on a Simpsons jag it’s kind of hard for me to stop), but: the gameplan seemed awfully light on options, included NO (if memory serves) QB draws, etc. Of course, a gimpy Pryor is still capable of being a deadly weapon – that 12-yard scramble on 3rd-and-11 on the last TD drive was notable for both the dagger-like quality of it AND for its further confirmation that if you lose contain on Terrelle you’re pretty much effed. I mean, on that particular play it’s not like the PSU guy took a bad angle so much as there just was no angle to take that could have possibly BEEN good – how do you attack a guy that looks like he’s running in slow motion when you’re running as fast as you can?

On Spitler: I don’t know that he performed badly; he made at least one great play in the backfield – but on that first big gainer of Zug’s (the swing pass to the left) he looked like he was running in cement, as he has on a few other occasions this year. Not to mention that Small almost broke both of his legs, his pelvis, and his back on that TD in the Spring Game. He’s an extremely solid assignment player, a leader, and a badass vs. the run; he just lacks speed. The danger is that since he seems to be a situational guy, that lack can be exposed as it was on that play by the teams we’re going to face from here on out – competent playcallers (like, for example, DickRod and Chip Kelly) can suss out that a given down-and-distance means that Spitler’s likely to be on the field and plan accordingly.

I second the observation that the plays on the last TD drive were expertly called by whoever it was that called them – the end-around to The Ghost was genius. Wasn’t the aforementioned Boren-flattens-Lee-then-catches-a-pass-for-a-1st-down play on that drive as well? And on 3rd down, no less? And finally, the TD play was also a thing of beauty – I don’t know if I’ve seen us do that yet this year, or whether we’ve tried to and it just wasn’t executed, but holy cow – talk about putting the defense in a bind. There isn’t a LB in the country that could’ve done anything on that play.

On Clark’s “TD”: I just don’t know – I think reasonable people can disagree about whether it was a score or not. The replay we viewers saw – sadly – was in fact inconclusive: ABC’s “goal-line” camera was quite obviously NOT set up EXACTLY ON the goal line, but a little skewed toward the field. The analogy here is the infuriatingly offset view that baseball viewers get on pretty much every pitch. A better question, now that the question of whether it was a score has been rendered moot, is: How in the world is this possible? I know that the replay officials have access to views that the TV viewers don’t, but how can there not be two (to cover both sides of the field) network cameras set up EXACTLY on the goal line to give the TV viewers an accurate picture of what’s happening on the field? Ugh.

And one thing that no one seems to have mentioned is that Sabino attempted to call timeout before the play started!!!! See minute mark 3:15 in the above video.

I’m happy as hell, but I have read some disturbing comments from Pryor about how much pain he is in from his ankle. Iowa’s offense is underwhelming, but don’t sleep on their defensive line. One well timed pass rush from the Iowa front-four could knock Pryor out of the game this weekend. In my opinion, a match-up between two dominant defenses respectively quarterbacked by James Vandenberg and Joe Bauserman is 50-50 and pick-em. The Buckeye O-line will be the key as to whether we smell the roses.