Despite National Championship loss, this is just the beginning for Ryan Day’s Ohio State
Red and white confetti fell like snow onto their shoulder. Chris Olave and Jameson Williams stood on the Ohio State Buckeyes’ sideline at Hard Rock Stadium to watch the celebration at midfield with about a dozen of their teammates. confetti could have just as easily been for them — their colors are the same as the Alabama Crimson Tide’s — yet the moments were brief when it actually seemed plausible Monday. Alabama never trailed and led by multiple scores for most of a 52-24 rout in the 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship.
Still, they waited and watched the Crimson Tide celebrate. Some will never play another game for Ohio State — Olave is likely off to the NFL to finally get paid and try chasing Super Bowls. Some will be back for 2021 and maybe beyond — Williams is only a sophomore with as many as three seasons of eligibility remaining.
Ohio State is already a juggernaut — the Buckeyes are favored to win the Big Ten Conference nearly every year, won a national championship in 2015 and have now been to the Playoff four times in the last seven seasons — but most of those accomplishments came with former coach Urban Meyer at the helm. Even in defeat, coach Ryan Day’s first run to the CFP National Championship is the launching pad for a new generation.
“I was just telling the young guys that they have a lot more years left,” star quarterback Justin Fields said. “They have time left, so I encouraged them to get back to work as quickly as possible and just remember this feeling of walking off the field with a loss.”
The loss means Day misses out on being the youngest coach to win a national title since 2000, but he’ll go into next season with a chance to join Meyer, his mentor, as only the second coach since 2000 to win a championship before his 43rd birthday. Ohio State (7-1, 5-0) will lose a lot — Fields, guard Wyatt Davis, defensive tackle Haskell Garrett and cornerback Shaun Wade are just a few stars likely headed to the NFL — and still the Buckeyes will be on the short list of true contenders for the 2022 National Championship.
This year, No. 2 Ohio State was one of only three teams with at least 80 percent of its roster made up of former blue-chip recruits and the Buckeyes will reload rather than rebuild this offseason. Ohio State currently has the second best Class of 2021, according to the 247Sports.com composite rankings.
“We’ve got a great program here,” Wade said. “The brotherhood is very, very strong.”
Exactly five months before the Championship, the Big Ten postponed the season. The plan, at the time, was to push the season to the spring and hopefully play after the COVID-19 situation improved. Ohio State, in particular, was not happy.
Fields and his teammates helped lead a push to play, and eventually the Big Ten relented, opting for an abbreviated, conference-only season in the fall. Even then, the coronavirus chased the Buckeyes and Ohio State played only five regular-season games, leaving them short of the Big Ten’s original minimum six-games requirement to play in the 2020 Big Ten Championship.
Again, the conference changed its mind and let the Buckeyes into the title game, where they eked out a win against the then-No. 15 Northwestern Wildcats to reach the CFP. Their Big Ten season was never exactly impressive, but it didn’t matter once the 2021 Sugar Bowl arrived Jan. 1. Fields shredded the then-No. 2 Clemson Tigers and Ohio State finally looked like the juggernaut it knew it could be. The idea of red and white confetti showering upon the Buckeyes in Miami Gardens wasn’t far-fetched.
Instead, Fields went just 17 of 33 and Alabama (13-0, 10-0 Southeastern) held Ohio State to fewer than 300 yards through three quarters.
The gap between the top-ranked Crimson Tide and everyone else was enormous in 2020. In 2021, the Buckeyes are positioned as well as anyone to close it.
“I’m sad that I won’t be a part of this group next year,” defensive end Jonathon Cooper said, “but I’m excited to watch and see what they do next year. I feel like this is just going to fuel and motivate them to greater heights, and achieve more. I feel like they got a taste of it and now they just need to go finish it.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 1:33 AM.
