Last week, amidst ongoing speculation about whether or not his future would be at Ohio State, Braxton Miller made a very definitive proclamation. “This is where I started and this is where I’m going to finish it,” the Ohio State quarterback stated in his mid-week announcement that he would indeed be returning to the Buckeyes for his final season.
Tuesday, Miller made another proclamation.
Prior to flying out to California to help represent OSU at the annual ESPY Awards show -- what does that tell you about how valued he still is by the football program? -- Miller was asked by the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Doug Lesmerises how strong his connection is to the flagship university of his home state and if leaving was ever part of his thought process.
“Nah, I’m a Buckeye man. I got a tatt[oo] on my shoulder. My son is going to come here one day,” Miller stated, reiterating that he never considered a transfer even as the speculation had him being heavily pursued by multiple FBS schools.
“It was just rumors. Teams weren’t really reaching out, it was just rumors and stuff. So I’m a Buckeye and that’s it.”
With Miller’s official decision in the books, the attention now turns to what will be an intensely-watched quarterback competition. Miller has the most extensive résumé of the three as he’s a two-time Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year who would’ve been gunning for a third were it not for a season-ending shoulder injury last August, while J.T. Barrett led the Buckeyes to the cusp of a conference championship game appearance and College Football Playoff bid before a broken leg in the regular-season finale knocked him out for the remainder of the year. And then there’s Cardale Jones -- all he did was lead OSU to three postseason wins in the first starts of his career, including the title clincher over Oregon, and he’s also headed to the ESPYs along with Miller.
While most view the above as a competition, Miller “hate[s] that word” and hates that it’s used in this case. Instead, he sees it as...
“Just going to have fun and right now I’m healthy and getting better each and every day,” Miller explained to Lesmerises as the alternative to the “c-word.”
Both Miller and Barrett should be 100-percent healthy for the start of summer camp early next month after both missed spring practice, the former all of it and the latter everything but individual, non-contact drills. Whether you want to use the “c-word” or not, what happens in Columbus during the first half of August will be the most interesting and watched “c-words” in all of college football.
