Ohio State’s Rose Bowl victory over Oregon wasn’t just dominant, it felt like the start of something unstoppable.
The Rose Bowl is sensory overload; 90,000 people pack into a big, practically flat bowl in the middle of a park in Pasadena, California. The main thing about the Rose Bowl, other than the crowd and the sun setting over the San Gabriel Mountains at the end of the third quarter, is that something is always happening. Oh, there’s a military flyover. Oh, there’s a giant mass of people huddling on the sideline to get a glimpse of ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit’s dog. Oh, there’s Billie Jean King doing an interview during a TV timeout. Oh, there are two sides of the stadium trying to drown each other out with chants.
Or, on this New Year’s Day: Oh, there’s another Ohio State player frolicking in open grass, running untouched to the end zone to expand the Buckeyes’ lead.
The Rose Bowl is never quiet, and if your team is losing, it will stand on your chest. It was clear just a little bit into this game that a lot of Oregon fans, who mostly filled up the west side of the stadium, needed to give themselves a break. Around the time Ohio State scored to go up 34–0 in the second quarter, if you looked down from the back of the Rose Bowl’s press box into the concourse on the Oregon side, thousands of people in dark green shirts had momentarily ditched the game. A beer that costs a mortgage payment was more appealing than remaining in the bleachers to watch what the Ohio State Buckeyes were doing to their favorite team.
The final score was 41–21. It was not even close to being that close, and it was over well before halftime, prompting legitimate questions about whether Oregon fans would beat the traffic. Most got back to their seats and hung in there for a while. They got no reward for that. When the night ended, a team that had entered with a 13–0 record was scattered around the field in a million pieces. Dan Lanning, the famously aggressive Oregon coach, lost his spirit and called for a punt, down 20, with four minutes left.
Ohio State broke Oregon. The Buckeyes entered the College Football Playoff off their fourth loss in a row to Michigan, with the fanbase sick and tired of coach Ryan Day. They are now halfway through that playoff, two wins from a national title, and have done the unthinkable: Ohio State has whipped its two opponents’ asses to such a degree that most of its fans probably no longer want to fire the coach tomorrow morning. After all, it is hard to justify firing the head coach of the clear-cut best team in college football, which just won a playoff quarterfinal game while setting a world record for style points.
The Buckeyes started the playoff by annihilating Tennessee in a first-round game a few days before Christmas. Day may well have been coaching for his job that night, in a spot where a loss would have completed an undeniable collapse. It could not have persuaded many Ohio State people when Herbstreit referred to Day’s skeptics as “the lunatic fringe” in a taunt at the end of ESPN’s broadcast.
Do you know what probably did persuade the most skeptical Ohio State fans? Day’s team walking into the Rose Bowl and treating the No. 1–ranked team in the sport like it was Akron or Western Michigan. This was the kind of dominance that would make anyone reevaluate their priors. It was easily the most impressive showing any team has put on this season. All things considered, it may have been the best single-game showing in the 11-year history of the playoff. This event has seen all sorts of tail-kickings, many by more than the 20-point final margin of this one. But a 34–0 lead in the second quarter against No. 1 Oregon was its own category. These Ducks were not the 2022 TCU Horned Frogs.
It started right away. The only mercy the Buckeyes showed all evening was calling for a fair catch on the opening kickoff. The first play from scrimmage was a 30-yard completion on a wheel route to quarterback Will Howard’s right. The second play was an incomplete pass. The third was a 45-yard touchdown to true freshman Jeremiah Smith, who almost literally walked into the end zone after shaking his man. Smith, already the best receiver in the country, wound up with 187 yards and two scores.
The Buckeyes never relented. They got at least a field goal on six of their seven possessions in the first half. Running backs TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins carried 25 times for 179 yards. An Ohio State offensive line that’s been missing two starters with season-ending injuries did not allow a sack of Howard all night. There are no perfect football performances, but this one was close enough.
Oregon’s offensive line lacked the same success. The Ducks’ Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback, Dillon Gabriel, took eight sacks. Because of the NCAA’s silly insistence on counting sack yardage against a team’s rushing totals, Oregon’s official rushing mark for the night is negative 23 yards. Only a handful of teams throughout college football had done that all season. Somehow more damning is that with those eight sacks of Gabriel stripped out, Oregon carried 20 times for 33 yards. Programs like Oregon do not typically suffer what Oregon suffered here.
Watching Ohio State play like this, in this setting, evokes the feeling that you are watching the most mechanized college football machine possible. There have been better teams, ones that didn’t lose at home to a barely bowl-eligible Michigan. The Buckeyes haven’t yet shown whether they’ll be remembered as a great or a disappointment. But Wednesday’s game is what it looks like when a plan comes together.
Smith, the elite receiver, cost money. Howard, the transfer quarterback from Kansas State, cost money. Ohio State’s whole roster—and Oregon’s, for that matter—cost many millions of dollars. Ohio State spends more than just about anyone, though exact figures on these things aren’t for our public consumption. Day costs money. Day’s coaching staff costs money, too, and Ohio State is the kind of place that can hire a head coach away from another Big Ten team and make him into an offensive coordinator. Head coaches don’t leave to become coordinators in the same conference, but Chip Kelly, the former UCLA (and before that, Oregon) coach did, because Ohio State is that kind of machine.
This ending of Oregon, carried out at the sport’s cathedral, felt like that machine whirring and purring and operating at maximum capacity. When a coaching staff and athletic department gather around a table and make plans for what one of the most expensive college football teams ever is supposed to look like in this era of paying for talent, it might be hard to point to precisely what it should look like, other than “lots of wins.” Now there is one game that stands up as the North Star. The best team does not always win the national championship. Ohio State playing two more games like this one would ensure that this year, the champion and the best team in the sport are one and the same.
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