While I agree with you on Michigan, I feel it’s a bit different situation than with tOSU.
UM lost their coach, and a lot of staff, to avoid the NCAA (like they did shit.) UM also lost their big advantage, and no more signs to steal (once the comms were finally encrypted, but we played early enough in the season the non-encrypted comm situation wasn’t really out there. (How the fuck did the ncaa NOT give any consideration to that? This ain’t nascar!)
On top of them losing a lot of talent.
With tOSU, we pretty much only have the normal talent loss to factor in, and consider their replacements. Of course we can only look at last season tape, maybe the season before, to see a) what could be possible, and b) how much they may progress year over year. Need to take some other variables into consideration as well.
I think it’s shaping up to definitely be a marquee matchup, and could honestly go either way. It could come down to who gets the right break at the right time, in whatever form. A challenged call, turnovers, blown (or wrong) assignment, etc.
Being game 1 is a kicker. You haven’t had a sniff at getting the live game rust knocked off, even if just one game against inferior competition.
I expect a few mistakes, both from returning to real play, as well as a few nerves early on.
Now, tOSU has a similar situation on their hands as well. We lost some people, and they have to also figure out and estimate how well our replacements can perform. So pretty much we both start from the same place essentially.
With researching those players, on either side, it’s going to come down to how much accurate evaluation either team can do, along with realistic projections from research on last season and if they have one before that to establish some form of progress in capability to project the jump to this year.
It’s also going to come down to how well each program can keep it all locked down. Whether through spin in the press; what’s fed to journalists, and maybe we continue to probe for leaks, which would be wise to continuously monitor (I assume tOSU does something similar, but who knows for real these days, so I guess don’t necessarily trust their press.)
Barring unfortunate events in fall camp, I expect everything will be at the highest of levels and expectations, as well as all drills having some impact on preparation for tOSU, and of course for the season as a whole.
It’s going to certainly live up to the hype, I think we can all agree on that at least. Who comes out on top when the 4th quarter hits 0:00.0? It looks to ve a close one that could go either way. I’m expecting Texas to find a way, using the tools that we can, and really hoping we don’t have to get too deep into the playbook, or maybe have a handful of plays just for this game that we don’t use later. A bit easier to accomplish being the first game of the season. Then we can focus a bit more on the main playbook the next couple of weeks during the OOC slate.
Off that topic, but relating to OOC, have we considered moving one OOC opponent to November? NOT FCS, of course, but one of the non-marquee schools we’d normally play OOC.
Seems easy enough to do, since league schedules only come out less than a year prior, and those games are scheduled well in advance of that.