This was not what they had signed up for. They had lost to Michigan – again. There was no Big Ten championship – again. And their coach was on the hot seat – again. The standards are high at Ohio State. Winning 11 games three years in a row means nothing if you don’t have anything to show for it except the wins, and Ohio State had nothing to show for it except the wins. No victories over its arch rival, no conference championships, no shot at the college football playoffs.
In today’s world, this is when college players start to bail. There is an old saying that there is no I in TEAM. Wrong. Ever since money started turning the college game into a mini-NFL, it’s all about the I. Miami’s Cam Ward, standing on the sidelines during the second half of the Pop-Tart Bowl, a 42-41 loss to Iowa State, after he had set the Division 1 record for most touchdown passes in a career during the first half, is the new standard.
So, it was reasonable to expect that, after the end of the 2023 season, with the lure of the NFL and possible greener pastures elsewhere, there would be some roster shuffling at Ohio State. The heart of this Ohio State team is its 2021 recruiting class, players like defensive end Jack Sawyer, receiver Emeka Egbuka, guard Donovan Jackson, running back TreVeyon Henderson and others.
Quarterback Kyle McCord was also a member of the recruiting class of ’21, but when Ohio State Coach Ryan Day would not promise him the starting job for this year, he left. And he was really the only player of consequence who did. Not only did the rest stay, they also played in the Cotton Bowl against Missouri, having decided, more or less as a group, that their legacy would not end on this sour note.
See, Ohio State has one thing going for it that is missing now at most schools. Players like Sawyer and Jackson and most others come to Ohio State not just because of the money; eight Buckeyes are listed among the highest paid college football players in the country according to On3’s NIL rankings, but because they actually want to play for Ohio State. Nineteen of this year’s starting 22 originally signed with Ohio State.
And through the years, a winning culture has been established there, a certain way of doing things, an understanding of what is expected of you when you don the Scarlet and Gray. When transfers are brought in such as quarterback Will Howard, they pick up on this, adapt to it.
With the revolving door that now exists in college football and the constant flow of players coming and going, few schools have this to fall back on. And the recruiting class of ’21 was an especially dedicated group, closer and more tight knit than most and determined to put Ohio State back on top.
When you examine Ohio State’s press conferences before the Notre Dame game, the players’ closeness and determination clearly stands out, and no one epitomizes it better than Sawyer. “It means everything to me,” Sawyer, who established his name forever in Ohio State lore with his scoop and score against Texas, commented. “Putting on the Scarlet and Gray is a dream come true, and the rest of the guys will say the same thing,” he declared.
“I remember being a little kid running around in the back yard every weekend with an Ohio State jersey on wanting to be like the guys I saw on TV.” Sawyer recalled that he “never took it (the jersey) off on weekends. My mom would be mad. It had grass stains on it and she had just washed it,” he said.
Jackson, one of the best offensive linemen in college ranks, echoed Sawyer’s sentiments. “A lot of us decided to come back for moments like this,” he said of the championship game. “You decided to commit to Ohio State to play in games like this.”
So if you were going to beat Ohio State this year, you not only needed to have top end talent, you needed to match that intensity. After another loss to Michigan, Ohio State reached a turning point in its season. It could easily have cratered then, but led by the Sawyers and Jacksons and Hendersons, the ’21 group, the players used the defeat to fuel their desire to save the season. And they did.
No team in college football history is a more deserving champion. To win the title, Ohio State beat Tennessee, the No. 7 team in the country; Oregon, No. 1; Texas, No. 4 and Notre Dame, No. 3, over four straight weeks. That’s never been done before, may never be done again.
“I think it’s a testament to everyone’s hard work in the athletic program, not just the players,” Jackson said. “With this extended format, it means a lot more games, a lot more high profile games. It means your body is banged up. You’re mentally exhausted, but at the end of the day, you want to go out there and win.”
They did. And if you knew anything at all about the make-up of this team, its quiet confidence, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Certainly it wasn’t to Sawyer and Jackson and the recruiting class of ’21. It didn’t surprise them, but it did give them a lot of satisfaction. Job well done.
