
In an ideal world, Ohio State will get through its regular season schedule unscathed and control its own destiny as far as the B1G Championship and playoffs are concerned. However, because of the nature of this year’s conference-wide schedule, the Buckeyes (along with the rest of the Big Ten contenders) don’t have a lot of wiggle room for error if they want to make the conference championship.
Each team that could be in contention for the conference title has approximately two tough conference games,
with one or two additional games that could potentially pose upset threats. Because of this, losing one game deeply increases the potential that a team’s destiny could be in someone else’s hands.
As a disclaimer, the following analysis excludes the Buckeyes’ season opener against Texas. While it could have down-the-road implications for College Football Playoff rankings, it won’t impact conference standings in any way. Plus, as the season opener, there’s plenty of time to bounce back in the rankings.
For the Buckeyes, their toughest games are their home game against Penn State on November 1 and their regular-season finale in Ann Arbor on November 29. Though they do need to be wary of their games at Illinois and Wisconsin, an unbeaten conference record is not out of the question for the Buckeyes, and more than one Big Ten loss would be disappointing, to say the least.
If the Buckeyes control their own destiny, then the rest of the conference’s schedules become a moot point. But should the Buckeyes do manage to drop one conference game, then the game that will likely have the greatest impact on season outcomes for the Buckeyes is the Oregon at Penn State game on September 27.
Of the two conference games that pose true threats for the Buckeyes (Penn State and Michigan), the Buckeyes are long overdue for a win over Michigan (and Ryan Day’s job might very well depend on it). But likewise, the Nittany Lions will have the best team they’ve had in years, with Drew Allar returning as their starting quarterback, a pair of star running backs returning, and a defense now being run by former Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles.
So, in a hypothetical world in which the Buckeyes finally manage to beat Michigan but drop the game at Penn State, the Buckeyes’ best-case scenario is for Penn State to go undefeated. This makes Oregon at Penn State the Buckeyes’ best chance to still make the conference championship,p even if they drop the game at Penn State, as it is the Nittany Lions’ other toughest game.
Should Penn State go undefeated, the Buckeyes’ hypothetical loss to them doesn’t necessarily preclude OSU from a conference championship berth. Michigan would, in this scenario, also have one loss, but OSU would win the tiebreaker based on their head-to-head results. Oregon would presumably also have one conference loss (to Penn State), and without a head-to-head game, it would then go into further tiebreaking metrics. The next tiebreaker is record against common conference opponents, and they would both have a loss to the same team. The next tiebreaker would be record against common conference opponents with the best record (again, if they both have one loss, it would come down to Penn State). They’d move into cumulative conference opponent winning percentage, which could really go either way. So even with a tiebreaker, Ohio State would have a good chance.
Therefore, this could be the game that keeps Ohio State alive even with one loss.
But even if Ohio State goes undefeated in the regular season, the Penn State-Oregon game is not without implications for them. On one hand, there is a world in which Oregon and Ohio State both go undefeated in conference play. This would hand Penn State two losses, eliminating them from Big Ten Championship contention and setting up an OSU-Oregon B1G Championship game.
Alternatively, if Ohio State is undefeated but Penn State beats Oregon, Penn State and Oregon could potentially have one loss each, giving Penn State the tiebreaker advantage and setting up an OSU-Penn State rematch in the Big Ten Championship. Though Penn State beating Oregon is ideal in some ways because it would add more weight to an OSU win over the Nittany Lions (something that could positively impact playoff rankings), it could also set up the Buckeyes and Penn State in a rematch in the B1G Championship.
It is extremely difficult to beat the same team twice in a season. We saw this last year with Oregon and OSU. It would be less than ideal for the Buckeyes to have to play Penn State a second time heading into the playoffs, and I don’t have confidence that if we beat them once, we’d beat them a second time.
While there are so many hypotheticals in any pre-season analysis, if the Buckeyes have the season we’re hoping they’ll have, the Penn State-Oregon game could be the biggest game of the year because, while OSU has no control over the outcome of this game, it will likely have ripple effects for the Buckeyes and the rest of the conference that will leave us talking for months afterward.
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