Thanks to the new 12-team playoff, Ohio State’s title hopes are more than alive. The Buckeyes are the hottest team in the nation and the new favorite to win at all.
The debate about whether a 12-team College Football Playoff is a good idea should be over.
For years we have asked for more big-time non-conference games. Now we’re getting them every week. How else would we get the stuff we’re getting? Ohio State’s redemption tour. James Franklin winning big games at Penn State. Notre Dame’s helmets shining in the spotlight again. Texas trying to salvage the SEC’s reputation.
We’ve enjoyed four-team playoffs. But we never journeyed to the final four like this. If you didn’t like playoff expansion, riddle me this?
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
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Were the past two rounds of games that decided merits on the field – no matter the margins of victory – more fun than a committee of suits in a hotel boardroom telling us who we had to watch in a final four?
A no answer would be like turning down your favorite meal and asking for a floppy, fast-food burger and cold fries. And, it would mean Ohio State’s season would have ended this past week in a meaningless bowl like it did last year.
So here we are on a trail that should have been blazed long ago. And in NFL parlance, the winner of this fun-filled ride through December and January will be a wild card team. Every team doesn’t get a trophy, but more teams get a chance to prove what they are instead of committee members and voters telling us who the best team(s) supposedly is.
In fact, under the old bowl system a lot more teams got trophies – and got to win their final game in feel-good, romanticized moments (often having accomplished less than they wanted) that meant nothing about determining a champion. Now we have fewer trophies. This is better in so many ways.
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First-round byes were awarded. A couple of them weren’t deserving, and you can guarantee that the system will be changed forthwith. And in true prove-it-on-the-field, integrity-of-the-game ideals, Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State said bye, bye, bye, bye.
And no one looks at the four left and claims any flukes. The conference-title byes for Boise and ASU kicked Texas and Penn State out of the top four. Ohio State’s loss to Michigan – growing more inexplicable with each passing playoff game – knocked them down to a No. 8 seed that no one wants to play.
This is playoff football. This is like an NFL team that started slow and got hot enough to sneak in. This is an NFL team whose franchise quarterback returned from injury just in time. Many griped that college playoffs would devalue the grind of the long regular season. Playoff football and 16 or 17 games to win it all is the new and more satisfying grind
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The playoffs are the second season. Don’t claim to love college football and, at the same time, say this is too many games. The fans spoke this week. Thousands from Ohio traveled west. The flight home to Columbus was packed with people who were at the Rose Bowl. When the pilot shouted “O-H” he got the hearty “I-O” he was looking for. Imagine not having another game to look forward to.
The Buckeyes are doing more with this second chance than many expected. They dismantled Tennessee 42-17 at home in a game that was supposed to be close while the top four seeds practiced that day and watched on TV that night. And now, after the 41-21 domination of No. 1 Oregon, the Buckeyes are favored to beat Texas next Friday night in the Cotton Bowl and win the whole thing.
Ohio State coach Ryan Day reminds his team that seedings, byes and point spreads are irrelevant. He knows his NFL history.
“Winning that first wild card game and then getting some momentum into the playoffs and continuing to play, there’s been evidence of that throughout the NFL playoffs,” he said during Friday’s first pre-Cotton Bowl press conference. “I did feel like if we could get a good win in the first game, we could build momentum. Now, it’s our job to keep momentum.”
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Seven Super Bowl champions began as wild card teams and found a way to keep momentum, plus four others reached the Super Bowl and lost.
Factors are many to a playoff run, but nothing trumps preparation. And the Buckeyes are studying for their football finals better than anyone. The next test against Texas in AT&T Stadium should be difficult. But that’s what we said about the first two.
Texas feels the playoff grind even more. The Longhorns played in the SEC title game (lost to Georgia) and haven’t had a week off. The Buckeyes sat at home that weekend while Oregon beat Penn State in Indianapolis. Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, who like Day has NFL coaching experience, said the playoffs feel like the NFL.
“We’re going into game number 16, and so how you manage the players, how you utilize your time, how you try to keep them as fresh as you can, not only physically but mentally, but also make sure you got a good plan that you can execute,” Sarkisian said Friday.
Day said this doesn’t feel like the old bowl season. The games are more than seven days apart but close enough that it feels like and prepares like a normal game week.
“These games are coming fast,” he said. “It’ll be a quick turnaround, and we’ll again focus on our process.”
If you want an explanation into why the Buckeyes are suddenly playing like the best team in the country, the answer is in the three Ps: progress, preparation and process. Day has talked for a year about planning for a possible 16- or 17-game season. Michigan mattered. But only for that week.
What matters now for the Buckeyes is the biggest goal and treating each game like it could be their last.
“Our motivation right now is keeping this team together one more week, and then we’ll go from there,” Day said. “But everything else right now is a distraction, and the leaders are the ones that have to set the pace on this.”
So far, they’ve played the cards they’ve been dealt to set a wildly successful pace.
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