It is hard  to win a college football national championship ( I once heard to no bury the lead). Yet despite all the mechanics of recruiting, coaching staffs, play calling, etc it takes a certain amount of luck or good breaks.

Let's say there are 70 offensive plays in a game and 70 defensive plays in a game. (OSU actually averaged 68.3 offensive plays a game and the national average was 75..... https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/plays-per-game). That means if you make it to the national championship game you would have 840 plays on offense and 840 plays on defense.

My non-empirical, but highly experiential, evidence suggests there are 8-9 plays (around 1%) over the course of a season, that need to fall your way to win a national championship. Ironically, there are also 8-9 plays per game that are required to "cover" a game as a favorite-but more on that later.

If you think back over the years of Ohio States national championship chance or outright champs, you can probably think of the 8-9 plays in a season that either went for or against the good guys.

1996 - Sean Springs slips against Tai Streets and scUM wins.

2002 National Champs - No Holy Buckeye, no NC. No completion on 4 and 14 to Gamble (?), no NC, No Clarret strip, no NC ( I was going to add no late PI call but that was clearly PI).

2007 BCS Championship - Ted Ginn, Jr doesn't get hurt after opening kick off TD

2013 Big Ten Championship - Braxton Miller picks up 2 more yards and gets a first down, who knows.

2014 National semifinal/National Championship - Steve Millers pick 6 and EZ's 85 yards through the South were both needed.

2015 Sparty - ugh

2016 vs scUM - JT Barrett First down in OT

2020 National Semifinal - Chris Olave cuts right instead of left, who knows.

2022 National Semifinal - Ruggles connects on field goal, Harrison and/or Stover don't get knocked out of the game, Safety slips and falls, mysterious spotting of the ball and/or timeout call - take your pick.

You can probably think of others.

I also believe in any game there are 8-9 plays that directly impact covering the spread. In other words, if you are a 7 point favorite and 4-5 plays go your way you are probably going to win but may not cover. For a double digit dog to cover (even) win, they need pretty much all 8-9 plays to go there way. Try it out, next time you watch a game, look for the 6-7-8-9 games that impact the outcome/spread.

So, the point is to enjoy the college football season, for all of it's ups and downs it is still the best game around. Don't get down on recruiting, or the coaching staff, or the players (or recruits for that matter). Shit's going to happen, that you have no control over. 

Go Bucks!