Picking OSU to beat Grambling isn't gambling

Picking OSU to beat Grambling isn't gambling By Jim Naveau jnaveau@limanews.com. Grambling is a legendary small college football program. It won 15 Black college football national championships. Its legendary coach Eddie Robinson's teams won 408 games from the early 1940s to 1997. More than 100 Grambling players have been drafted by NFL or AFL teams, including Pro Football Hall of Fame members Willie Brown, Willie Davis, Buck Buchanan and Charlie Joiner. But those teams and those players are in the past. The Grambling team coming into Ohio Stadium to play Ohio State on Saturday is expected to be less than legendary this season. Grambling was picked to finish fifth in the West Division of the Southwestern Athletic Conference in a preseason poll. And the last time any Grambling player was selected in the NFL draft was in 2017. Here are a few things you might see from No. 1 Ohio State on its way to a win that should be easy: … Unlike last week's sellout against Texas, there will be a few empty seats at kickoff and 15,000 empty seats with five minutes left in the game. … Jeremiah Smith will catch a touchdown pass, have a catch of 20 yards or more and will have no drops. … Julian Sayin will throw two or more touchdown passes. … The name of the No.3 running back on Ohio State's depth chart will become known when he gets into the game early in the second half. And the No. 4 running back probably also will get playing time. … One of Ohio State's young wide receivers like Mylan Graham or Quincy Porter will catch a pass. Two or more tight ends will catch passes. … Ohio State will have more than twice as many yards of total offense than the 203 yards it had in its 14-7 win over Texas. If it doesn't, expect the message board "experts" to begin questioning Brian Hartline's play calling. … Ohio State will sack Grambling quarterback C'zavian Teasett three times or more and have at least one interception. … This game will give Grambling's athletic department a significant financial boost. Based on a 2024 USA Today chart ranking the incomes of FBS and FCS athletic programs the $1 million check OSU will be sending Grambling for playing this game would be around 8 percent of its annual athletic income. … There won't be as many TV timeouts for ads in the first half of the Big Ten Network's telecast as there were in FOX's telecast of the OSU-Texas game because it is almost physically impossible to cram more ads into the first half than FOX did last Saturday. … Jayden Fielding won't attempt a field goal for the second game in a row unless Ryan Day wants to give him a kick in a game situation. The prediction: Ohio State 42, Grambling 0.