From now until preseason camp starts in August, Land-Grant Holy Land will be writing articles around a different theme every week. This week is all about cause and effect. We will explore domino-effect scenarios that could impact OSU’s season. You can catch up on all of the Theme Week content here and all of our ”If This, Then That” articles here.
Since this week we’ll be dealing with a lot of ifs when it comes to the upcoming season for Ohio State football, or looking at one of the other Buckeye
sports, sometimes you have to look at the past before you can move forward. There are plenty of games and seasons over the years we can look back on and say if a player didn’t get hurt or ejected, the game would have gone differently, or if the coaching staff had gone with a different game plan, then Ohio State wouldn’t have suffered a loss.
Today, we want to know what the biggest if of the past was when it comes to Ohio State sports. With the Buckeyes having so many high-stakes games over the years in football, basketball, and many other sports, it shouldn’t be hard to find an event where something questionable happened that wound up costing Ohio State the game or the chance at a conference or national title. Nobody dwells on the past quite like Buckeye Nation!
If you still need some help when it comes to today’s topic, here are a couple of examples. Ohio State basketball wins this year’s national championship if they hire Dusty May over Jake Diebler. The Buckeyes have a second national title under Jim Tressel if Tatgate never happened. These examples should help to clear up any questions when it comes to how to approach today’s question.
Today’s question: What is the biggest ‘what if’ in Ohio State sports in the past?
We’d love to hear your choices. Either respond to us on Twitter at @Landgrant33 or leave your choice in the comments.
Brett’s answer: Ohio State wins back-to-back titles if Urban Meyer feeds Ezekiel Elliott against Michigan State in 2015
Ohio State shocked the college football world when it won the first College Football Playoff at the end of the 2014 season. The Buckeyes were left for dead by many early in the year after they lost in Columbus to Virginia Tech. Prior to the season, quarterback Braxton Miller was ruled out for the year due to a shoulder injury, leaving J.T. Barrett to start as a redshirt freshman. Barrett was eventually replaced by Cardale Jones when Barrett broke his ankle against Michigan in the final game of the regular season.
After Jones led Ohio State on a storybook run in the Big Ten Championship Game and wins over Alabama and Oregon in the CFP, he announced he would be returning to school in 2015. With Jones and Barrett at quarterback, Miller decided to move to wide receiver to make an already scary offense even more dangerous. To top it all off, Ezekiel Elliott was also back after recording three straight games of at least 200 yards rushing to cap off the championship season in 2014.
For a while, it looked like Ohio State was sleepwalking through its 2015 schedule, putting up underwhelming performances against Northern Illinois and Western Michigan in the non-conference, struggling at Indiana in Big Ten play, and whatever that 28-14 win over Minnesota was under the lights at Ohio Stadium. To add to what Urban Meyer was dealing with, J.T. Barrett was charged with an OVI following the win over Rutgers, leading to Barrett being suspended for the Minnesota game. Barrett returned to the lineup the next week against Illinois.
Then the Michigan State game happened. It didn’t help that the Buckeyes were taking on a top-10 team a week before heading up to Ann Arbor to play Michigan, but at least Ohio State was at home for this game. The weather played a major factor in the game since it was rainy in Columbus. Common sense would say to give the football to Ezekiel Elliott early and often. Instead, Elliott only carried the football 12 times while Barrett ended the game with 15 carries. The Ohio State offense only mustered five first downs and 132 yards in the 17-14 loss to the Spartans.
Following the loss, the Buckeyes would go on to trounce Michigan 42-13 the next week, and destroy Notre Dame 44-28 in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Day. Michigan State earned a spot in the CFP after it defeated Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game, only to get shut out 38-0 by Alabama in the semifinals. It’s hard to imagine Ohio State not winning it all had they beaten Michigan State and been included in the College Football Playoff, especially after seeing five Buckeyes selected in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft, and 12 Ohio State players being selected overall.
In a way, Urban Meyer was on the right track when it came to the game plan against Michigan State, as he kept the football on the ground; he just went with the wrong player to receive the majority of the carries. The decision ended up costing Meyer and the Buckeyes back-to-back national titles.
Matt’s answer: Had Ted Ginn Jr. not gotten injured on a touchdown celebration, Ohio State would have won the 2007 BCS title
The final score of the 2007 BCS National Championship Game says that Florida beat Ohio State 41-14, and no amount of Buckeye coping is going to change that. However, I will go to my deathbed believing that had it not been for the freakiest of injuries, it would have been the Buckeyes, and not Urban Meyer, who walked out of Glendale, Arizona, as national champs.
The Buckeyes got on the board first in this game, as Ted Ginn Jr. returned the opening kickoff 93 yards for a touchdown; a score that set the stage for what should be a thorough beatdown of those pesky gators from Gainesville. However, in the celebration, Ginn injured his foot and would not play another snap the rest of the game.
Because of that unfathomable injury, the Buckeyes lost the one player Florida had absolutely no answer for, the player that the Gators had to account for on every snap. Without him, the Gators could tighten the field, lean harder into their pass rush, and make OSU quarterback Troy Smith play the entire game in a phone booth without the benefit of his best playmaker.
Derrick Harvey, Jarvis Moss, and the rest of the UF defense were already a problem, but taking away Ohio State’s best vertical and horizontal threat made them insurmountable. Florida finished with five sacks, and Smith ended the game with just four completions for 35 yards and an interception, while the entire offense accounted for a grand total of 82 yards. That is not a box score; that is a crime scene.
Now, you might be saying that one player would not have overcome that great a disparity, and — unlike today — 20 years ago, the Big Ten was not on the same plane as the SEC, and the outcome was an eventuality, regardless of Ginn’s status. But you, my friend, would be wrong.
Ginn was not some complementary piece in Ohio State’s offense that was nice to have, but the unit still would function essentially the same without him. During the season, he led the Buckeyes with 59 receptions for 781 yards and nine touchdowns while also adding two special teams scores. He was the one player on the roster who could confound every defensive call and every special teams decision. That matters against any defense, but it especially mattered against Florida.
Moreso, if you were watching that game, you know full well that there have been few emotional shifts as stark as that one in sports history. From the high of getting on the board first on a thrilling opening score to knowing that your best weapon is done was devastating. It felt like all of the wind had been punched out of Buckeye Nation’s solar plexus, and the team could just never catch its collective breath.
The loss of Ginn was not only crushing from a game plan and athletic standpoint, but from psyche and morale standpoint as well.
The SEC bias counterargument is obvious: Florida was excellent. Correct. The Gators were national-title good, and Ohio State’s offensive line had one of the worst nights imaginable. But that is exactly why Ginn mattered so much. When a pass rush is overwhelming your protection, you need cheap yards, field-position swings, coverage distortion, and explosive plays. Ginn was the Buckeyes’ best source of all four.
Maybe Ohio State still struggles even if Ginn still plays the entire game at 100%. Maybe Florida still lands haymakers. But the beauty of revisionist history — especially that of the scarlet-and-gray colored glasses variety — is that I can still wholeheartedly maintain that Ginn’s presence would have changed the geometry of the game. It undoubtedly would have changed Florida’s defensive strategy. It certainly would have changed how the Gators approached special teams. It absolutely would have changed how Florida could allow its defensive playmakers to pin their ears back and attack the box. And, perhaps most importantly, it would have changed how Smith would have been able to operate the offense.
So, yes, Florida won the game that was played. But the game that would have been played had Ohio State’s most dangerous player not been taken out by a cruel twist of fate would have looked a lot different, and it would have resulted in Jim Tressel’s second national title.
