Hey, hey, where you been? But got talk is about to begin. Hey, hey, hey, come on in.

Welcome back on a Monday morning. It's Doug Lamarice with a new book. I talk for you. I like this one. We're introducing our bracket. It is the 64 best games of this century, starting with Jim Tressel's inaugural season in 2001 and running through the 2021 season. So we are doing a 64 game bracket all wins. This is six. That's 64 best games. 64 best

wins. And to help us have fun introducing that we have a tremendous guest today. He's Albert Breer. He is one of the finest NFL reporters in all the land. He works for SI dot com works for sports illustrated runs the Monday morning quarterback part of that online. Absolute NFL insider knows so much stuff. I've seen this guy work seen him in action. And he does it as well as anybody out there. And he's in Ohio State grad.

And he's a loyal Ohio State football fan. So on this podcast, the brunt of this is Albert visiting with us to talk about his life as an Ohio State fan and some of his most memorable games because he hits right in this range here. He is at Ohio State at the end of John Cooper era and the crossover into the Tressel era. So then he leads and then now as an adult, his fandom is this era.

So we just have a good time with Albert. We talk about what it's like to be a journalist, but also have this thing that you love as a fan. And then we talk about sort of he has some insider knowledge right of being around the team with his NFL connections, but also he has a lot of fan knowledge. He tries to go to these big games. He tries to make time in his schedule. So we talk about his favorite games, his favorite teams, sort of the different errors in Ohio State football.

And I think it's a good introduction to this bracket, which is going to be voted on by our tech subscribers. If you want to be a tech subscriber, get in now 614-350-3315.

I'm going to make the bracket. The bracket is not yet finalized. There are four groups of games, but I'm not going to have them stick in their own regions because some of the brackets are just some of the regions would just be more high profile than others then.

Because one area that we have 16 games from is Michigan wins in this era. One is postseason wins. So that's all the bowl games, all the college football playoff games, all the big 10 championship games.

Then the other two regions would be home games that aren't Michigan and away games that aren't Michigan. So that's how I selected them with the help of the tech subscribers.

There's definitely one game that needed to be in there that I forgot that when I sent out the textures and said, hey, how's this group look? They said, hey, what about this one? I was like, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right.

That was the 2014 road win at Michigan State, the revenge game. I made sure I got that thing in there. So we're going to go through. I'll tell you all the games at the end, but I'm going to shake it up and make the bracket and have them all just cross over.

So I'm going to seed the bracket in my mind. I'm not going to tell you my seeds, though, because I don't want my seeding to affect the voting, which has happened in the past, but I will tell you of these 64 games.

26 are from the Jim Tressel era, the 10 years of Jim Tressel. One is from Lucvickals, one year, 28 are from Urban Myers, seven seasons, and nine are from the three years of Ryan Day. Now, big 10 championship games, more playoff games, there's more opportunities right in the in the Meyer and Day era.

Tressel didn't have all those games, and then if the bowl game is a loss, you can't be in here, right? So 2006 national championship, 2007 national championship, 2008 Fiesta Bowl against Texas.

They're not in here because they're not wins, but also there was this time some of the Tressel era games got a little boring because they were so methodical and so good. They didn't have like super exciting games.

Sometimes I also will tell you there it was much harder to pair down the 16 away games. There are not necessarily 16 great home games that are not Michigan games in the last 21 years of Ohio State football.

Because a lot of the home games they're like dominating wins and then they've had this history of the close games at home against good opponents. They don't win.

They don't win those games.

Texas 05 lose at home. USC 09 lose at home Virginia Tech 14 lose at home Oklahoma 17 lose at home Oregon 21 lose at home. So this can't be in here.

So the home games there's some in there where it's more like just great individual memorable performance, maybe not a great game, but a great experience, but the road wins baby.

There's some humdingers in there. So our VL all 64 games at the end, but right now we're going to get to Albert Breer so gracious with this time. I think a fun, especially anybody like who this is your era of Ohio State football. I mean, it's all your air.

If you're listening to this, this is part of your era, but if this is like how you became an Ohio State fan, sort of the post Cooper.

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