Throughout the year, we will be asking and answering questions about various Ohio State teams, the players, and anything else on our collective minds of varying degrees of importance. If you have a question that you would like to ask, you can tweet us @LandGrant33 or if you need more than 280 characters, send an email HERE.
There has never been any doubt that Ohio State is first and foremost a football school, but there have been times throughout OSU’s history when men’s and/or women’s basketball
have given even the most fickle football fans something to get especially excited for. In the days of Thad Matta and Jim Foster, both of the hoops teams were just as likely to win a Big Ten title as Jim Tressel or Urban Meyer’s squads.
However, for a variety of reasons, that has not been the case nearly as much in recent years. While Kevin McGuff’s women’s program has found more success than Chris Holtmann and Jake Diebler’s men’s teams, there still seems to be a ceiling on the program that Ryan Day’s football team does not have to contend with.
So, in this week’s fan survey, we asked Buckeye Nation which they thought would happen first: another Buckeye football national championship, a women’s basketball Final 4 run, or a men’s hoops Elite 8 run. The results are now in, and even though they are lopsided, I guess they shouldn’t be surprising.
Take a look below and feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments at the bottom of the page. And, if these prediction results got your prognostication juices flowing, you should visit our friends at the FanDuel Sportsbook and put your money where your brainpower is, since they are sponsoring this article.
Question: What happens first?
I tried to make the options as equal as I possibly could, given the difficulty of the accomplishment and the status of each individual program, but apparently, I missed the mark by a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide margin. Perhaps if I had bumped the basketball goals each back by a round, it would have yielded a different result, but maybe not?
If I said: football national title, women Elite 8, and men Sweet 16, I think we would have gotten at least some movement for the men, given how difficult it is to win a national championship in any sport, and especially football.
But, alas, it appears that Ohio State fans simply view the football team as being that much further ahead than their hardcourt counterparts that the hoopsters don’t even warrant conversation. To be fair, I don’t think that the respondents are necessarily wrong either. I would have voted for football as well, although I would have hesitated at least a little bit when considering the women making the Final 4.
There is a reason why Ohio State is considered a recession-proof program. They are the only football team in NCAA Division I history to never lose more than seven games. The first time they did that was in 1897, and the second was in the throw-away Luke Fickell season of 2011 (which I would argue doesn’t even really count). The Buckeyes will always be in contention for a national title, especially with the recent expansion and the proposed further expansion.
So, while I long for the days of the 2009-10 season when all three of OSU’s marquee programs won Big Ten Championships, times have changed (both in Columbus and across the conference), and if I had to put money on which of the three programs will best adapt to the new college athletics paradigm, I’m going with football as well.
Throughout the year, we ask questions of the most plugged-in Ohio State fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
