A day after the Bengals loss to the Browns, I want to shift my focus to something positive here in the Buckeye State: the Ohio State Buckeyes. I’ll start by saying this: I go to school in what I call the Bearcat State of Cincinnati, but I am also a proud citizen of the whole Buckeye State. I’m not the biggest Ohio State football fan, but I still absolutely root for them because I live in the state of Ohio and will never root for That Team Up North, who has the most overrated head coach in the nation. The Buckeyes, on the other hand, have a head coach who, especially after Saturday, I admire and have so much respect for, especially after what he has done this season. Urban Meyer proved on Saturday why he is still one of the best coaches in college football.
I feel like this season has had an Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes against the world mentality. We all know what happened before the season started and Meyer’s health issues that have occurred this season. But on Saturday and in a year that finally felt like Michigan was going to walk into Columbus and beat Ohio State, Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes simply showed up as the more prepared team and outclassed the Wolverines. Not only that, I also think the Buckeyes showed they are a College Football Playoff team. And when Urban Meyer said after the game in regard to how he has the edge in the rivalry simply that he loves Ohio State, that’s all he needed to say. No matter what gets thrown at Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes, they will do what they need to do win. That is why I have so much respect for them, especially after putting everything aside and beating That Team Up North on Saturday.
“The Game” Saturday was set up for Michigan to win. They had the No. 1 defense in the country, were in control of their own destiny to make the College Football Playoff and were on this revenge tour that was making its final stop in Columbus. Yeah, Columbus was the last stop,alright, as the tour came to an abrupt end. All Jim Harbaugh has done is make the Michigan football program relevant again. They’ll beat the teams they’re supposed to beat but will flop on the big stage against big-time opponents. This 2018 Wolverines team was good enough to win a national championship, but they weren’t good enough to win one game on the road. Their two losses this year came at Notre Dame and at Ohio State. Big-time road games, right? Teams who win national championships win that one game, especially a road game, that shows they are big-time. Michigan just simply didn’t do that on Saturday.
Here’s also what I loved about Saturday’s game, and it happened at Buckeyes quarterback Dwayne Haskins’s postgame press conference. He talked about how the Buckeyes didn’t need a revenge tour or a guaranteed win because they knew what this game meant to each other, the coaches and the school. Big games are won with a sense of urgency that the Buckeyes showed a lot of on Saturday. You can prepare, as a team, the same way for every game. I think that’s how teams should prepare. It’s the sense of urgency, though, that should be greater in games of the magnitude that is Ohio State-Michigan.
The dark cloud hovering over this team at the beginning of the season is in the rear-view mirror. Now Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes have an opportunity to earn a berth in the College Football Playoff. A No. 5 ranking in this week’s CFP rankings and an Alabama win over Georgia in the SEC Championship will put Ohio State in a win-and-in situation in Saturday’s Big Ten Championship game. And what happened in 2014 with Ohio State could be exactly what’s happening with the Buckeyes this season.
Let me be Frank and Cut to the Chase 