No team has ever taken a more unusual route to college football than the state of Ohio this year.
While all college football teams were impacted this year by the COVID-19 pandemic, the other three playoff teams (Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame) at least started their seasons in September and played 10 games of the regular season. Ohio State did not start its season until the end of October and only managed to play five games of the regular season.
The Buckeyes hardly even managed to do that. The Big Ten initially opted to postpone the football season to spring, which would have prevented the state of Ohio from competing for a spot in the CFP. Many of the Buckeyes’ stars probably would also have chosen not to participate in the spring season, leaving Ryan Day talking in the past about how the Buckeyes of 2020 “could have been a unique team”.
Day, his players and his parents continued to fight for their opportunity to play this season, and the Big Ten finally reversed the course, announcing in September that their teams would play a regular eight-game season starting in October. Still, COVID-19 continued to make a big impact on the Buckeyes season, as three of its last five regular season games were canceled – one due to an outbreak in Ohio, two due to outbreaks within state teams of Ohio. to play – while the state of Ohio had more than 20 players unavailable for its final regular season game against Michigan and the Big Ten Championship Game against Northwestern.
Numerous Ohio State players tested positive for COVID-19 and were forced to waste time during the season, forcing Buckeyes to adjust to playing without major players in the final stretch, even though they took extra precautions and players being forced to make sacrifices – how to not even be able to visit their families at Christmas – to try to limit the positive cases within the program and give themselves the best possible chance of reaching their goal of winning the national championship.
While Ohio State may have had an easier path to the playoff, needing to win just six games to secure its place on the four-team field, this season is far from easy for the Buckeyes, especially from a mental and emotional point of view, how they had to face unprecedented challenges just to survive the season.
But the Buckeyes continued to fight it all, winning their fourth consecutive Big Ten championship last weekend to get a chance to compete on the highest stage of college football.
Knowing all they had to endure to get to this point, Ryan Day couldn’t be more proud of his team, which he described as a special August group throughout the season.
“This is one of my favorite teams I have ever met,” said Day after the Big Ten Championship Game. “And maybe not because of what is happening all the time on the pitch, but the most important thing is that this team is so difficult. They’ve been through so much and they just don’t falter. I cannot give this team enough credit. ”
Despite Ohio State entering the CFP with an unbeaten record for the second year in a row, it is fair to say that the Buckeyes have not been as impressive on the pitch as they were last season. But Day doesn’t want people to forget all the stops and starts and challenges they had to overcome along the way.
“What this team has been through, I say this over and over, but I don’t know if anyone really listens,” said Day. “They started and did two spring training sessions and then they go into quarantine and go away for a long time. They enter the pre-season camp and then discover that the season has been postponed, and a few days later discover that the season has been canceled. So, for a month, they don’t have a goal. They have nothing to work for a month, until September 19th. And they decided, no, we want to play, we want to play safely, and they fought. They went public. They said.
“Then, on (October 24), we played our first game. The virus, everyone in the north comes in and the virus has fired. Because of that, we had to deal with being out of games, we had to deal with game cancellations, we had a hard time getting into the rhythm in all three phases. And then we entered (the Big Ten Championship Game) and things may not be going as well as they normally do and we found a way to fight in the second half.
“In a world where everything comes down to winning and losing, this team has learned a lot this season, which is why we started playing college football. It is the reason why we played and started training, to see the growth of young people like this. ”
All that the state of Ohio has had to endure this year has made winning the fourth consecutive Big Ten championship – and the chance to compete for a national championship – even more significant for the Buckeyes.
Day believes that the lessons his players have learned throughout this year’s turmoil will benefit them not only as they prepare to play against Clemson at next week’s Sugar Bowl, but for years to come, whether on the football field or in other aspects of Your lives.
“Many life lessons have happened since March about perseverance, about pain, about adversity, about ups, about downs, about work ethics, moments with themselves, and I think when they are 10-20 years on the road and something like that comes in front of them, they will deal with it as adults, ”said Day after the team’s first canceled game against Maryland in November. “As difficult as it was, I know that they are learning a lot. It certainly wasn’t easy, it wasn’t easy for their mental health. It has been difficult. But I know that we will be stronger out of this. ”
“This team is so tough. They’ve been through so much and they just don’t falter. I cannot give this team enough credit. “– Ryan Day at 2020 Ohio State Buckeyes
As the Buckeyes had to go through so much to get to the CFP, it gave them even more motivation to try to take advantage of the opportunity they won and win the national championship for which they fought all year long.
“I want to make sure that we have something to show for all this sacrifice that has happened in the past few months, because it has been incredible for me,” said Day last week.
There have been many arguments about whether the state of Ohio played enough games to belong to the playoff, but if the Buckeyes could defeat Clemson and then the Alabama / Notre Dame game winner, they would answer that question with authority. And while there may be some who choose to assign an asterisk to this year’s national title, or think of it as less than a normal national championship season if a team wins after playing fewer games, all that the state of Ohio had to go through to get to this point, it would only make the victory much more meaningful for the players and coaches who went through the process.
The 2020 season is already for the history books and will continue to do so, no matter which playoff team comes out first on January 11th. But if the State of Ohio can win the national championship in one season, it barely managed to start playing, Day believes the Buckeyes will be especially deserving of historic recognition.
“Everyone is on a different journey this year. That’s what makes this season so unique, ”said Day this week. “Our story, for me, is just incredible. We weren’t playing the season for a month, and so here we are now. I think we have the opportunity to write one of the greatest stories in the history of college football. ”
Even if the Buckeyes do not win the national championship, what they have already achieved and sacrificed themselves for is worthy of praise. Still, it’s how they fare at the CFP – starting with the possibility of getting their first win against Clemson next Friday – that will determine whether this season will be best remembered for the adversity that the state of Ohio faced along the way or the that the state of Ohio has managed to achieve despite this adversity.
After how hard the Buckeyes fought to get this far, anything less than a national championship would be a disappointing final chapter for the 2020 season, but if the state of Ohio celebrates with the trophy in Miami next month, no doubt. will fall into college football history as one of the most winding roads any team has ever had to travel to win a title.