Ohio State Football: 5 Ways Luke Fickell Can Keep His Job After This Season

In 1977, a movie premiered called Star Wars: A New Hope. It was about a young man named Luke Skywalker who must carry on the mission of his old mentor and bring his side victory.

Fast forward about 34 years and another Luke, Ohio State coach Luke Fickell, is carrying on the same battle that his mentor, Jim Tressel, fought before he left his post as head coach.

Going into a year where the microscope is firmly over the top of the Ohio State program, Fickell has one job: win football games.

Winning cures almost everything, and winning will be the one thing that helps Ohio State move past the painful offseason the program and its fans have had to endure.

But going beyond this year, is Fickell the guy for the future? This year is essentially his job interview for the coaching search set to begin after this offseason.

Here are five things that might win Fickell support and could help him keep his job after this season.

1. Start Braxton Miller at QB

No offense to Kenny Guiton and Taylor Graham, but right now the darkhorse in the QB battle appears to be freshman Braxton Miller.

The battle is Joe Bauserman's to lose, and based on his spring coupled with a lack of faith in him from fans approaching Maurice Wells levels, he is not the popular choice.

And given his performance in spot duties the past two seasons, it's not hard to blame fans.

Miller is the sexy choice by far, but in reality, his dual-threat playmaking gives his team a better chance to score points and hopefully win football games.

He comes in a more polished freshman than Pryor and will get some playing time at some point this season.

But going against two MAC teams to start in Akron and Toledo, it might be a smart move to let Miller take his lumps and learn the speed of the game as soon as possible to better prepare him for the future.

2. Make Aggressive Playcalls

Tresselball is a taboo term in Buckeye Land, although last year it seemed as if Tressel was breaking his conservative tendencies very often, including quite a few trick plays that The Vest normally never used.

That trend has to continue forward into 2011, regardless of the perceived lack of experience on offense.

The defense, regardless of its youth, has been very aggressive since Fickell became co-defensive coordinator in 2008.

The coach is usually the guy who sets the accelerometer of the play-calling and gives his coordinators the parameters of how to run the game.

That means Jim Bollman, whose role in the offense actually grew in 2010 with the more exotic play-calling, according to Fickell, will have to open things up, especially if Miller starts.

If Ohio State can find ways to utilize their playmakers, especially at TE and RB, their new QB will settle in more quickly. In this era of college football, let the playmakers make big plays.

3. Keep the Goal the Same and Go for a Seventh Straight Big Ten Title

While the NCAA could still theoretically eliminate Ohio State from Big Ten title contention on Aug. 12, the Buckeyes still have a shot to win an unprecedented seventh straight conference championship.

And their challenge will be as tough as ever, as they play all of the big boys this season: Michigan State, at Nebraska, Wisconsin, Penn State and at Michigan, not to mention a road trip to Miami.

But the problems in the offseason should not and cannot be an excuse as to why Ohio State doesn't do well.

In fact, those should be more motivating factors for this young team. All the talk in the offseason suggests that the negativity has galvanized this team quickly.

Fickell is the right guy at the right time for this team: an energetic, angry football coach who knows how to relate to young players and will get them ready to play.

If he can do that effectively and with a roster that is still among the best in the country, there is no reason Ohio State can't make a run at No. 7.

4. Keep the Players Hungry and Motivated

For fans of Remember the Titans, this speech should sound familiar.

"

"You got anger? That's good, you're gonna need it, son. You got aggression? That's even better, because you're gonna need that too. But any little 2-year-old child can throw a fit. Football is about controlling that anger, harnessing that aggression into a team effort to achieve perfection." - Denzel Washington (Herman Boone)

"

Fickell and his team will need to post this all over the locker room, especially that last sentence.

They have all the motivation in the world to defy the critics, but they also have to be aware of energy burnout.

These kids are human, and thus they aren't just full of energy they can use game after game. The best way to control their emotion is to relax themselves and if they want to shock the world as they say, do their talking on the field and take it out on the opponent in small doses.

There will be games where Ohio State can simply out-talent teams.

But their are opponents like Nebraska and Wisconsin where Ohio State needs more than talent alone. They need to have that chip on their shoulder, that next person to tell them they shouldn't be there.

If they save that energy for those moments, anything is possible.

Fickell will not only need to be coach, but also part psychiatrist and dole out this never-ending pool of motivation in small doses, or it could blow up in his team's face.

5. Beat Michigan by as Much as Possible

If college football fans have learned anything in the past few weeks from Michigan, it's that new coach Brady Hoke loves to talk.

He's done a lot of talking to try and inspire the Michigan fanbase that has been downtrodden by the Rich Rodriguez era, to fire up his troops before going into battle and to jab at the fragile Buckeye fanbase by taking a page from the Woody Hayes playbook and refusing to add the word "State" to "Ohio."

That alone has aggravated Buckeye fans, especially those that still believe Michigan's team doesn't stack up with Ohio State in terms of size and talent.

Thus, Buckeye fans across America as well as the players themselves might want nothing more than to beat Michigan, and to beat them bad, much like 1968 or 2008.

If Fickell does so, that would win him a lot of support among the fans and go a long way to keeping his job.

A loss, regardless of Ohio State's season, can only hurt his stock. 

For more college football news and updates, visit The BCS Blitz and follow me on Twitter @bielik_tim.