That’s the question Ohio State footballers, coaches and fans will be asking themselves weeks, months and probably years after the Buckeyes lost the chance to play this fall.
On paper, it turned out that Ohio State clearly has one of the top three teams in college football in the 2020 season, along with Alabama and Clemson. Before the Big Ten canceled its fall sport and sportsbooks took whole football odds off the board, most oddsmakers gave Ohio State the one to one best odds behind Clemson to win the national championship.
The Buckeyes ‘startup had the potential to be the best in the country, led by Heonman Trophy frontrunner Justin Fields, a star-studded offensive line, two excellent receivers in Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson and an intriguing graduate transfer that’ t runs back in Trey Sermon. Ohio State’s defense was less of a sure thing, but the Buckeyes still had no shortage of talent on that side of the ball, including one of the nation’s best defensive backs in Shaun Wade, seven capital letters for capital letters and a lot of potential breakout stars such as Zach Harrison, Tommy Togiai, Josh Proctor and Sevyn Banks.
Ohio State was not only loaded with potential star players, it was also loaded with great leadership – Ryan Day said the Buckeyes “probably could have 11 or 12 captains” – and was as motivated as ever to chase a title to their heartbreaking college Last year, playoff semifinals for football went to Clemson.
Even after winning 13 games in his first year as head coach, Day thought this year’s Ohio State team had a chance to get even better, making the heartbeat of not being able to play that much deeper this fall.
“I’m going to get emotional when I start thinking about it,” Day said Wednesday. “What I said to the team the other day is the truth: As a player you work your whole life and as a coach, you work your whole life for a chance to coach a team like this. This team is special. It’s special because it’s a talent. It’s special because it has leadership. It is special because of the character. It could have been in a once-in-a-lifetime team.
‘Sure the team last year I will never forget. It was the first time as head coach, and what they did was great, but there was just something about this team that it had. It had it. They came back hungry after their last game on the field. They were determined. And this quarantine, this virus was not getting in her way. ”
Fields had a similar feeling about this year’s team.
“Of course we want to start team-wise with defeating the team in the north and win a Big Ten championship, then we want to continue to win the first playoff game and win the national championship. “I think that’s where the team is most focused, and in fact we are getting better every day,” Fields said last week before the season was postponed. “I think we all see the opportunity we are looking at.” have the table in terms of return and the chance to play and compete for a national championship. ”
“This team is special. It’s special because it’s a talent. It’s special because it has leadership. It is special because of the character. It could have been in once in a lifetime team. ”– Ryan Day on the Ohio State football team in 2020
Now, however, this opportunity has been taken off the table for this year’s Ohio State team – at least for the fall, and quite possibly for good.
While the Big Ten has come up with a plan to hopefully play in the winter as well as spring, that is far from guaranteed. Even if the Big Ten are able to play football in the spring summer, that might not come with a chance to compete for a national championship; that will, in part, depend on whether the ACC, Big 12 and SEC are able to follow through on their current plans to play in the fall or if they also end after 2021.
And even if every conference ends up playing in the winter until early spring and the College Football Playoff is moved by that – now the best-case scenario for Ohio State as it will play all football in the next 12 months – it’s still likely to ever get the full Ohio State roster in 2020 to take the field for a game.
While no Ohio State players have yet publicly opted for a potential spring season, it would come as a surprise to most when Fields plays, given that he has already been established as a top prospect for the 2021. NFL draft. what many will consider a smart business decision by skipping the spring and shifting his full focus to preparation for the NFL, Ohio State’s next season will be played with an unproven quarterback who has never played a game before began.
Wade’s father, Randy, told Marty Smith of ESPN on Thursday that his son “does not play in the spring,” leaving the Buckeyes likely to leave even without their biggest star in defense. Many of the other Buckeyes ’capital letters that also have a chance to be 2021 NFL pick types, such as Olave and right-back Wyatt Davis, should also weigh their options.
Not as talented as Ohio State is, the Buckeyes will be a contender for anything they can compete in for when they can play next games. Even if they lose key players, they will still have many four- and five-star recruits – possibly including early entrants from the 2021 recruiting class, even if they play in the spring – who are desperately the next man.
But even under the best of circumstances, a short season played in the second half of the academic year will not be the same as a full season with a full roster in the fall. And knowing what that season may have become, makes it that much more painful for anyone in the Ohio State football program and its fans to sniff that season away.
“Once in a lifetime” can be hyperbole, and it’s easier to say that a team could have won the national championship if you were never proven wrong. But even the highest expectations seemed to be within this realistic range of this Ohio State team, and that’s what makes the Big Ten’s decision to accept things so difficult, even if Day tries to keep his players to the future rather than living on what they lost.
“It will be difficult for many people, there is no question of that. It hurts, ”Day said. ‘They feel that they have been deprived of something. But at the same time, we get this thing really focused on what’s next. ”
