I wasn't there, and I don't know why long and rambling answers to questions are called "nuggets," but this is some of what Ohio State coach Jim Tressel had to say at the Big Ten media day on Monday:
An overall view:
"We most certainly have to mature quickly because our September is an extraordinary one. We're going to have to be ready on September 5th to face Navy coming in. It's an exciting thing for us because we haven't had an academy in Ohio stadium since about 1930. And it's really going to have some extra excitement and energy as the Naval Academy comes in with their unique style of play where they've led the nation in rushing the past four years, and they give you some problems that you probably haven't rehearsed against for many, many years.
"And then Southern Cal comes in, and enough said there. A great football team.
"Then we go up to Cleveland stadium to play in the Browns' stadium, which will be exciting for our young people, to play in an NFL stadium and play against the University of Toledo there.
"And then we open the Big Ten with the University of Illinois. In my opinion, they may have as much or more talent than anyone in this league. I know they're going to be a very veteran team, very mature team. So that's going to be quite a September for us.
"So we're going to need to have a heck of a preseason. We're going to need to grow very, very quickly. Unfortunately sometimes the only time you grow is through real experiences, so we're going to have to train and get ready for those real experiences, and then handle those bumps and ups and downs and so forth and see if we can become a good football team.
On Terrelle Pryor's growth:
"I think the experiences Terrelle got this past fall were very, very valuable. I think they were tough. When you step in and you take over for a guy like Todd Boeckman who was our captain and who had done a lot of good things. I think that's a difficult assignment, and I thought he handled them well.
"He has a real passion to do well. He wants to make sure he can do all that the team needs, and I thought for a freshman he was pretty careful with the football and grew to learn from every experience he had. There were some tough experiences along the way.
"I thought his Bowl preparation was very, very good, and then of course we're playing against a very good team in Texas. That was another lesson that he had a chance to be a part of, and then I thought his preparation this spring was excellent. He's a guy that's passionate about being good. He's very serious about the game, studies the game extremely hard, loves to study film, loves to just be on his own with his DVDs and grow as a quarterback.
"But not unlike our team, the maturity in September is going to be a great challenge. I think that will be a real plus for him to face the challenges that we have. But we feel real good about him."
On the schedule being played by Illinois, which takes the Illini into late November:
" … part of me is an old traditionalist that I always enjoyed Thanksgiving weekend because my dad was a football coach, and typically his season had just ended. We got to see him for the first time since the massive Ohio conference media day that he would head out to, so that was a special time.
"I also have an affinity for the fact that our players who really train all year-round in our conference setup, they have a chance to be home for an extended Thanksgiving weekend, which really there's nothing more important in any of our lives than our family and having the chance to be with them.
"On the other side of things, certainly the arguments about the exposure later in the year with the Conference Championship games and all those kinds of things, I'm sure there's validity from that standpoint. As far as how many days you have in between games, you know, the difference between 46 and 38 or something like that, I'm not sure it's that significant.
"We've not felt in any of our Bowl situations that because we happen to have a lot of days in between — I think when we played Miami back in '02 we might have had 43 days in between the end of the season and the championship game, and it worked out. Other times we've had 46 or 45 and maybe it didn't work out as well.
"The whole picture is bigger than just football, whether it's the discussion of a 12th team or a Conference Championship or the calendars and all that. You know, we're on board with whatever is best for the conference, whatever is best for the institution, all the while keeping in mind what's best for the student-athlete and trying to make it as great an experience for everyone as we can.
"Like any complicated matter it will continue to be discussed, and we'll come up with good solutions."
On the perception of the Big Ten nationally:
"Well, we spend time in meetings, whether it was our meeting at the national coaches' convention that we met as a conference or the meetings in May, and we always talk about how we can get better. I mean, that's — even after the years where we might be 5 and 2 in Bowls, you're sitting there talking about, How can we get better? This year we were 1 and 6, and maybe that discussion gets even more impactful or whatever.
"But that's an ongoing thing that we talk about. I don't know that anyone in this conference has an inferiority complex. If you watch ball games, our guys will play toe to toe with anyone. If you watch the NFL draft, they'll get selected at the regularity of almost every conference.
"But it is something that, as I mentioned earlier, we take very, very serious, that every time we line up outside our conference, obviously we're representing ourselves and our institution, but we're representing this league. That's important to us.
"When those Bowl games are going on, we're rooting like crazy. That's something that's very, very important."
And a comment from Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez on his first Ohio State-Michigan game:
"The intensity was what you thought it was. I think it's the greatest rivalry in sports. Coming in on the bus, people were pretty colorful. We saw a few old ladies hold up some hand signals (laughter) while we were driving in, but I had seen that before, too. That was kind of fun."