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Why Ohio State is the Only Real Choice for the Committee’s Fourth Playoff Spot

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The Buckeyes have been plagued by inconsistency, but when it has mattered most, Urban’s squad has put together a championship resume that rivals any competitor.

Dwayne Haskins capped off his 2018 Heisman campaign with a B1G Championship victory and a flurry of broken records.

B1G Champion Ohio State is hoping for it’s third College Football Playoff berth in the tournament’s short five year history.

The 2018 Ohio State Buckeyes are looking to join Alabama and Clemson as the only teams to make 3 or more appearances in the Football Bowl Subdivision’s prestigious College Football Playoff. While the #6 Buckeyes face a tough uphill battle against the likes of teams such as the CFP committee’s #5 Oklahoma, 2-loss #4 Georgia, and undefeated Notre Dame and UCF (numbers 3 and 8 respectively), OSU’s coaches and players seem confident in their ability to match up with any team in the country, both on the field and on paper.

“I think we deserve a shot,” said Head Coach Urban Meyer from the B1G Championship podium. “You look at the road wins we had, at Penn State, at Michigan State, at TCU, and the way we played against the fourth-ranked team in America… [The CFP selection committee] have a tough decision to make because we’re a heck of a football team.”

While Meyer may be confident in his team’s ability to compete for a national title, many around the country have begun to doubt the Buckeyes’ ability to attain a playoff berth due to their lack of consistency and often poor defense.

Ohio State managed a perfect 5-0 record against then-ranked teams, including 4-0 in-conference, on their way to back to back B1G titles.

However, when one takes a closer look at how Ohio State’s playoff resume stacks up against teams in similar position heading into Sunday’s final CFP rankings, the Buckeyes don’t seem to be in nearly as bad of shape as many have suggested.
With the committee’s previously numbers one and two ranked teams Alabama and Clemson each winning their respective conferences, and with the #3 Fighting Irish out of commission on conference championship Saturday, the first three playoff slots seem to be a lock. With #4 ranked Georgia falling to #1 Alabama in the SEC Championship, the committee should have a fairly complicated decision to make between two one-loss, power-five conference champions in #5 Oklahoma and #6 Ohio State, as well as potentially a two-loss, conference runner-up Georgia team and undefeated group-of-five UCF at number eight. If contemporary wisdom is correct, it is fair to assume that the committee will eliminate Georgia from consideration for losing their conference championship this weekend, as well as UCF due to the weakness of their schedule. This would leave the selection committee with two very similar teams in Oklahoma and Ohio State.

When comparing records, it seems apparent that Ohio State clearly has better wins against ranked teams #15

Oklahoma’s defense managed to help propel the Sooners to their fourth straight Big 12 title while avenging their only loss earlier in the season to bitter rival Texas, despite struggling mightily over the course of the year.

TCU, #9 Penn State, #18 Michigan State, #4 Michigan, and now #21 Northwestern, while Oklahoma’s two ranked wins have come against #13 West Virginia and #14 Texas (who the Sooners lost to while ranked #19 earlier in the season) in consecutive weeks to close the season. This would put OSU at 5-0 against teams then ranked in the top 25 while OU sits at 2-1, having avenged their earlier loss to rival Texas in the Big 12 Championship. When adjusted to account for teams only ranked in the CFP selection committee’s top 25 heading into conference championship week, the Buckeyes sit at 3-0 while Oklahoma is a curious 3-1, with an added win over #23 Iowa State (7-4); though this is subject to change with the advent of the committee’s final rankings post-championship week as the Cyclones struggled to a 3-point win against 7-4 FCS team Drake to close out their season.

According to ESPN’s strength of schedule metric, which measures the difficulty of a team’s schedule based on the perspective of an average FBS team, Oklahoma would have the 27th most difficult schedule while Ohio State’s would rank 46th. However ESPN’s strength of record, which reflects the chances that an average Top 25 team would have that team’s record or better given the same schedule, gives the slight edge to OSU with the fourth most difficult schedule while the Sooners’ rates sixth.
But the data point that the selection committee has used so far to rank OU a spot above the Buckeyes in previous weeks has been Ohio State’s road loss to an unranked 6-6 Purdue team while the Sooner’s sole loss was by three points to rival Texas on a neutral site, which they later avenged in the Big 12 Championship.

A 29 point shellacking to an unranked team may seem an insurmountable blunder at first, but what is important to remember is that this loss came to an upperclassmen-heavy Purdue team with perhaps one of the most intelligent head coaches in college football while on the road. Ohio State’s youth on defense has come back to bite them time and again this season, yet they have shown flashes of brilliance and seem to have matured significantly as the season has come along, as evidenced by their undressing of a #4 ranked Michigan team who came into Columbus highly regarded as the favorite to win the B1G and secure a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Led by a Heisman candidate QB, a veteran receiving core, and an outstanding effort by young talent such as Freshman Chris Olave (17), the Buckeyes secured impressive late-season victories over rival Michigan and Northwestern on their way to a 37th B1G title. But will it be enough to propel them to a CFP berth?

While Ohio State’s defense has struggled mightily to prevent large-chunk plays, they still hold the edge over the Sooners in total defense with the 73rd ranked unit compared to OU’s atrociously represented 109, sandwiched between Texas Tech and Ball State. The Sooner’s finally seemed to find some relief by holding a Texas offense that struggled to close out either half to 27, the first time in over a month that they were able to hold an opponent under 40 points (including 3-9 Kansas’ 40 point, 500+ yard dismantling of the Sooner D), though the Buckeyes were able to hold Northwestern to just over 400 yards of total offense while forcing 3 turnovers and holding the Wildcats to 27. The Buckeyes also hold a significant advantage in scoring defense at 25.8 PPG, good for 57th in the country, compared to OU’s even 100th ranked 32.8.
Both the Oklahoma and Ohio State are ranked #1 and 2 respectively in total Offense, averaging 50.3 and 43.3 PPG. While Kyler Murray and the Sooners have seemed more consistent throughout the season, Urban’s Buckeyes have taken apart multiple top ranked defenses in #1 overall Michigan and #1 rush defense Michigan State, as well as well respected Penn State and TCU, none of which are ranked outside of the top 35 in total defense. Oklahoma’s most difficult opponents? Army at #6, which took the Sooners to overtime and Iowa State in-conference, at #22. Other than the common opponent TCU, Oklahoma hasn’t faced another top 50 total defense all season.

Also, while the Sooners are widely regarded as the best offense in college football, Kyler Murray will be without top target Marquise Brown for an undisclosed amount of time, after he was carted off the field with a lower leg injury late in the Big 12 championship. Ohio State rolls into the postseason relatively healthy with a stacked roster of four 1000-yard receivers, two 1000-yard running backs, a Heisman candidate QB in Dwayne Haskins who may own nearly every single-season passing record in the B1G books by season’s end, and a vastly improved (though not without its flaws and injuries) offensive line that has shown it can hang with the toughest opponents.

While Head Coach Lincoln Riley was able to lead the Sooners past the rival Longhorns for a fourth straight Big 12 title, Oklahoma’s vaunted offense struggled for much of the game once again versus a Texas defense which gave them fits earlier in the season, until late into the second and fourth quarters, when Kyler Murray was finally able to find some open receivers and put the Longhorns away with a late one-handed touchdown catch by TE Grant Calcaterra.

With all of this information available to the selection committee, it seems bewildering that they would so definitively place Oklahoma above the Buckeyes for the final spot in the College Football Playoff without something other than a flukey, mid-season loss to an in-conference team to base their rankings on. Is it possible that this conundrum of having to choose between two incredibly similar one-loss conference champions could lead the committee to choose either an undefeated non-power-five champion in UCF, or a two-loss SEC runner-up in Georgia, who just lost a neutral site game that they seemed to have control of until late in the fourth quarter against the committee’s number one team in Alabama? The way that the committee has discussed UCF’s back to back undefeated seasons so dismissively seems to imply that a non-power-five team getting into the playoff, at least this year, is very unlikely.

However, there is precedent for the committee taking two SEC teams that they feel are deserving, as they did last year when Georgia and conference-non-champion Alabama both snagged playoff spots, though that seems unlikely as Georgia just incurred their second loss in what is essentially a quarter-final elimination game. There is also precedent for the committee to forgive a mid-season loss to an unranked team, as the they chose to do in the inaugural CFP season in 2014 where eventual national champion Ohio State’s early loss to Virginia Tech was ignored after a convincing B1G championship blowout against Wisconsin, allowing the Buckeyes to overtake two Big 12 co-champions in Baylor and TCU. The one situation that seems absurd when placed among the committee’s short historical context and self described criteria would be choosing one single-loss power-five conference champion over another seemingly indiscernible one-loss power-five conference champion to represent college football in this year’s playoff.
That being said, if there is anything that this playoff selection process has taught us, it is that nothing with the selection committee is out of the realm of possibility.

Urban Meyer is 2-2 all-time in his matchups against Nick Saban, including a 2014 Sugar Bowl Victory on the way to the inaugural CFP National Championship. Meyer has also led his Buckeye teams to a perfect 7-0 as underdogs since taking over in 2012.

One more piece of information that should be considered, and might tilt the field in the Buckeye’s favor, is Ohio State’s unblemished 7-0 record as an underdog under Coach Urban Meyer, as well as his 2-2 career record against Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban, including a recent 42-35 win on their way to winning the first ever CFP National Championship. An even record may seem inconsequential, but when Saban’s undefeated record against former proteges is taken into account (say buh-bye Kirby), as well as Bama’s domination of seemingly every other school in college football on their way to national title dominance, a .500 record is about as frightening a threat as one can muster against the Tuscaloosa title train.

If the committee truly wants the four best teams (or at least the three teams with the best chances of dethroning Alabama), then the Buckeyes need to be in the mix. There is no wrong choice here for the committee, and as Urban has already said, for Ohio State, an opportunity to play in the Grandaddy of them all would be more than satisfactory to a team that has felt like it has struggled to keep its head above water at times. But for the sake of protecting their own precedents, criteria, and perhaps their sanity (with the assumption that, should they leave perhaps the most profitable/popular ratings machine that is the Ohio State University out of the most important competition of the year, the ire of scores of Buckeyes fans may descend upon them) there is only one real choice. Urban knows it. We know it. The question is, does the College Football Playoff Selection Committee?

 

 

A Personal Take on the “Problem of Pain”

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I’ve always had conflicting feelings about the way things have turned out in my personal life. To some, it could be seen as a success story; having overcome some tremendous obstacles to accomplish things that the average person might find, to some extent at least, somewhat impressive. Others, however, may see it as a failure. Having consistently squandered a multitude of talents and opportunities that could have led me to soar to much greater heights, regardless of the “empty accomplishments” I have managed to achieve. I tend to bounce from one side to the other, typically (ideally) trying to land somewhere in the middle.

On that note, something that I have come to realize, as my mother once mentioned to me, is that, for whatever reason, I have been subjected to a tremendous amount of experiences at a very young age. Again, this always brought up conflicting feelings. On the one hand, I have always been proud of the fact that I seem to have a sort of wisdom beyond my years because of the things that I have been through, but on the other I severely detest some of the things that I have been subjected to and regret many of the things that I have subjected myself and those around me to just as much, if not more. There seems always to be this tradeoff of aggravation and acceptance.

Why these things happen, I couldn’t tell you. It has been one of the biggest struggles of my life to try to find the answer to that question. I suppose there are times when we just have to accept that some things are just beyond our understanding. What I do know, is that there are two ways of reacting when these circumstances arise; you can either become self destructive, turning to drugs, alcohol, or any other kind of selfish behavior that can be an attempt to satisfy the emptiness you feel with some form of happiness, or you can turn the circumstances around and utilize them for some sort of good.

If nothing else, suffering through difficult or painful situations can give insight on how to avoid them in the future, wisdom on how to advise others who might be suffering through the same experiences, or a drive that refuses to allow the same thing to happen to anyone else. Those are just a few ways that we can make the best out of the painful experiences which we encounter.

What is most important is that we recognize the significance of making something good out of the bad. All too often, I have seen friends, family members, and even random passers-by who choose to take the opposite route; to go down the road of “self-satisfaction,” which far too often becomes self-degradation. The whiskey never stops the hurt. The weed never makes you forget the pain completely. And the women won’t take away the memories of the traumatic experience forever. Perhaps for a short while everything will seem slightly better, but in the long run, it all comes back anyway. “Pain insists upon being attended to,” wrote one of the late, great 20th century authors, C. S. Lewis. What we must decide is how we intend upon attending to it.

It is so easy to want nothing more than to “stop the bleeding,” so to speak, or to just desire a little bit of temporary relief, but what we must remain focused on is the fact that a little indulgence goes a long way. An attempt to numb the pain for ourselves for just a little while can translate into creating more pain for those around us. Becoming emotionally unavailable or detached when a loved on is in need can lead to more suffering on their part. Drug and alcohol abuse can result in death, and in turn more heartache for loved ones. Even just the every day, run of the mill bad attitude can cause others hardship or force them to pick up the slack.

That is not to say that acknowledgment of difficult and painful circumstances is not ok. It most certainly is, and in many cases is completely necessary. But there is a difference between accepting the unacceptable nature of dreadful deeds and constantly moping about complaining about how terrible life is. Finding a shoulder to cry on and lamenting the appalling things that happen in the world is perfectly acceptable, so long as it is understood that it cannot go on forever. At some point the decision must be made to either make things better, or accept that there is no hope and to give in completely. As I refuse to believe that there is not at least some sense of hope in the world, it seems logical to me pursue the former.

The choice we have set before us to take advantage of these terrible actions and use them for some beneficial good seems to me of the utmost importance. By choosing to use this to our advantage for the good of ourselves or somebody else, we are refusing to continue the possible cycle of mistreating those around us and making them our own victims, which we hate to be so much ourselves.

So much good can be done by simply refusing to hurt the people around us. It saves others pain and suffering, and even prevents putting ourselves in situations where more harm might come to us through retaliation. It is a very simple concept; treat others as you would like to be treated. Hmm. Sounds a bit familiar.

But regardless, this simple desire to end the pain, the simple effort to make someone else’s life better, the simple attempt to prevent another from having to suffer the same hurt can make all the difference in someone’s life. I have seen it in my own experience as well as that of those around me. I will quote one of my favorite musician’s, and a fellow Ohio native, Colson Baker (better known by his stage name as Machine Gun Kelly), who wrote “I think we all need a little more love.”

“I wish that I could let the world know that it’s ok to let the pain show, and even though times seem bad, it always rains before the rainbow.”

The burden is on us. It is up to you and I to decide; will we take the initiative to be part of the solution, or concede to being part of the problem?

Cubs Make Quick Work of Cards as They Advance to NLCS

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The Chicago Cubs celebrated their first home playoff series victory on Tuesday night amidst a crowd of 42,000 excited fans

The Chicago Cubs celebrated their first home playoff series victory on Tuesday night amidst a crowd of 42,000 excited fans

The Chicago Cubs disposed of the MLB’s top seed in the 2015 playoffs, the St. Louis Cardinals, on Tuesday night in very timely fashion. After hitting a Major League record 6 home runs in a postseason game on Monday night, the Cubs solidified their first home playoff series victory in club history by following it up with a win on Tuesday night, which also made them the first team to move on to the League Championship Series this postseason.

After a year in which the Cubs finished 73-89 and in last place in the NL Central for the second year in a row, this season’s 97-65 Cubs who came into the postseason with the third best record in Major League Baseball are quickly proving themselves as legitimate contenders.

The Cubs offense has been on a tear so far throughout the playoffs, hitting 10 home runs in this series alone – – the most ever in a Division Series of four games or fewer. All this after taking down the team with the second best record in Major League Baseball early last week, the Pittsburgh Pirates. So, just to recap, the Cubs have hit 12 postseason home runs (only two of which have come from players over the age of 26), off of two of the most solid pitching staffs in the MLB, and to defeat the two best teams (as far as records are concerned) in all of baseball. The curse, it would seem, is about to face quite a challenge to avoid being reversed.

Anthony Rizzo hits the go-ahead home run in the bottom of the 6th inning Tuesday night as the Cubs clinch an NLCS berth

Anthony Rizzo hits the go-ahead home run in the bottom of the 6th inning Tuesday night as the Cubs clinch an NLCS berth

The Cubs’ young bashers have been hitting at a record pace, which has certainly helped to carry the team thus far. 18 of the Cubs’ 24 runs this postseason have come off of home run balls. The amount of power that has been exhibited by the likes of youngsters such as Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler, and Anthony Rizzo has been extraordinary. The question now is whether or not they will be able to keep it up. This rate of slugging is unparalleled and may be very hard to maintain, especially with the inexperienced youth of this Cubs team.

What awaits at the end of the tunnel if the Cubs can manage to sustain this pace however, is something that no modern Cubs fan has ever experienced: a World Series Championship. On the 117th anniversary of the last Cubs’ World Series title, a band of young talent would have the opportunity to pull off the unthinkable in the Windy City. They would be very hard to contend with if they were able to continue this unbridled success.

This new brand of Cubs baseball doesn’t buy into the shortcomings or hexes of the past. Quirky first year manager Joe Maddon embodies this mantra of future oriented baseball and his players do the same. Cubs President Theo Epstein said of his players, ”Our guys don’t buy into those old narratives. They’re doing this for each other. The pressure and the history don’t matter to them. They were in Instructional League last year. You think they’re worried about history? They were just worried about getting their laundry done.”

Curses and embarrassments of yesterday don’t discourage these young sluggers. Goats and Bartmans do not scare them. They are concerned with one thing, and one thing only: bringing a World Series trophy back to a city that has not seen one since before its inhabitants had any concept of what a “World War” was. The quest for a title continues, and the youthful Cubs have already dispensed with two of the most threatening competitors on their journey to “reverse the curse” and bring back a World Series ring back to “Sweet home, Chicago.”

Talent vs. Teaching: The Cardinal Rule

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St. Louis Cardinals Capture Their Third Consecutive NL Central Title

St. Louis Cardinals Capture Their Third Consecutive NL Central Title

As the St. Louis Cardinals cemented themselves as the top seed in the upcoming postseason once again with the best record in Major League Baseball, and ensured that they would finish out the year with over 100 wins for the ninth time in franchise history, an interesting question emerges: just how do they do it?

Most casual baseball fans probably couldn’t name half of the Cardinals starting lineup for the majority of this season, and, though they have had some recent success in the free agent and trade markets, they aren’t known for making a splash with those kinds of acquisitions. So what do they do?

The St. Louis Cardinals are well known throughout baseball for their “system” of rich history and win first mentality that has been enacted throughout the organization. So far, it’s brought them 11 World Series titles. Nowhere else in baseball, maybe in all of sports, has a system been so effectively put into practice. You won’t hear about many of the Cardinals players in the news, unless its a modest quote from one of them who has flown remarkably under the radar at their position and still achieved great success, while quietly becoming some of the most consistent players to play the game (enter Yadier Molina.) Players like Molina and Matt Holiday are some of the most routinely great baseball players in Major League Baseball today, maybe of all time. Yet, you won’t hear their name called for most accolades, or if you do it will be quietly fade into the background (that Molina kid? Yeah, I think he won a bunch of gold gloves back in the day.) You won’t hear them mentioned with the likes of Ruth, Mantle, or Bench by the casual observer. Yet they continue to succeed year after year, and at a very high level.

This is because from the very beginning, the Cardinals implement a system of discipline, hard work, and a “team-first” mentality that is second-to-none. You won’t see any Manny Ramirezes or Yasiel Puigs strutting their stuff around the dugout in St. Louis. Cardinals players are brought into the organization only if they fit this mold of a quiet, hard working man who has one goal in mind: winning, and winning consistently. The competitive spirit of the St. Louis ball club is undeniable. The grittiness and determined attitude of Cardinals players is ingrained in a way that only that only a certain kind of upbringing can create. This is the kind of behavior expected of a St. Louis Cardinal; determination, will to win, and a dedication to the good of the team that supersedes all individual accolades.

What makes the Cardinals so amazing is that they have been so effective for so many years. The rich and proud history of the St. Louis organization stretches clear back to the 1880’s. Since the founding of the organization, the Cardinals have predicated themselves on establishing a team of winners who do so on a consistent basis and leave no questions about whether they will be there to do it again and again. Players like Rogers Horsnby, Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, and Chris Carpenter have been a regular sight throughout the Cardinals organization for years. Incredibly talented, Hall of Fame caliber players who are astonishingly, and almost unbelievably, consistent.

The names you won’t hear, though, are the ones that solidify the team as an exceptional ball-club. Players like Matt Carpenter, Jon Jay, and Kolten Wong who put in work day in and day out, and who would be praised by any manager or coach for their dedication and work ethic, are the kinds of players that make the Cardinals’ organization great. Players who go largely unnoticed and underrated for most of their careers, yet who are happy to succeed discreetly and help the Cardinals to win, and win consistently.

Teams who build their organizations around stars have had difficulty finding this kind of established success. The Mariners of the 90’s, with A-Rod, Ken Griffey Jr., and Edgar Martinez, never won a World Series trophy, despite all of the hype and individual success that surrounded them. Current teams, like the star-studded Los Angeles Dodgers, who have blown away any concept of what a budget is with their outrageous payroll deficits, have also struggled to find any kind of consistent prosperity.

While its impossible to say that organizations loaded with stars haven’t been able to have any sort of continued success whatsoever, (yes Yankees fans, we know you win quite a bit as well) it seems that the most stable way of creating success has been through the use of this sort of organization wide system or mentality. The San Francisco Giants are another great example of this in recent years, as they won 3 World Series Championships between 2010-2014. It has become a joke around Major League Baseball that, “welp, this is an odd year (2011, 2013, 2015). Better see who wins this time before the Giants are back next season,” which has even been acknowledged by Bruce Bochy, the Giants manager, himself. A quick look through the history of baseball will show you that teams with the kind of rich history that follows great organizations like the Cardinals, the Giants, and Cincinnati Reds has lead to a tradition of success and excellence around these organizations.

So what is the best way to run a ball-club? Well, while the Yankees and Red Sox would beg to differ, baseball enthusiasts will tell you, if you just play the game the right way, sooner or later you’re gonna win. And that’s exactly what the St. Louis Cardinals have been doing for the last 115 years.

Kershaw Finishes Strong Again, But Will It Finally Translate to Postseason Success?

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Kershaw Tosses Shutout Gem In Dodgers' Clinching Effort

Kershaw Tosses Shutout Gem In Dodgers’ Clinching Effort

Clayton Kershaw is an imposing figure on the mound. That much is without argument. Some have even called him the best lefty starter to ever play the game (insert Sandy Koufax reference here.)

His individual accomplishments are indisputable. So far, in his 7 full seasons with the Dodgers, Kershaw has averaged almost 16 wins per year, a 2.32 ERA, and 235 strikeouts per season. Those kinds of numbers are astronomical and put most competitors to shame. The question with Kershaw is, will it finally translate to postseason success?

Over his final start in each of his 8 seasons, Kershaw has only once gone fewer than 6 innings or allowed more than 2 runs. That one exception? His final start as a rookie in which he threw 5 2/3 innings and allowed 3 runs. Without that one “outlier” of an outing (which was still just one out shy of a quality start and in which he still got the win); Kersh has gone 7-0, with a 1.14 ERA, and 65 K’s over 51 1/3 innings in his final outings of each year. Again, numbers that are unreal from anyone without the name Maddux, Young, or Ryan.

The problem thus far for the Dodgers is that this momentum has not translated into postseason success. In his 8 postseason starts, Kershaw has gone 1-5 with a 5.12 ERA. Not quite so Koufax-esque for a player who garners so many honors and hall-of-fame comparisons. It’s no secret that Kershaw has struggled in the postseason. The question is why.

His ability to handle stiff competition hasn’t been much of an issue as 3 of those end-of-season wins came against the division rival and recent playoff heavyweight San Francisco Giants. It’s hard to question Kershaw’s composure as there are few in the game who have managed to maintain such a calm attitude under the bright lights of Major League Baseball. Many have pointed to Kershaw as one of the most cool, collected heads in the game. While fatigue could be a possible factor, Kershaw refuses to acknowledge any kind of pain or exhaustion and seems only to ramp up his intensity during playoff time.

Whatever the reason, the Dodgers are hoping that this will cease to be the norm as they will make another postseason run this year after Kershaw’s 9 inning shut-out gem on Tuesday clinched them the NL West for the 3rd year in a row. If they hope to make a deep run in the playoffs this season, the Dodgers will look to Kershaw to figure out his past postseason woes sooner rather than later. The clock may be ticking on the Dodgers’ opportunity for a World Series championship, and Kershaw will be a major x-factor in the team’s hopes for returning to LA with a set of World Series rings at the end of this postseason.