Honest question.  What are you guys expecting?  12-0 every season.  News flash...You ain't gonna win them all.  8-10 wins every season for the past 3-4 years is solid for this program and just about every program in the nation for that matter.  I hate the losses just as much as every one of you but this football team is not going to go out against good teams (BGSU, Ball State and Kent) and win with 10 projected starters watching the game from the sidelines.  There are so many knee jerk reactions here I can't count them all.  Why weren't you guys all over the coaching job back around the first of October?  They were the same coaches then.  

I don't know if I can put this all on Frank because Groce had this problem too but good Ohio teams seem to find a way to lose to teams that they had no business losing to.

Off the top of my head I'll start with a 6-6 marshall team who just fired their coach in the Pizza bowl in -09. In '10 we missed going to Detroit because a 4-7 Kent State team who had just fired their coach held us to 183 yds offense the day after Thanksgiving (btw the score was 28-6, same as '12.). Last year we were the only FBS team Buffalo beat and we lost to Ball State on homecoming by 3. Then we blow a 20 point lead in Detroit with the worst half of football I've ever seen. And sure, its not fair to leave out all of the close games that we did win but the point is those were all, with the exception of NIU, games against bad teams. We realistically could have been 13-1 last year.

As for this year I firmly believed our losses were because of our injuries but then I got to thinking about how we lost each-

- Miami was lost on a greedy, bone headed play, not injuries.
- BGSU was lost on a complete meltdown by our special teams, cost us 19 points in a game we lost by 12. no body on special teams was injured.
- Ball State, we repeat the Miami bone head play before half but still go into the 4th quarter down 7 but then TT is benched and everyone just gives up. Injuries didn't cause that.
- Kent State, our injured defense hold them to just 14 points but our offense stalls out.

I'm willing to concede the loss to Kent, but 11-1 was a very real possibility. Injuries certainly didn't help but at the end of the day we didn't get it done. why?

I will agree, the opportunities were there! The wins are great, but let's be honest about who we are playing and who we are beating. Heck, half of you want to dump Kent State and in the past 5 years they've owned us! And owned us with losing teams.

please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe these were the circumstances of the 09 game with kent. If I remember right Scott had the flue(throwing up on the sideline) and had to be replaced by Tyler who was getting his first real action, and to say the least it was not a good day for him. No excuses for 2011. The only good thing about that day was a free basketball game that evening. Today wasn't as bad as 2011. As I remember while driving home that evening I listened as Ohio was destroyed by Kansas something like 91-50. As Ludendorf might have said it was the darkest day in Ohio sports history.

The highlighted is true.  Very true.  And bothersome.

Now, I'm not necessarily in favor of firing any of our coordinators or other staffers, but please tell me what injuries have to do with this:

Late in the season (EMU?) we're at the oppo's 10 yard line.  We call a sort of sweep/option to the left side. Oh, no, TT curls back right on a naked roll and hit (Waters?) in the endzone for a TD.  Why did we, apparently, not try that play again the rest of the year.

In, I think, that same late season game, the announcer notes that we have the oppo set up for a twist on the wide receiver screeen.  Fake the screen and send the receiver long.  Bingo, we finally did it vs. kents and our receiver catches it wide open by 10 yards, could've walked into the endzone if ball was not underthrown.  (Called back by unnecessary roughness on our one of our linemen--how do you do that on offense?!)  So, if the 'nouncer saw that any team we faced would bite and the screen and be susceptible to the fly, why did we only do this once all year?  And why did we keep running the wide receiver screen despite it's pretty much ineffectiveness?

Losing--bad.  Losing because our play-calling (on offense and defense) doesn't incorporate plays/formations concepts that one could see by watching a weekend or two of football on TV--headscratching.

This is simple business; if you ain't doing the job, you gotta adjust, you gotta get better.  We don't require innovation necessarily.  We just need to be able to copy well.

This staff has been here eight years?  It is entirely legitimate to ask this question:  Where's the MAC title?

And let's put the Vick instead of Tettleton argument to bed as well. 

As mentioned earlier, we are very fortunate to have Frank in Athens.   Mark May was talking about him being a candidate for coaching vacancies after the game and I cringed.   Don't think it will happen, but would be a huge setback to our program.   

And I think JSF is a good poster....not a great poster.

Bull frikkin shiet.

SBH is a whiny blow hard.

I'm pretty sure that all of this is related to the curse Woody Hayes put on Ohio back in the sixties.

Seriously, there were more serious injuries on this team than I have ever seen on any team. I think that the injuries also sapped morale after awhile, and the whole team played like they were tired and beat up. That made games close that shouldn't have been, and sooner or later bad things are going to happen. It was nice to see them playing like the team we knew they could be in the bowl game, though.

As for Nebraska fans, I'd say that most of them have moved on, and don't think much one way or the other about Solich. Most probably agreed with the firing at the time, but then, after seeing his replacement, regretted it. Keep in mind that in 1967 Nebraska fans wanted to fire Bob Devaney, and that in 1978 they wanted to fire Tom Osborne, so it isn't surprising that in 2003 they wanted fire Solich. Even now there are a fair number that want to fire Pelini.  Is Solich as good a coach as Osborne? Probably not, but few are. He's clearly a very good coach, and better than the average FBS coach. 

To me the interesting thing has been watching him build Ohio in a slow, systematic way. He started with a team with a few very good players, and a lot of horrible players (translate that to "a team with zero depth"). His recruiting classes haven't been outstanding, but have top to bottom contained generally solid players. Add to that generally solid coaches, and you a team that is never horrible, and top to bottom is generally solid, though never flashy.  Then, each year the recruiting classes have gotten a little better, and each year the coaches have gotten a little better, and each year the team has gotten better.

There are as many ways of judging coaching staffs as there are people who do it. For me, the way i judge a job coaching is how the teams perform on the field compared to how the recruiting classes rank. Some coaches consistently have Top 10 recruiting classes, but actual team performance may net them a second ten ranking or less (think Zook). Other coaches have teams that finish higher than their recruiting ranking. At Nebraska Solich generally had recruiting classes ranked about #35, and his teams ranked between #2 and #19 except for 2002. At Ohio his recruiting classes have been #90 or so, and his teams average about #60. Each year, however, the recruiting classes seem to be climbing a little higher. If they can keep recruiting classes in the #65-75 range, which I think they can, I expect teams to rank in the #40-45 range. Realistically that's what this team was, until they got hammered with injuries. I think that's a reasonable goal, and it's basically middle of the B1G level.

What about MAC championships? I agree with Billy the Cat that the first 4 years were a building stage, and they weren't really competitive enough, yet. The last four years they could have won it in any of those years. I have no doubt that, even with Woody Hayes' curse, Ohio will win it one of these years. They are at the point where year in, year out, they are going to be competitive for it. To win it, you need to be competitive, but you also need a little luck. With the injuries this year, luck said 2012 wasn't going to be the year. 2013? Maybe.

I would vote for killing this entire thread......what a bunch of idiots we seem to have on this board at times!!   It gets so boring to read.  The same people, saying the same negative things that are not based on anything that makes any sense at all.  Tired of it.  go away.   Go Bobcats  !
Great jobs by the Bobcats !