This is a shift for college football. I know I sound like a geezer, but there was a time when the national champions had to be the best team in college football from beginning to end. Not the most talented. Not the team on a hot streak. But the best team for 12, 13, 14, maybe 15 games. That wasn’t just the case in 2023, when Michigan went 15-0, but basically since the beginning of the sport. I was against the twelve-team playoff since people first started talking about it, and I’m still against it. College football is the NFL now, where you just have to make it to the playoffs and then a hot streak is good enough to win it. Ohio State wasn’t the best team in the Big Ten. They weren’t even the second best team in the Big Ten. They lost two conference games – to Oregon and Michigan – and didn’t make the conference championship game. And now we’re supposed to believe the fourth best team in the Big Ten is the best team in the entire country?
I’m disappointed but not surprised by the outcome. I was, of course, rooting not for Notre Dame, but rooting against Ohio State. I don’t like Ryan Day. I don’t like Will Howard. I don’t like Jack Sawyer. If it comes down to a winner-take-all game, I almost always believe in the team with superior quarterback play. I can’t believe Riley Leonard was ever considered a possible 1st round pick. I didn’t watch him much when he was at Duke, but having watched a handful of Notre Dame games this season, he’s just not an NFL-caliber player. His footwork is awful, his pocket awareness is non-existent, and his accuracy is hit-and-miss. He’s a decent college runner, but his style won’t fit as a runner in the NFL.
Man coverage on 3rd-and-long? Come on, man. After a rough first half on defense, I thought Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden made some good adjustments in the second half. I didn’t like that he gave up the edge so much and let Will Howard gain chunks of yards on the ground, but they definitely picked it up. But then in the 4th quarter, he played man coverage and rushed seven guys on 3rd-and-long, allowing a deep shot to Jeremiah Smith. Ohio State needed a conversion and needed to throw the ball, and your answer was to leave perhaps the best wide receiver in the country in open space against Christian Gray? That’s just a terrible defensive call in a “gotta have it” situation.
Michigan and Ohio State and the Big Ten run college football? It’s interesting and noteworthy that now that Name, Image, and Likeness are on the up-and-up, the Big Ten is dominating college football. Michigan won in 2023, Ohio State won in 2024, and Oregon was 13-0 and #1 in the country going into the post-season. There were too many stories coming out of SEC country to believe that Alabama, Georgia, and other schools down south were even attempting to follow amateurism rules. It wasn’t a level playing field. With the playing field finally somewhat leveled, some of the blue bloods (plus Nike’s pro college team) are stepping to the forefront. I’m not going to say the SEC will never recover or that Michigan, Ohio State, and Oregon are going to dominate football from now on, but allowing college players to be paid awakened some sleeping giants.
It’s not going to happen overnight, but does this diminish the greatest rivalry in sports? Going back decades, sometimes the Michigan vs. Ohio State game in late November was a “playoff game.” Each team had to win that game to have a chance to play in the Rose Bowl, or had to win that game to win the conference, etc. That’s partly why the game was The Game. If you can lose that game, still make the playoff, and win it all, does the rivalry lose any of its luster? There are many reasons why college football and NFL football are different, but one of the reasons Minnesota vs. Green Bay or Dallas vs. Philadelphia doesn’t have the same juice as Michigan vs. Ohio State is that the loser in the NFL can lose a game to a division/conference and still make the NFL playoffs. Teams that have been 10-6 or 9-7 or 8-8 have made the playoffs. Now with 17 games, there are teams who have 5 or 6 losses who make the playoffs. But we’ve seen 11-0 Ohio State teams drop to 11-1 after the Michigan game, and their national championship hopes went poof. Now a 10-2 Ohio State team backed into the CFP after losing to Michigan and sitting out conference championship week, and it doesn’t matter here in mid-January because they got hot in the CFP. Michigan and Ohio State fans still cherish this rivalry, but how does The Game feel in 2030 or 2040? I honestly feel like The Game will be headed in the direction of feeling like a Dallas vs. Philly game. (To be clear, college rivalries will always feel different because many of us actually attended those schools, spent years living in those college towns, etc., whereas I love the Lions but never worked there and don’t have a framed diploma from Detroit Lions University. I just think the weight is going to shift a little bit.)
