We’re wired as people to be drawn to stories of overcoming great adversity. Or by stories of tragic downfalls.
Rise and fall narratives. Those are human nature. We all imagine ourselves as champions of struggle. We all fall short at times, and also take some sick pleasure in seeing someone or something much more fortunate foiled by its own foibles. At least, when we’re not a fan or friend of that entity.
Dominance just isn’t as engaging. No one writes books or films documentaries about a team winning its 27th championship by dominating everyone with its wallet, no one falls in love with the story of a rich kid inheriting his father’s company and keeping the wheels on the Ferrari.
Ohio State’s 2024 season came with a lot of rise and fall. The Buckeyes entered as preseason No. 1 after retaining a glur of projected NFL draft picks, then fell at Oregon midway through the season. They climbed back up the ranks with a top-three win over Penn State and a top-10 win over Indiana, but two of their three best offensive linemen suffered season-ending injuries. And then they lost to Michigan in the worst defeat of Ryan Day’s now seven-year tenure.
All that to scoop themselves from the cold ground and go on the greatest national championship run ever.
This year’s Ohio State team barely had a rise and certainly hasn’t had a fall. Sure, in the offseason, there were doubts by many locally and nationally about the Buckeyes’ odds for a repeat title after a school-record-tying 14 players from the 2024 roster were taken in the 2025 NFL draft. Then the Scarlet and Gray beat then-No. 1 Texas in Week 1 and have won every game afterward by at least 18 points. Week 2 onward, OSU has stood atop every major poll.
It’s not true for the players or staff who attack each day to beat Michigan, win the Big Ten and conquer the gauntlet for Ohio State’s first repeat national championship. But for the public, the media and even some Buckeye fans, dominance is boring.
“Every year is different, it's a different group of guys, but I think the mindset of this team is that they're business-like, they're locked in, they're focused right now on what they want to get done, and that's the most important thing,” Ryan Day said on Wednesday. “We know that we want to be playing our best football down the stretch, and that's it. And I think these guys embrace it.”
A bit of insider baseball here: Every week, the College Football Playoff holds a teleconference call with the chairman of its selection committee every week after the latest batch of CFP rankings are revealed. Ohio State has the largest media contingent in the country. (This is anecdotal, but I’ve seen a lot of beats out there, and few compare in size. Just ask Big Ten communications folks about the difficulties of press box logistics when the Buckeye beat comes to town.) Every week in 2024, without fail, there were multiple Buckeye reports in the 45-minute conference call with questions.
This past week, for the first time I can remember, there were none. Ohio State was No. 1 in the first batch of 2025 rankings. It was No. 1 again with no contest in the second. The largest, loudest beat in college football had nothing to ask. The beat was bored on Tuesday night.
ESPN analyst and former journeyman backup NFL quarterback (alright, he was a starter once, for the 0-16 Detroit Lions in 2008) Dan Orlovsky feels he can’t determine how good Ohio State is because the Buckeyes haven’t “Been down four in the fourth quarter.” Credit to him, it’s hard to drum up any interest when a team’s been too dominant to have anything close to a fall.
“The least tested No. 1 team in the history of college football,” Orlovsky said. Clearly, when it comes to Ohio State, the national media is bored.
Dan Orlovsky on Ohio State:
— The Buckeye Nut (@TheBuckeyeNut) November 13, 2025
Theyre the least tested No. 1 team in the history of college football. Theyve played nobody.
Week 1 Texas, ever since then they havent played anybody.
I dont know if theyve played a team thats ranked right now since Texas. pic.twitter.com/egAtEggiAr
In fact, some national media members are so bored that they’re willing to take hard-line stances against Ohio State without even watching the games it plays. FootballScoop writer Zach Barnett got smacked with an appropriate community note on X after posting a story that Julian Sayin has “No business as a Heisman Trophy candidate” because... he’s been dominant and breaking NCAA completion percentage records? The Buckeyes have been dominant, and real Heisman winners have “Heisman Moments” against 3-6 teams? I’m not sure. To paraphrase Zach Barnett’s words, I haven’t read much Zach Barnett this year.
Good afternoon.
— Zach Barnett (@zach_barnett) November 19, 2025
Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin has no business as a Heisman Trophy candidate, let alone winning it.
Have a nice day.https://t.co/WZGGlK9unj
Like Orlovsky, though, credit to Barnett, enraging the Ohio State fanbase is a tried and true method to generate clicks. It’s equal parts depressing and unsurprising that my most-read story since February is about an 88-year-old former Notre Dame head coach taking another shot at the Buckeyes. It was less than 600 words, half of it quotes, and less than 30 minutes of effort. I didn’t even put my name on it. But it broke through the boredom of Grambling State week like the Kool-Aid man breaking a wall. Oh yeah.
Barnett implied that he’s bored with the Buckeyes. The national landscape is bored with the Buckeyes. The Buckeyes? Not bored.
“We're not really satisfied,” center Carson Hinzman said. “Like I mentioned earlier, (the current players) have never been to a Big Ten championship before, so for us to be able to have that edge of, man, we've never really done anything with this team yet in any aspect. We don't have any hardware. We haven't done anything besides the turtle (Illibuck). But just having that edge about us, wanting to go and prove something for ourselves is big for us. So just having that mentality this year, kind of like how we did last year, is important.”
More boring dominance is likely in store this weekend for the Buckeyes against Rutgers. Then things get interesting. There are actual rise and fall narratives tied into The Game, the one in Ann Arbor, this year. Michigan has beaten Ohio State four consecutive seasons. Righteous justice is on the line after the NCAA slapped the Wolverines on the wrist for – in the NCAA’s words – cheating.
Win there and it’s a guaranteed Big Ten title game berth. A CFP berth is practically already in hand. No outcome will be boring for Ohio State fans there, even without the ultimate fall that preceded last year’s championship pursuit.
“We're writing a different story right now, and we're in control of that,” Day said. “That's what's great about being at Ohio State, you're in control of what's going on, and that's it. That's what we're going to focus on, what we can control. And then the rest of it is just noise, and we have to stay focused this time of season.”
Nothing will be boring for Ohio State or its fans that happens after this Saturday. But everyone can hope college football at large stays bored while the Buckeyes prove they’ve dominated the sport with the school’s first-ever repeat national championship.
“We're chasing history here at Ohio State, and they know that,” Day said. “That was the vision early on in the season, and then the challenge is to focus every week on being your best and being the hardest-playing team in the country and getting our job done.”
