Big Me Kickoff

The NFL crowned the Tampa Bay Buccaneers champions just a few short days ago and the NFL calendar is already shifting to some incarnation of the scouting combine as well as pro days and the culminating with the NFL Draft at the end of April.
As with any other NFL Draft, there will be plenty of Ohio State interest with players like Justin Fields, Wyatt Davis, Shaun Wade and others all looking forward to hearing their names called, be it in-person, virtually or some other manner as the NFL continues to move forward.
With so much draft interest around Buckeye Nation, we are bringing in Ryan Roberts, Director of Scouting for NFLDraftBible.com to talk about a handful of Ohio State players who will hear their names called, a couple that opted not to jump into the 2021 draft and a whole lot more.
Plus, we are talking about Ohio State’s former head coach, Urban Meyer, who is now the head coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars and is sitting in a powerful position, not only with the No. 1 pick in the upcoming draft, not only a ton of draft picks, but also more than 77-million dollars in cap space.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – National Signing Day 2021 is in the books and the Buckeyes are sitting with the nation’s No. 2 class, but things are not done with one more player sitting out there and Ryan Day’s Buckeyes are in a good spot with a talented lineman out of the Pacific Northwest.
In this edition of the BIA Podcast (BuckeyeGrove Instant Access) we talk about the class of 2021, even if Wednesday was a slow day in terms of not signing any players, it was a tremendous cycle with 21 players already in the fold, 15 on campus at this point of the game.
Joseph Hastings joins Kevin Noon to talk about the class of 2021 as well as what is ahead for the class of 2022. Is a new Buckeye Bash coming together for this class and why will this one be very different than its predecessor for the class of 2021?
How does line recruiting look for the Buckeyes, not only on the defensive side of the ball but on the offense too and why is it too early to start getting worried?
Plus, we talk about Ohio State recruiting in general, why are Day and his staff just so good at all of this and is the Ohio State brand one of the most powerful in the nation?
All of that and more.

Plenty to discuss today as we are at that odd intersection of getting ready for "winter conditioning" with the football team, the traditional February signing day and the basketball season is in full-swing.

Kevin Noon is talking about all of that in a solo show where we talk about the two major targets left on the Ohio State board, the upcoming QB battle that will be in place with the departure of Justin Fields and of course where the Ohio State men's basketball team stands as we close the month of January.

Plenty going on as we talk about Greg Mattison's decision to retire and what's next there with the Ohio State coaching staff. Plus NFL decisions are in, how did the Buckeyes fare? Plus, should we expand the CFP field? We talk about that and much more.

Ohio State Buckeyes Basketball is now sitting at 11-3 on the 2020-21 season and ranked in the top-25 but there is a very long way to go for this team with at least 11 more regular season conference games to go in a super-competitive Big Ten Conference.

Chris Holtmann’s team is coming off of an impressive road win at Illinois, down a pair of point guards and on the back of a hot shooting afternoon by EJ Liddell as well as some instant offense by Justin Ahrens.

What do we see in the future for this team as the grinder of the B1G continues to chew teams up and spit them out? Join Kevin Noon and Marcus Horton as we talk about the season that is already in the book and what is ahead for this Buckeye team.

The Big Ten has made it to the finish line, barely. We are here on the eve of the Big Ten Championship Game and the Buckeyes and Wildcats are set to compete for a league crown as champions of their respective divisions.

The path for each of these teams have been very different however as the Buckeyes have run through their schedule putting up a bunch of points, maybe allowing a few too many as well as too many passing yards in second halves but then having to sit back and see if the league would alter a rule that would have prohibited the Bucks from competing for a league crown, despite having a head-to-head win over the second place team.

On the other side the Northwestern Wildcats have played close games, won with defense and have a game that nobody can quite explain where the Cats tripped up against a Michigan State team that really had no business competing with Pat Fitzgerald’s crew.

What happened over the past eight weeks will not matter once this game kicks off on Saturday at 12pm EST (FOX) and 60 minutes of football stand between Ohio State and its fourth consecutive Big Ten Championship or Northwestern’s first in quite some time.

We catch up with our good friend Louie Vaccher of WildcatReport to talk a little bit more about Ohio State’s opponent and put everything into perspective.

See our Picks: https://ohiostate.rivals.com/news/staff-predictions-northwestern-6

See Louie's Pick: https://ohiostate.rivals.com/news/behind-enemy-lines-northwestern-39

COLUMBUS, Ohio – We are all still reeling from the news that “The Game” has been called off for this year and the Buckeyes are still looking for a dance partner for this weekend. There is a lot of significance when it comes to getting to six games for Ohio State, or any team in the Big Ten for that matter.

According to rules that are currently in place, there is no opportunity to be in the Big Ten Championship Game without having competed in at least six games, based on rolling averages of games played and things of that nature. That rule, like most things, could be subject to change but as of now, is still in place.

We don’t know who else may not be able to go in the Big Ten and if the Buckeyes will be able to find someone to play against this upcoming weekend to get to Indy to try and defend its crown as Big Ten Champion.

But it does bring up an interesting thought if the Buckeyes were able to go out of the league and find a non-conference opponent. A game last weekend between BYU and Coastal Carolina came together at the 11th hour and provided one of the more entertaining games of the season.

Texas A&M saw its game canceled against Ole Miss this week as the Mississippi program was dealing with its own COVID issues and now the Aggies would like to find someone to play as they sit outside of the top-four in the College Football Playoff rankings, strangely enough, just behind the Buckeyes who are No. 4 in those rankings.

We want to preface this whole discussion by saying that we are well aware that the league shot down Nebraska earlier this year when the Huskers’ game against Wisconsin was canceled and while the Huskers found an opponent, the league said that was not an option.

But what if this game was green-lit and allowed to happen?

It has been a week of highs and lows for the Ohio State program and we are going to try and talk about a few of them in this edition of the BuckeyeGrove Instant Access (BIA) podcast. A couple of wins and a big commit on the basketball side of things and a second game canceled for the Ohio State football team and a lot of uncertainty moving forward as we are unsure what the future may hold in terms of the 2020 season.
We start off the show by joining longtime friend Bill Bender of The Sporting News to talk about all of the happenings on the college football side of things. Bill is no stranger to college football and we have a deep conversation about some of the rules that the Big Ten has in place and why Kevin Warren and the leadership must address these issues if they want to have any sort of credibility when it comes to crowning a champion.
Does the 21-day rule still make sense? Who has been the biggest surprise this year? We touch upon all of that.
Then we head to basketball with BuckeyeGrove’s own Jake Spegal, who makes his debut on the BIA show. We recently had the commitment of Bruce Thornton to Chris Holtmann’s program, what does that mean? What does the rest of the class of 2022 look like? We talk about all of that.
Plus, we go over what we have seen out of the first two games of the season and a whole lot more from the hardwoods.

Not a member of BuckeyeGrove but interested in checking things out? Now is the time with our CYBER MONDAY special. Get your first year for just 75-dollars AND get a $75 gift code from Nike to pick up some of your favorite Ohio State gear. Be sure to use code: NIKE75.

Ohio State Buckeyes Football 2020 is off to a 4-0 start so far this season but the most recent against Indiana had a weird feeling to it as the Buckeyes got up big, saw the Hoosiers not go away and really needed to take it to the final possession.

Andy Anders joins Kevin Noon on this Monday edition of the podcast to talk about what we know and what we don't know.

The Buckeyes entered the 2020 season as heavy favorites to win the Big Ten season and has changes and alterations to the schedule took place as the conference had an on-again, off-again approach to things, the biggest fear for Ohio State fans was that COVID would be the biggest opponent in the grand scheme of things.

As we learned on Wednesday, COVID has taken a bite out of the Ohio State season but not at Ohio State’s fault as Maryland had to call off Saturday’s game with the Buckeyes due to concerns around the Terrapins program.

So now the Buckeyes will have a seven-game schedule, at best before a hopeful trip to the Big Ten Championship game. We will never know for sure what would have happened if the Buckeyes and Terps would have played but we caught up with our friend Scott Greene of Terrapin Sports Report to get his views on the Terps and what may have been if these two teams would have been able to meet in College Park. (Md.).