In an appearance on the “Footbahlin’” podcast with Ben Roethlisberger, Will Howard and Jack Sawyer answered a question that has divided Buckeye Nation for over 100 years.
“Is it OK to lose to Michigan and win a national championship, or would you rather beat Michigan and not win a national championship? What’s more important?” Roethlisberger, a Pittsburgh Steelers legend, asked the former Ohio State stars and current Pittsburgh rookies.
“Winning a national championship,” Sawyer answered. “And don’t get – that takes no emphasis off how important The Game is.”
“I understand that,” Roethlisberger responded before allowing Sawyer to continue.
“When you win a national championship, if anyone tells you they’d rather go 1-12 and just beat the ‘Team Up North,’ you’re crazy. You know what I mean? You’re playing this game to win championships,” Sawyer said. “Make no mistake about it, no one wants to beat those guys more than we do, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing we could have done after (we lost to the Team Up North). We have our shot to chase the ultimate goal, which is to win the national championship. Like, in the NFL, you lose four games in the regular season and you’re probably the No. 1 overall seed in the playoffs. That’s kind of the approach we took, especially with the expanded playoffs, and I think it’s gonna continue to be like that.
“Obviously, The Game is still gonna be The Game, because it is The Game, the best rivalry in sport. But at the end of the day, I think you’d be crazy to say you would rather beat them and not win a national championship instead of win a national championship and not beat them. In a perfect world, you do both of those things, but obviously we didn’t. But winning a national championship kind of erases all of that. For me, it does, at least.”
“When you win a national championship, if anyone tells you they’d rather go 1-12 and just beat the ‘Team Up North,’ you’re crazy. You know what I mean? You’re playing this game to win championships.”– Jack Sawyer
Howard agreed.
“And that’s coming from a longtime Buckeye fan,” he said of Sawyer’s stance. “Me just being new to the rivalry – and obviously I was a Penn State fan, so Penn State thinks that their rivals are Ohio State, and Ohio State just doesn’t really see it that way.”
Roethlisberger compared how Ohio State views Penn State to how the Steelers view the Browns. “It’s little brother,” he said, garnering laughs from Howard and Sawyer.
“But I think that the rational Buckeye fan would say, ‘Give me the championship every day of the week.’ I would hope so,” Howard said.
He reiterated that Ohio State still treats the rivalry with the respect it deserves.
“We literally talk about (the rivalry) every single day,” he said. “There’s a huge emphasis on it, like, no M’s in the building, can’t wear blue. I don’t think I’ve worn blue this whole year. It’s very, very – it runs really deep. It means a lot to a lot of people.”
