Since July 1, notifications that some Ohio State football player has been named to the watch list for a postseason award have been landing in my email inbox almost daily.
Sometimes it has been several times a day.
What this means is (a.) Ohio State is very good; (b.) as national champion, the Buckeyes are getting a lot of attention and maybe the benefit of the doubt; (c.) there are a whole lot of postseason awards and a really long list of players nominated for those awards.
OSU players appear 17 times on 14 award watch lists, including some who are on more than one list.
Junior defensive end Joey Bosa leads the way with four nominations. He’s up for the Walter Camp Award for college football’s best player, for the Lombardi Award for the best lineman, for the Nagurski Award and for the Bednarik Award, both given to the best defensive player in college.
Linebacker Joshua Perry, running back Ezekiel Elliott, defensive lineman Adolphus Washington and quarterback Cardale Jones are all on three watch lists. Quarterback Braxton Miller and offensive linemen Taylor Decker and Pat Elflein are on two and six other Buckeyes are mentioned on one list.
How much this means this early is debatable. The Nagurski Award, for example, has 92 players on its watch list, including 17 from the Big Ten alone.
A few other things to think about, other than who’s going to be the starting quarterback, in the 50 days until OSU’s opener:
ANOTHER LIST: For the third year in a row, the Big Ten Network had eight writers from websites that cover the Big Ten rank the best football uniforms in the conference.
Michigan has been voted the best uniforms for the second consecutive year. Ohio State was second and Penn State was third, followed by Michigan State, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northwestern, Maryland, Illinois, Rutgers, Purdue and Indiana.
Michigan got four first-place votes, Penn State had three and OSU got the other one.
The greatest disagreement was about Iowa’s uniforms, which received one vote as high as second and another as low as No. 14. Indiana’s jerseys did not finish higher than tenth on any ballot.
YET ANOTHER LIST: The Big Ten has more games in high demand on the secondary ticket market than any conference other than the Southeastern Conference, according to ticket broker vividseats.com.
Seven of the top 25 college football games with the highest median price are Big Ten games. That trails only the SEC, which has 12 games in the top 25.
OSU’s home game against Michigan State on Nov. 21, with a median asking price of $325 is No. 8 on the top 25 list. Its Oct. 17 game at home against Penn State is No. 10. The season opener at Virginia Tech is No. 13 and the Nov. 28 game at Michigan is No. 16.
The highest priced game nationally, according to espn.com, is Texas at Notre Dame on Sept. 5, with a median asking price of $800.
NO NAMES: Penn State football coach James Franklin is returning to the tradition of not putting the Nittany Lions’ names on the back of their jerseys.
Former coach Bill O’Brien put names on the jerseys in 2012 to honor the players who stayed when they entire roster was eligible to transfer after major NCAA sanctions were imposed because of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
“It’s time we bring back the tradition that represented Penn State for 125 years,” Franklin said. “We are a strong family, playing for one goal and one university. There is only one name that matters – Penn State.”
HARBAUGH EFFECT: Michigan, which nearly saw its decades-long streak of 100,000-plus crowds at home games last season, has seen ticket sales improve since Jim Harbaugh was hired as coach.
The 89,975 season tickets it has sold this year are the most since 2012. And the 17,899 student tickets it has sold is up from 11,597 last year. Prices for student tickets were also reduced this year.
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