ISU -2 early? I would expect a lot of early $ to come in on ISU and for this to widen.

Do any bars open up early for gameday for a quick bite and a beer? Jackie O's? Pigskin?

Bringing in some friends from Iowa State, Noon kickoff is tough for showing people around beforehand. Dont know how much time we're gonna have after the game, unfortunately.

Pigskin opens at 11. Courtside at 11:30.

That might be cutting it too close for four people to pop in and run it all the way back down Court in time for kick-off.

I took a little anecdotal tour of some of the ISU message boards this morning. Not sure I’ve ever visited an opponents’ board(s) in the past that have been as dismissive of our chances as theirs are. Golly. Rethinking whether I should even go now. Maybe they end up being right about it but wow!

They know a few things. They totally killed us last year, they’re Big 12- we’re MAC, they have a pretty good to great defense, we have a pretty good to great defense, and we don’t look good offensively. We have to hope that our offense gets it legs, our defense is for real, and they don’t really come to play. As others have said, this is not a good opponent to get going offensively against. I just hope we get our turnovers under control and it ends up being a competitive game.

If you look at their game by game results last year, they had a TON of close losses. TCU was literally the only team to beat them by more than a score. That combined with them stomping us makes me think this is tough and the 2 point line is too small. But each season is new and I hope the guys are amped to have the P5 team in Athens.

I agree P5 message boards tend to react this way and I’ll give them that they do have evidence of general overall superiority but I didn’t see, unless I overlooked it, one poster even saying as much as Ohio could be a pretty good G5 team. I think one person did say, incorrectly of course, that we did win the MAC last year.

Although the scores were similar last year, I think if we had applied the Penn State gameplan, effort, and discipline to the Iowa State game, the latter would have been far more competitive. Penn State I at least saw an aggressive and focused attempt to score, but were just out-athleted and out-depthed towards the end. The ISU effort was inexcusably poor. We looked completely ill-prepared and soft.

You can't post to their main board without subscribing to their wesbite and we probably have more lurkers looking for information this week from the other school than normal so I feel like maybe a summary about this team is in order.

-We have the returning MAC player of the year in quarterback Kurtis Rourke. We run a spread option but Rourke's strength is as a dropback passer. He is the younger brother of former Bobcat and current Jaguar Nathan Rourke. Kurtis is much taller and has a bigger arm and faster 40 time than Nathan but lacks Nathan's agility.
-Rourke tore is ACL near the end of the regular season last year and wasn't medically cleared to play until the Monday prior to our week 0 game with SDSU.
-We had the top offense in the MAC last year even though the offense was slowed by playing the last four games without Rourke.
-We had a new defensive coordinator last year and switched schemes. We were giving up 40.6 points, 561 yards, and 387 passing yards per game through six games last season. We won three of them in shootouts and took another to OT. Even FCS Fordham and FBS doormat Akron lit us up. We weren't going to keep up against top notch defenses in Penn State and Iowa State and got blown out.
-Ohio allowed 18.0 points, 321 yards per game in the final six regular season games. Then held Toledo to 17 in the MAC Championship but didn't win missing our first and second string QBs. Then beat Wyoming in the Arizona Bowl. The MAC Championship was Ohio's only loss in the final 9 games. The competition might have been a little worse in the second half even though Fordham and Akron came in the first half mostly because Penn State was probably easily the best offense Ohio faced.


-Rourke was knocked out in the first quarter of the SDSU game and sat out the second game. Likely, it was a mild concussion but the staff has been hush, hush about it.
-Ohio returns 9 of 11 starters on offense. One of the new starters is receiver Jacoby Jones who was easily statistically our second best receiver last year behind only Ohio State transfer Sam Wiglusz. Jones missed the first two games and Wiglusz sat out one and was a game time decision in another. Rourke and both receivers played against FAU but the offense was sluggish and disappointing. Ohio had 45 rushing attempts in each of the last two games which was uncharacteristic with Rourke under center last year.
-Ohio only returns 6 starters on defense. The defense has looked surprisingly good giving up only 13 points and 64 rushing yards per game.

-Most of us believe that if it stays healthy it is only a matter of time before the offense is at least close as good as it was with Rourke healthy last season. It has had its problems with health and Rourke finding himself after a serious injury. We hope the second half performance from last year and the early returns on the defense this year is a real improvement from the first half of last season.

Hoping Albin and staff are scheduling a lot of recruits to be on campus this weekend. Weather is looking good, gotta believe a sold-out (or near sellout) Peden, and hopefully a competitive game for OUr Bobcats with a rare P5 opponent in town.

I scanned the ISU boards, and to summarize them, they expect to win by >20, and if they don't their coach should be fired; whether Ohio is good or not is irrelevant, because they are a MAC team. The biggest thing that puzzles them is the point spread, which they can't figure out, because Ohio had a bad defense (last year), and Ohio's offense hasn't done much, yet, this year. Among hundreds of posts, one poster was aware that Rourke is very good, and another was aware that Ohio is playing better defense this year.

 

And they are... it's like 80% bets for ISU at this line.