Here at Green, Gold, & Bold we’ll momentarily depart from our format all USF, all the time so we can focus on tonight’s college football national championship game.
We’ll have to wait 222 days for another USF game (against Boise State) after Ohio State gets done wiping the floor – oops, I mean engaging in a spirited battle – with Notre Dame.
I am not neutral on this subject. I was born and raised in southwest Ohio, which means I root for the Buckeyes even though I never stepped foot inside a classroom there. That’s the way it is in Ohio.
There are eight Division I FBS schools in the state, and the other seven have their allegiances. But rooting for the Buckeyes is a way to bring the state together for a common purpose.
This is one of those nights.
Now, I may be a Buckeyes fan but that doesn’t mean I don’t think a sizeable portion of their fan base is bonkers. If they lose tonight – especially if head coach Ryan Day goofs up – many Buckeyes will want him gone, immediately if not sooner.
That’s crazy talk, of course.
Day enters this game with a 69-10 record over seven years.
In the same number of years, former OSU coach Urban Meyer 83-9 and won a national championship. Day was 3-0 filling in while Meyer was suspended in 2018 and the 2020 season was shortened to eight games because of COVID-19.
“(Ohio State has) one of the best rosters I’ve ever seen. Every offensive and defensive skill guy, these guys will start in the NFL. I’ve never heard of that before,” Meyer told WBNS TV in Columbus.
“Then on the other side, you got, not the same roster, but you got grit, you got toughness, you got guys that found when they beat Georgia, I think the whole country said ‘How did that happen? So they are just really tough, rugged guys.”
That sounds like what the Buckeyes faced against Michigan and, oh, let’s not talk about that.
A side note: When Meyer coached at Bowling Green, he brought a one-loss team to Tampa to face USF and got his doors blown off 29-7. They came in averaging 38 points per game, which was a lot back then.
Former Bulls coach Jim Leavitt told me later that Meyer phoned him after the game and asked how he managed to shut down an offense that no other team had been able to do.
Leavitt’s incredulous response: “I’m not going to tell you.”
Because of the expanded playoffs, this will be the 16th game of the season for OSU and Notre Dame, just one short of an NFL workload. That’s a lot.
Yes, there were issues with the first 12-team College Football Playoff, mostly with seedings. That will something for the NCAA playoff committee to discuss in the offseason.
Overall, though, I think it worked as well as could be expected. Oh, and Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin can moan he wants about being left out of the field, but spare me the crocodile tears. You lost to Kentucky! You lost to a mediocre LSU team. Besides, the SEC was down this year and both title game participants took out opponents from the “It Just Means More” conference. Apparently, Tennessee and Georgia didn’t get that memo.
So, let’s concentrate on who is in the game and forget about those who are not.
I think Notre Dame hangs around, especially if the Irish can handle sensational OSU freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith the way Texas did (one catch for three yards after 13 catches, 290 yards and four TDs against Oregon.
But I’ll still take the Buckeyes.
Ohio State 31, Notre Dame 21.
That might make Buckeye fans forgive Day for losing to Michigan again.
Umm….probably not.