Sowing the Seeds of Disrespect
After beating every team on their schedule by double digits — including a Top 10 Wisconsin team twice — the Buckeyes fell from No. 1 to No. 2 in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s eyes in the final rankings.
The drop has now pitted them against No. 3 Clemson out in the Fiesta Bowl, while No. 1 LSU gets No. 4 Oklahoma, which is seen as the much easier road.
While Ohio State head coach Ryan Day isn’t going to get into any “easier road” talk with his team, it wouldn’t be all that unusual for a coach to use a drop in the polls after a win as a motivational tool with his team.
But will Day?
“Yes, again, trying not to get too far into that. I know we’re just proud of what our guys have done,” he said recently. “We’ve been done everything we can up to this point, and now it’s time to go play Clemson. I think at this point you can’t look back on those kinds of things and we can go back and forth about it, and I know those guys had a hard decision to make.
“They made it, and we’ve got to move on. We can’t worry about that. Again, if we want to go win the whole thing, we have to be able to play everybody, so now we’ve got a chance to go play Clemson.”
Oh, To Be Young
If all goes as planned for the Buckeyes, they will play 15 games this year. That’s just one game less than a typical season for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.
These last three games for the Buckeyes — against Penn State, Michigan, and Wisconsin — physically drained the team, but the recovery process has already begun.
“The players are going to be fine,” OSU athletics director Gene Smith said on Sunday. “I think what Ryan [Day], [strength coach] Mickey Marotti and the staff put together as a schedule, really is a good break for them. We’ve still got academics as a high priority right now because we’re in finals, but I think they’ve given them enough off time for their bodies and more psychologically to recover. Because fortunately, knock on wood, we are kind of healthy, really. So I think the schedule is fine.”
The coaches, however, have to wrap up recruiting, keep up with practice and organization, and then at some point they have to try and figure out how to beat the Clemson Tigers.
“The coaches is a little challenge. I feel for them because literally, they’re gone now,” Smith said. “We just won the championship how many hours ago, and these guys are leaving their families and they’re gone, trying to make up for last week. We weren’t on the road last week when everybody else was, which is good. I’m glad that we weren’t on the road. But at the same time, these guys gotta roll now and all the way through the next weekend. So I think it’s harder on the coaches than it is the kids.”
Fear the Buckeyes?
There has been constant talk heading into the seedings that both LSU and Ohio State needed to avoid Clemson.
If the Buckeyes had stayed at No. 1, they would have faced Oklahoma instead of Clemson and life would have apparently been easier.
However, the Buckeyes have the No. 1 scoring offense in the nation and the No. 1 defense in the nation in terms of yards per play, so shouldn’t teams have also wanted to avoid them?
“Yeah, I mean, I’d like to think so,” redshirt sophomore center Josh Myers said. “To be honest with you, top four teams in the country, I don’t think anyone really wants to play. I mean, you do because you’re a competitor, but when you’re looking at advantages for yourself, all four these teams are great football teams. Oklahoma’s 12-1, Big 12 champs. They’re not gonna roll over. You know what I mean?
“All four of the teams in this thing are really, really good football teams and it could go either way for anybody.”