Around the Big Ten: Mark May’s biggest disappointment in Week 1? Surprise, surprise it is Ohio State
Mark May wasn’t that impressed with Ohio State’s output in the first work of the college football season. In fact, the former ESPN analyst and two-time Super Bowl winner thought that Ohio State was among the biggest disappointments of the first full week of the season.
This, after Ohio State pulled off what might arguably have been the most impressive win to start the season.
In a battle of two teams ranked in the top five, Ohio State beat Notre Dame last Saturday night 21-10. It wasn’t a sloppy home win for the Buckeyes, but some national pundits felt that it lacked the punctuation point many had predicted when Ohio State went into the game the heavy favorite.
To poo-poo Ohio State’s win is a big discredit to Notre Dame, especially since the Buckeyes beat a top-five teams by double-digits. That is impressive in and of itself but, well, that is neither here nor there.
“I was a little surprised by Ohio State’s offense, I was kind of disappointed because they are the No. 1 offense in the country,” May said on the Crowd’s Line.
“They couldn’t get anything generated.”
The duo of Holtz and May appear weekly on the Crowd’s Line, reprising their popular debate format from their time as ESPN analysts. Holtz was head coach of Notre Dame and led them to the national championship in 1988.
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May, a former collegiate standout at Pittsburgh, had a solid NFL career that included a Pro Bowl selection and two Super Bowl titles.
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Holtz praised Notre Dame for forcing Ohio State to run the ball.
“Notre Dame played them with two-men under, two-deep and Notre Dame just forced them to run the football – and they did. They come out in the second half and they’re going to run the football when they get the lead,” Holtz said.
“All of a sudden Notre Dame did blitz once and, well, Ohio State hit them for a touchdown. It goes back to the game plan. On the other hand, I don’t think Notre Dame really had a good game plan as to how they were going to attack the defense. They tried this, they tried that.”
Both Holtz and May like the job done by Georgia in getting an impressive win over Georgia.
“They played well. They lost five first-rounders off that defense,” Holtz said.
“They played so very very well and you had to be impressed with them on both sides of the ball, offense and defense.”
