If you’re in Ohio right now and you look out your window, it won’t look much like spring. If you were inside the Ohio State football facilities, however, you’d notice plenty of similarities with March and April.
Spring football is a time of fundamentals and technique. It is also a time when young players get to show what they can do. The same holds true during bowl practices.
Right now, the Buckeyes are indoors practicing and preparing for USC and the Cotton Bowl, which kicks off December 29. There is quite a bit of time from when the game was announced to when it will be played. Ohio State doesn’t use that entire time to get ready for the Trojans, they use a large bulk of it for other things, including putting the young players to work on stuff that they don’t normally get to do during the season.
“The young guys get a lot more reps during bowl practice,” senior left tackle Jamarco Jones said. “During the season, it’s a lot of scout work, so they’re running other teams’ offenses and defense. Especially as young guys just trying to give us looks, they don’t really work on our stuff as much.”
Working on the scout team is tremendous experience, but what those players are taught changes from week to week. One week they are trying to do what Michigan State does. The next week they’re trying to do what Illinois does. The week after that, they’re wearing winged helmets and trying to accurately emulate the Wolverines.
They never really get to be Buckeyes, and like anything else in life, you can’t blossom until you are truly yourself.
Bowl prep helps that process move along.
“This is a good chance for them to get to go through our plays and work on fundamentals and techniques and stuff,” Jones said. “That’s like the first phase of bowl season for us is working on technique and fundamentals, which kind of gets washed up during the season with so much going on, you can’t really focus on it as much, so without game planning for a specific team, we’re able to do that.
“I think that’s probably the reason why you see so much development in young guys. It’s pretty much like an early spring ball in a way because you don’t have a game for so long.”