COLUMBUS, Ohio — In 2014, Ohio State made it clear why expanding the playing field was necessary and long overdue with its first College Football Playoff commercial. Perhaps the same thing is on the cards 10 years later.
The Buckeyes are fully committed to the 2024 season, regardless of what happens next. They spent the offseason filling out their roster with players who could easily be in NFL training camps right now, plus a few calculated additions from the transfer portal. They spent nine months assembling a roster that some consider the deepest in the country, and now it’s time to see if it was all worth it.
The 2024 college football season has already begun, and Florida State has already become its first victim, losing to Georgia Tech in Week 0. The rest of the top 25 will compete on Saturday, including OSU, which will face Akron.
A new era has dawned. The four-team playoffs have expanded to 12 and the Big Ten is now the Big 18 while divisions are being eliminated. Once again, Ohio State hopes to navigate all the newness in the sport by finishing it like it did the last time when so much new was happening.
Only this time I hope it goes off without a hitch.
Top-ranked Buckeyes
Michigan ended the four-team playoff era as the first Big Ten team to secure the No. 1 seed en route to the national title. It took a team from the conference 10 years to do that, but I don’t think it will have to wait that long to do it again.
Ohio State would have done just that last year if it hadn’t lost The Game. It had already secured its spot in the first rankings released after having two top-10 wins and having at least one more game of that magnitude on the schedule.
This type of resume will be available in 2024.
The first month is a breeze, as you don’t play a Power 4 team until September 28, but then it ramps up significantly. There are currently four top-10 teams on the schedule, plus another team in the top 25. Maybe even another will be added as the season progresses.
This isn’t the toughest schedule of the Ryan Day era, and far from the toughest in the country this year. But it’s an ideal schedule that’s winnable while also having enough quality opponents to build a winning record to be proud of. That’s why I have an undefeated OSU team with a Big Ten title at No. 1, followed by the SEC, ACC and Big Ten champions:
| Rank | team |
|---|---|
| No. 1 | Ohio State |
| No. 2 | Georgia |
| No. 3 | State of Florida |
| No. 4 | State of Kansas |
| No. 5 | Texas |
| No. 6 | Oregon |
| No. 7 | Penn State |
| No. 8 | Iowa |
| No. 9 | Ole Miss |
| No. 10 | Oklahoma |
| No. 11 | Freedom |
| No. 12 | Utah |
• The Seminoles got a blow with their Week 0 loss, but that’s the beauty of a 12-team playoff. They can still finish top of the standings, or at least emerge victorious in what I think is still a lackluster ACC.
• The Big 12 could spend the next three months cannibalizing itself, so that its eventual champion is a 10-3 or 9-4 team that only gets a bye because the rules require it. It also gives Will Howard a chance to play his former team, which believes it has also improved by switching to Avery Johnson.
• The Big Ten and SEC will spend the next few years battling for playoff supremacy. Neither should have fewer than three teams making it each year. Then the question becomes who can surpass that number each year by having more than the other. I gave them both four in year one, but I think the SEC has a better chance of getting to five than the Big Ten.
• The only other conference with more than one for me is the Big 12, which includes both the winner and loser of their conference championship game.
• Liberty represents the teams in the Group of Five. I’m putting the Flames at number 11, but they also have a schedule that doesn’t rule out a 13-0 record. An undefeated Liberty could overtake some of the two-loss Power Four teams in that case.
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The last four
In the top four spots in the College Football Playoffs, it’s all about qualifying. The actual Final Four is all about who the best teams are every year.
My last four matchups are No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 5 Texas and No. 2 Georgia vs. No. 6 Oregon.
I think there will be years when the weaker teams pull off the upsets. That won’t be the case this season, especially because the top teams are so stacked this year that it’s hard to imagine such upsets. Instead, the Big Ten and SEC are battling to make the national title a single conference affair, adding a few entertaining storylines to the mix.
Remember when Quinn Ewers was a Buckeye for four months? Let’s put them both on the field together.
Dan Lanning received a rude reception from his former boss Kirby Smart when he was named college football head coach in 2022. Let’s see how he fares in Round 2 after going through a few recruiting phases under his tutelage.
Reaching the Final Four is now the new benchmark for judging the best college football programs, and I have Day planning to check that goal off in the first year of the new playoff format.
A title game that took three years to prepare
Let’s be honest: We all wanted to see Ohio State’s offense against Georgia’s defense in 2021, and Michigan blew that for us. Then we saw it a year later in what was clearly the actual national championship game. Last season, both were left out of the playoffs despite being CFP-caliber teams, which fueled both of them in the offseason leading up to this season.
Every so often in college football, there’s a year when there are two clear heavyweights that we all want to see face off again at the end. Sometimes it works out that way – like Texas and USC in 2005 or Alabama and Clemson several times in the 2010s – and it results in some of the most memorable national title games we’ve ever seen.
The Buckeyes and Bulldogs will likely be in that situation again in 2024. They enter the season as clear top teams and have a schedule that makes it seem realistic that they will eventually make it here, but there are enough obstacles that it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if they don’t make it.
I predict that we will finally get the championship game we have all been waiting for for three years, in the same stadium where the two teams last faced each other. The last time, the winner was decided in the last second when OSU lost 42-41 because they couldn’t make a 50-yard field goal.
Only this time, Ohio State is on the other side of that result.
Ten years after they opened the first-ever College Football Playoff round with a Cup victory, it’s time for the Buckeyes to do it again, validating their efforts to bet everything on the best roster Day has ever had.
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