Two things can be true at once.
Consider the duality of non-conference scheduling: This weekend's visitor, the historically rich and successful Grambling State football program has no business being on Ohio State's schedule. OSU has transferred GSU a million dollars for the privilege of losing by whatever score Ryan Day chooses on Saturday.
This opponent was originally UConn, which, meh? Anyway, GSU already cashed the check.
The Horseshoe just hosted 107,524 fans for the Buckeyes' first game, which by itself is about the same number who attended 10 of Grambling State's 12 games in 2024. So this visit will be an occasion those players will reminisce into their golden years, regardless of the scoreboard.
Hence, the duality of scheduling. GSU deserves this opportunity. And so does Ohio State.
Grambling State is ranked no.257 in SP+ while Ohio State is no.1. The predicted score is 61-0, but the final will be whatever ryan day decides.
Saturday ends a 14-game stretch for Ohio State which has involved exactly one layup - poor old Purdue, on a forgettable afternoon when two moments in particular still found a way to be historic. The first was when Buckeye defenders kept coming off the field telling their coaches hey if that number 86 ends up in the portal, you should go get him. That guy was Max Klare. He did, and they got him.
The second was Jack Sawyer's first scoop and score touchdown. That's called foreshadowing.
The Boilermakers, still technically a Power Four program were the only layup in this stretch. It's been a rare, brutal and ultimately rewarding sequence of games which began at Sparty under the lights, always a chore no matter what the analytics might suggest. The Nebraska game was the first time the Buckeyes had to play without Josh Simmons, their best lineman. That afternoon was dicey for the 25.5-point home favorite.
They got Northwestern in an old baseball stadium which presented multiple hazards, from brick outfield walls dangerously close to the endzones to NU defensive back Robert Fitzgerald deliberately trying to injure Jeremiah Smith.
As for the rest of this stretch - banger after banger after banger without any notes or exceptions. It's been gloves-up for a full year now. Whew, bring on Grambling State.
| OPPONENT | DATE | SP+ |
|---|---|---|
| @ MICHIGAN STATE | 9/28/24 | 90 |
| IOWA | 10/5/24 | 16 |
| @ No.3 OREGON | 10/12/24 | 3 |
| NEBRASKA | 10/26/24 | 47 |
| @ NO.3 PENN STATE | 11/2/24 | 5 |
| PURDUE | 11/9/24 | 121 |
| N'WESTERN @ WRIGLEY | 11/16/24 | 101 |
| No.5 INDIANA | 11/23/24 | 11 |
| MICHIGAN | 11/30/24 | 26 |
| No.9 TENNESEE | 12/21/24 | 15 |
| NO.1 OREGON | 1/1/25 | 3 |
| No.5 TEXAS | 1/10/25 | 7 |
| NO.7 NOTRE DAME | 1/20/25 | 8 |
| No.1 TEXAS | 8/30/25 | 5 |
| GRAMBLING STATE | 9/6/25 | 257 |
We are standing at the intersection of Ohio State deserves Grambling State and Ohio State should never schedule Grambling State. This matchup pairs SP+'s no.1 and no.257 teams, with analytics predicting a 61-0 final score. GSU is 1-0 after having beaten the Langston Lions, who are ranked no.513 in SP+. Five-hundred thirteenth.
Context: 68 Power Four teams are among the 136 FBS programs. That 14-game stretch included most of the top 10 and no.1 twice. Ohio State now ventures into the mid-200s to face a program that just played one in the 500s.
Apologies, reader - I'm obsessed with this. The 2024 Boilermakers were one of the worst teams Ohio Stadium has ever hosted in its 103-year history. Purdue went 1-11, failed to beat a single FBS team, was shut out three times, fired its coach - and still ranks almost 400 spots higher than the team Grambling State just played.
These football teams are playing different sports. You can't name 200 college football teams. I just tried and tapped out in the low 100s. It was exhausting. Don't try it.
Grambling State's neighbors in SP+ rankings are the Colorado School of Mines and Saginaw Valley. Since you're morbidly curious, the teams sandwiching Langston in the 500s are Millersville and Elizabeth City State. Just hope everyone has fun and stays safe on Saturday.
Oh, there aren't any teams ranked above Ohio State in SP+ or the polls. Cool. Let's get Situational.
OPENER | THE GUNS OF AUGUST
Aug 30, 2025: Brandon Inniss attempts to make a catch over Texas Longhorns defensive back Graceson Littleton (29) in the first half at Ohio Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joseph Maiorana-Imagn Images
Ohio State fans might be undergoing a culture change for how they emotionally process winning.
Consider what happened over the weekend. We all watched the Buckeyes make their debut coming off a national championship having to replace 16 starters, 14 of whom were drafted. One undrafted guy tore his Achilles while the other still made the Arizona Cardinals' 53-man roster. The point is they were really good and had to replace a lot of dudes.
And so this rebuild opened against the preseason no.1 team whose roster cost twice as much as Ohio State’s did last season - and it won a hammer fight, 14-7. Why did Max Klare channel Ryan Hamby against Texas? What happened to Jeremiah Smith's hands? Why couldn't Brandon Inniss catch that JSN Rose Bowl ball Julian Sayin pasted to his clavicle? Is Brian Hartline going to have to call plays from the sideline?
…said nobody after that game. Which is fascinating, because that's generally how Buckeye fans behave following victories - for several generations now we have been obsessed with the hypothetical games our beloved team might have lost in parallel to the actual game it just won.
It's because we've seen a lot of football. Just 10 years ago, Ohio State merely survived opponents during its first CFP title defense, winning games by putting on its uniforms correctly. This worked all the way until the Michigan State game. There was a 38-0 win over Hawai'i in there which was especially hard to enjoy, because hypothetical Hawai’i might have won that game.
The Ohio State team that played on Saturday performed as if it was coming off a hypothetical 7-5 season and wanted to prove it belonged among the nation’s elite – which, google 2002 Ohio State Buckeyes if you want to see what the real version of that looks like.
It is a performance level difficult to sustain over a full season, but if Day can bottle it for just the bangers, like a Texas, Penn State or *nodding with eyes wide open* – and again against any of those teams in postseason rematches, that's the path to more WHAC atrium trophy cases.
You have something in common with all of Ohio State's punters since the pandemic: None of you can constently kick a football 40 yards in the air.
Peaking in Game One is generally ill-advised, especially in a 16-games-if-everything-goes-right era. This wasn’t anything approaching kitchen sink game plan, which should be all anyone needs to know about the current condition of this year's team.
Sayin played unbothered football and threw darts all afternoon. Pass protection, aided by 12, 13 and 14 (!) personnel packages kept him clean all afternoon. The defense was a marvel. Keeping everything and everyone fresh will be the seventeenth opponent.
If there was anything worrisome, it's that Ohio State - despite having 67,000 students enrolled – apparently doesn’t have a single one who can punt a football 40 yards in the air for the fifth straight year. And the running game was dialed back into staleness, which was probably appropriate for Game One but still jarring with the three seasons that preceded Chip Kelly still in everyone’s memory stores.
James Peoples' performance was more Lydell Ross than Maurice Clarett, and holding new running backs up to a legendary standard - yup, that's still us. We do that to every player who graces Archie Griffin’s sacred backfield. Here are some stats from an actual OSU tailback during his second season - see if you can figure out who this was:
| GAME | ATT | YDS | YPC | TD | TOT YDS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | 44 | 3.7 | 1 | 44 |
| 2 | 8 | 32 | 4 | 1 | 48 |
| 3 | 7 | 65 | 9.3 | 0 | 117 |
| 11 | 13 | 107 | 8.2 | 1 | 146 |
| 12 | 17 | 121 | 7.1 | 2 | 128 |
A nice little regular season trajectory, ascending on a manageable and modest increase in touches. Peoples had 20 yards on 10 carries Saturday, running directly into a defensive strategy that pushed all of its chips toward forcing no.10 to beat them. Which he did in the most game managerish way possible, and despite an anomaly of drops from his receivers.
CJ Donaldson, who looked much better but has done all of this before in Morgantown, still had just 67 yards on 19 carries. Texas is going to do this to every rushing attack it faces this season. And the Buckeyes didn't have a grad student under center with two 2nd round picks behind him to counter it.
Peoples was the no.7 running back in his recruiting class. This guy was the no.1 quarterback in his. His recruiting tape doesn't resemble how he was allowed to perform on Saturday at all.
Arch Manning ALWAYS making it happen
— Overtime (@overtime) October 2, 2021
This was his 2nd consecutive game with 5 TDs pic.twitter.com/eM7c9OAxp6
Arch Manning has more reasons to be good than he does to be not-good, but Saturday was the first time in his life he has ever faced a good defense while not wearing a black no-contact jersey. This ain't the charm school league he played prior to college.
Every player we watched on Saturday has plenty of time to settle in. Anyway, that second-year OSU tailback above? Zeke Elliott. It's barely September, reader. Too hot for hot takes, and definitely too early.
INTERMISSION
The Solo
Last year in an attempt to exorcise the demons of Michigan claiming a national title* songs exclusively from 1997 were sacrificed in this space. This strategy worked marvelously, so this year's theme will be Songs From Any Year Except 1997 or 2023.
Big Noon Saturday is a big stupid vehicle for advertisements, interrupted by brief moments of college football. Commercials are fine, since everyone needs to pay bills, pee and stretch their legs. But there’s one commercial I actually look forward to every year.
It came on right after Carnell Tate's touchdown. Pacific Life’s Tail Slaps, which doesn’t contain any dialogue. Just whales, frolicking to what sounds like a marching band's pastiche of Fleetwood Mac’s legendary banger Tusk.
I'm formally requesting the Pacific Life marching band banger get a turn in the Intermission in the Situational this season.
— thatisonehugeant.bsky.social (@thatisonehugeant.bsky.social) August 30, 2025 at 2:45 PM
A marvelous idea. Tail Slaps has been Pacific Life’s college sports campaign theme song since 2008. It features whales slapping waves set to music. Let's answer our two questions.
are the whales in the video actually tail slapping?
Despite what I told an embarrassing number of women in Chicago bars during the late 1990s, I am not a marine biologist. That said, I’m still confident these are humpbacks, blissfully unaware they’re starring in the best college football commercial of the past two decades.
Which is their fault for not unionizing. The slaps are dubbed over with cymbals. VERDICT: Slapping.
does this whale tail slap slap?
The next time this commercial comes on, drop the whale emoji and the saxophone emoji into your noisiest sports friends group text thread. You'll improve everyone's mood including your own. We’ve never reached a swifter or more literal verdict. VERDICT: Slaps
The Bourbon
There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.
The 601 Vault Series. Sweet and easy.
It's impossible to talk about Grambling State - or the story of college football - without invoking Eddie Robinson, the legendary coach who led the Tigers for 56 years while amassing 408 wins.
He also coached the basketball program for 13 seasons, as long as Thad Matta was at Ohio State. He coached both programs at the same time. An absolute legend.
Robinson got his Master's Degree from Iowa in 1954, so BTN can definitely include him in their B1G Legends series. The school actually associated with him is in Louisiana, a state which is very strong in cocktails but, being kind, still emerging when it comes to local bourbon distillation. This is a tough one.
Fortunately, we are blessed with numerous, stubborn facts of humanity: The camera adds 10 lbs. Bananas share 50% of their DNA with humans. Michigan cheated. And there’s a bourbon for every situation.
Robinson coached 588 games. His birthday is February 13. South 13th Street in Baton Rouge has been named for him for decades. Add 13 to 588 and you’ll get this week’s pick.
The 601 Vault Series comes from the Adirondack Distilling Company. It’s aged in tiny black swan honeycomb oak barrels which don’t even produce three cases apiece. Honeycomb refers to a barrel treatment which is alleged to accelerate aging, which this stuff needs – it’s very young otherwise, just north of two years. But it works, because from nose to palate it’s quite mature.
This is a 100% corn mash bill that goes down easy. Appropriate and situational. Apologies, Grambling State. Remember, this is what the money’s for.
CLOSER | THE BONE GARDEN
Ohio State freshman Bo Jackson runs the ball during the 2025 Spring Game. © Kyle Robertson/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The most interesting dynamic that comes with opening against Texas - a Final Four team and the preseason no.1 - is that fall camp was probably just preparation for the Longhorns.
It had to be. Which means the next couple of weeks should be less about building a team that can win that game, and more about developing the depth necessary for a marathon. The Buckeyes did not dig into their depth against the Longhorns.
That's going to change on Saturday, and the riddle Day has to solve for is when to start subbing in guys in a game his team should win by nine touchdowns. Jeremiah Smith, Carnell Tate, Sonny Styles, Davison Igbinosun and Caleb Downs are the only players who can truly be deemed returning starters, which means 17 new and new-ish ones need seasoning as much as they require preservation.
The home team using a paycheck opponent to run live game drills is box office poison for a program that Fox loves (commercial) to (commercial) put (commercial) (commercial) at (tail slaps!) noon (commercial) because they are normally a fantastic draw, especially when they're playing the schedule they've been playing for the past year.
This one is on Fox-owned BTN at 3:30pm. Hey, good practice for playing at not-noon too.
This won't be a telecast which draws the masses, even for what's a pretty lousy slate of matchups across the country this weekend. Only 37 Buckeyes saw the field against the Longhorns. Last year, 71 got in against Purdue. On Saturday, have a current roster handy - you'll need it to figure out who you're cheering for to make a play.
Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Beat Grambling State.
