It's a logistically impossible proposal, but Urban Meyer says, if he could, he’d package up his Ohio State Buckeyes and ship them off to a deserted island away from the “little propaganda machines” of Twitter, the vices of social media, and anything that threatens to pull their ever-wandering attention away from team mottos of 4 to 6, A to B.
Good luck with that one.
Seeing that this is indeed 2014, hiding from the seemingly endless static and noise of college football’s big picture is nearly impossible. You know, like projections, rankings, and standings; like prognosticating where Ohio State fits on the national stage. It's a clockwork conversation.
And over time Meyer — who jokes about relocating his team to the uncivilized world (might we suggest Jaco Island off the coast of East Timor) to get away from it all — has succumb to it — especially after his team’s playoff hopes were imbued with life last weekend. He has no choice.
Sure, the Buckeyes are still very much on the outside looking in, but their nose is pressed against the glass now.
“When you look at it, everything’s wide open. College football is a pretty open year. So we had a five-minute discussion because I know I can hear it: you walk around campus or your watch TV so why not address it,” Meyer said last week.
“I don’t want to make it bigger than it is, we talk about it briefly and move on and then we’re getting ready for practice. I don’t think these kids care.
"I think — I’m hoping — that they just want to get better.”
But what if Ohio State's playoff hopes are out of its own control?
The Case for Ohio State
The "we-just-have-to-keep-getting-better" approach has been an impetus for progress after a loss to Virginia Tech in which Ohio State was out-played, out-coached and out-classed.
That team — the one that lost to the Hokies and suddenly became roadkill in the race for a spot in the sport’s first-ever playoff — feels like an ancient memory after the Buckeyes crushed Maryland last weekend. It put an exclamation mark on a relative turnaround that’s reset expectations to where they were before that anticlimactic night in early September.
Redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett, who threw three interceptions and was sacked seven times in that game, seems more poised with every passing week. The offensive line, which Meyer called the team’s “number one concern” earlier in the year, is now the backbone of a surging offense that’s averaging 45 points and 524 total yards a game. A cache of skill players who were so highly thought of by the coaching staff during the offseason are making good on the hype.
Here’s Ohio State’s case for a playoff berth: For what it’s worth, the Buckeyes are on the upswing. That’s the budding narrative, anyway. After taking its due lumps early, they’ve outscored Kent State, Cincinnati and Maryland by an average of 56-17. You can call it a side effect of weak competition, but it seems like progress regardless.
“I mean, the thing that you'd hope if you’re an Ohio State fan is that the committee is truly studying how teams improve throughout the course of the season. Because that’s what Ohio State’s argument would be,” Adam Rittenberg, who covers Big Ten and national college football for ESPN.com, told Eleven Warriors this week.
“That ‘Hey, listen: Week Two, got a new quarterback, first real test, we’re a lot better in Week 10, 11, 12, 13 than we were in Week Two and we are one of the best four teams.’ That’s the argument that Ohio State has to make.”
And while the Big Ten is by and large a sad shell of its former self, a win against Michigan State should be taken seriously and provide legitimacy to a team that hasn’t won against a ranked opponent since beating Northwestern last October (the Wildcats finished 5-7).
It says as much about Ohio State as it does about the league.
“The hard part is the Big Ten being so weak, there aren’t many chances for Ohio State to really show, hey here’s why we’re so good because we beat this team and this team is good. Michigan State is the one example that could certainly hold water nationally, but they’re not many others,” Rittenberg said.
It’s why the battle for conference supremacy could come down to a bout between the schools Nov. 8 in East Lansing. Because other than the Spartans, few teams in the Big Ten appear to have the chops necessary to compete with a blue blood program like the Buckeyes. That's how far the league has fallen. That’s good when it comes to Ohio State’s league title hopes and bad for its playoff chances.
It’s also why it’s hard to completely forget how the Buckeyes — abounding youth and inexperience or not — was vanquished by an unranked Virginia Tech team that promptly followed its triumphant night in the Horseshoe by losing back-to-back games against East Carolina and Georgia Tech.
For Ohio State, this season seems to be an uphill battle against perception and stigmas from playing in a tattered and torn conference that’s well-steeped in mediocrity.
Fighting Perceptions and Reality
After the league finished 1-10 against other Power Five opponents in non-conference play, CBSSports.com’s Tom Fornelli documented the carnage as such:
“At some point a narrative is no longer a narrative but just reality, and the last two weeks have been all too real for the Big Ten.”
And this:
“What's more disturbing than the Big Ten's record this week, and what has much more impact on the national level, is how the Big Ten has fared against other Power 5 conferences. This is the era of the College Football Playoff in which you not only have to win games, but impress a selection committee while doing so.”
Thing is, crushing Indiana, Rutgers and even Michigan — which find itself in a historically tumultuous season — doesn’t do much to impress people while teams like Ole Miss topple Alabama and Mississippi State bounces Auburn.
It does less to woo folks when you already have loss to an average team, too.
“For Ohio State, clearly, the only way would be to win out and do so in impressive fashion and then to hope that other things happen. Because the thing that still hurts Ohio State is the type of loss that occurred. A home loss against a team that’s not very good, and that’s going to be held against Ohio State even though it occurred early in the season.”
Because the perception — and how it paints the Buckeyes and its conference brethren as inferior, plodding clubs mingling away from the big shows down south and out west — is reality and vice versa.
“It just seems like other leagues have more depth at the top and then the Big Ten’s problem for a long time is that there are just so many teams that are completely dismissed. You look at the Big 12, how many teams are completely out of the mix? Maybe three. The SEC? Even though the East Division is so weak, every team in the West — probably except for Arkansas and LSU — is a team people talk about,” Rittenberg said.
“The problem in the Big Ten is there’s so many teams that are just irrelevant. If you beat them, it doesn’t matter. The good thing for Ohio State is that a win against Rutgers matters a little bit more now, a win against Maryland could be OK. Penn State, with them winning until the Ohio State game and after the Ohio State game, will be important for the Buckeyes.
“But Michigan getting so bad, again, I keep going back to this: it really drags down the perception of the conference because when Michigan’s good, it’s a team that people talk about. And Ohio State beating Michigan this year, no one’s gonna bat an eyelash at that because everyone’s expecting a win and probably a dominant win against Michigan. So that win in most years historically would really help Ohio State. This year it won’t. At all. It’ll be kind of a lose-lose. You have to win, you have to win big or it’s going to go against your resume.”
Can Ohio State win out? Sure, it’s possible. Get past the Spartans and it seems likely. It’s doable.
Overcoming a potentially hopeless battle of perception is less certain.
