Tony Petitti is the former president of sports and entertainment of Activision Blizzard. He was formerly the chief operating officer of Major League Baseball. He succeeded Rob Manfred in the position on January 25, 2015, after Manfred became Commissioner of Baseball. He previously served as the president and chief executive officer of the MLB Network, where he oversaw all of the network's day-to-day operations.
Ah so the B1G will start to be inaccessible like baseball is cool cool cool. Also, pretty sure Blizzard had/has a shit ton of discrimination issues Spoiler I know nothing about him and am making a blanket statement
I'll take this as a good thing if he brings Greg Amsinger in to be a studio host for B1G sports. Will be disappointed if not.
Ohio State post-Spring summary: QB McCord was okay in the Spring game, not great. He was pressured repeatedly. Devin Brown did not play due to injury. We’re not going to name a starter. WR and RB starters mostly did not play. Freshman Carnel Tate had a nice TD. OL has work to do. The DL mostly beat them. RT remains wide open. DL and LBs were good. LB CJ Hicks had a good game, should have had two picks but dropped them. CBs looked good, probably the biggest upside and pleasant surprise of the game. Good coverage and active pass breakups. We shouldn’t lose again until probably 2025.
We will have plenty of L's, probably about 8-10 next year. Would be happy to share those, if you need one before 2025 let us know.
Both were 25ish in rank. There are a few 2022 guys who will likely start this year (for better or worse), but many also already left via the portal. 2023 was a very small class. As a result, we're still slamming the program with 10+ transfers/year as well, hoping for both multiple starters and to hit the lotto again. I am not sure we brought in anyone via either route who will immediately elevate the level of play. Our OL was healthier this spring which was great to hear, but I don't see much to make me think we would be more than incrementally improved. The defense will probably be trash again. Also, the 2024 recruiting class is a disaster and Tucker is turning over the entire recruiting staff. The new recruiting staff, supposedly, will improve the results by setting our sights lower. Which is great to hear since tucker never really improved recruiting to the level he promised to begin with... We are probably fucked for a while.
On paper, the Big Ten East looks rough this year as well. Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State all should start the season in the top-10. Locksley made interesting coaching hires this off-season—Gattis and Sumlin. He has Taglovia back as well.
Should be run heavy on offense this year. Cephas will help the WR room, but passing game is a question mark. The defense is weakness up the middle (DT and MLB), but a lot of playmakers on the outside. i feel good about the year, but the Ohio state and Michigan game will make or break the season. A loss in any other game would disappoint me.
This should be Ohio State’s best defense since 2019, but it’s all relative as we watched Michigan and Georgia outscored us 39-6 in the fourth quarter of our last two games. Our DBs looked much better this Spring. We could have two transfers starting.
We have a ridiculous amount of skill talent returning on offense—every WR, every RB, and our top TE returning. McCord looked okay, not great at QB. The OL has people freaking out. The OL has people freaking out every year though. Last year, they were freaking out that Paris Johnson wouldn’t make a smooth transition to LT because he had a rough spring game.
We picked up two transfer kickers and had four kickers attempt a FG or extra point on Saturday. No one knows what we’re doing there.
Locksley has done a pretty good job at Maryland. They played UM and OSU well last year. They're a pretty strong #4 team and should at least be able to stay at this kind of level going forward.
Maryland gave us fits in 2022. We needed a 45 yard FG in the fourth to make it 36-30 and we didn’t put the game away until a scoop/score fumble with less than a minute left.
We should do a Freaky Friday and exchange Special Teams coaches with you. Would anyone actually notice?
If your special teams coordinator has ever contributed anything at all to a single recruit, we win that exchange.
I hope everyone is okay, but Carnell Tate should probably transfer and find a better mentor because I think it would be cool if Michigan didn't have to play against him the next three years.
Against Michigan, we had a perfect alignment on a fake punt and called a fake punt, but our long snapper snapped it to the punter instead of the up man who would have run easily for first down. Instead we almost got it blocked because our punter wasn’t expecting the snap. Against Georgia, we had a fake punt called while leading 38-27, but Kirby Smart recognized it and called time out. We had 12 men on the field. We gave this guy a $200,000 raise.
That fake punt fuckup changed the game, and Day ate so much shit for being too conservative when he really made an inspired call. I enjoyed it immensely.
I gotta say I enjoy the OSU machine coming off the tracks at times due to their Inability to cut underperforming bottom tier position coach staffers
They let the former OL coach stay around about two years too long, years in which they completely ignored the OT position outside of offering kids they could get without trying. After hearing the spring practice reports and watching the spring game, I’ve got a bad feeling that this is the year it finally catches up to them.
Ryan Day loves fake punts in big games. In the 2019 Big Ten title game, he called a fake punt on 4th and 9 at our own 26 while trailing 14-0.
This is all true but, Brian has a benchmark in writing to hit that 25ppg, and it doesn’t even have to be all offensive points, defense and kick/punt returns count.
Our coaches had a press conference today and Brian Ferentz was quoted as saying “ We are working on the same things as we have in years past, just trying to get better at them.” The rest of the conference has been out on notice, we are coming for that 25ppg.
There’s no real reason to make drastic changes when they brought in a QB who fits that offense perfectly and knows how to win the Big Ten. Iowa is going to easily win the west as long as they have a normal Iowa defense and special teams.