Ohio State has reached the point in this prolonged 12-team playoff season where today is indistinguishable from yesterday and where, if not careful, routine threatens to devolve into rut.
College is not yet the length of an NFL season, but just as NIL and the transfer portal are fair facsimiles of pay-to-play and free agency, so the updated College Football Playoff schedule resembles the professional path from wild-card game to Super Bowl.
The team that best handles the grind, both physically and mentally, while maintaining crisp execution and momentum will be named national champion. Just like in the NFL.
Ohio State has played 14 games, the same number the 2002 Buckeyes finished with after winning the BCS championship. Game 15 arrives Friday in the Cotton Bowl, where No. 6 OSU takes on No. 3 Texas in a CFP semifinal. The Longhorns would max out at 17 games if they win. Penn State also would play 17 games if it defeats Notre Dame Saturday in the Orange Bowl.
Ohio State and Texas players have no reference point for how to navigate the extended season, but their coaches do.
Ryan Day spent the 2015 season as Chip Kelly’s quarterbacks coach with the Philadelphia Eagles before reprising that role in 2016 when Kelly landed with the San Francisco 49ers. Neither NFL franchise made the playoffs under Kelly, but their 16-game regular seasons ran into January, allowing Day to experience what it is like to run a football marathon.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian served as quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders in 2004 and as offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons in 2017-18. The Raiders missed the playoffs in Sarkisian’s lone season in the Bay, but the Falcons won a wild-card game in 2017 before losing to Philadelphia in the divisional round.
Both coaches tasted enough of the NFL to share their knowledge with their college teams. These are the messages they sent:
“Being in that league gives you a different perspective,” Day said. “You try to give the guys different reference points on what it could look like and what needs to happen late in the season, because that’s what it comes down to. It doesn’t come down to one game. It comes down to a series of games where you’ve got to be playing your best football.”
So far, so good for the Buckeyes, who are playing their best at the right time, having soundly defeated Tennessee and Oregon in the playoff opener and quarterfinal.
But Day stressed those games mean little in and of themselves.
“I did feel like if we could get a good win in the first game, we could build momentum,” he said. “Now it’s our job to keep momentum. We have it right now, but that doesn’t mean anything if we don’t keep it, so we’ll continue with our process.”
Day uses NFL examples to make his point.
“We’ve talked about going back and watching some of the old NFL teams winning that first wild-card game and then getting some momentum into the playoffs,” he said. “There really has never been a college football playoff like this before, so you go back on things that you can best compare to.”
Specifically, Day points to “growing up in New England and watching the Patriots, all those runs they made, watching how those teams developed as the season went on and growing from that.”
He also uses New England’s heartbreaker, the New York Giants, as a template for riding momentum. The Giants lost three of their last six regular-season games in 2007 before getting hot during the playoffs, culminating with a stunning Super Bowl win over the 18-0 Patriots.
“The Giants were struggling at the end of the season and (coach Tom) Coughlin was in a bad way, but they found a way to win,” Day said.
Struggling at the end of the regular season? Coach under fire? Sound familiar?
Sarkisian said the extended college season “definitely feels like (the NFL). We’re going into game 16, so it’s about how you manage the players, how you utilize your time, how you try to keep them as fresh as you can, not only physically, but mentally, but also making sure you’ve got a good plan that you can execute.
“The further you go into the playoffs, the better quality opponent you face, so your quality of play has to continue to improve. The coaching has to improve. Everybody’s got to improve. We’ve always got to continue to strive to get better, all while trying to get everybody fresh and back and putting them in the best position to have success.
“It’s a challenge. But that’s the beauty of it, right? To be on this stage and to be with this opportunity, you embrace it. You try to balance it as best you can, so that when the ball is kicked off you’re putting your staff and players in the best position to have some success.”
What do those players think?
“Just being honest, there are times and moments where I’m, ‘Aw again? We have to do this again?’ ” OSU senior tight end Gee Scott said of a same old, same old practice regimen. “But that’s when the intangibles come into play, of being able to dig deep in those moments and say, ‘Man, how grateful I am to be going to play in Texas.’ It’s the perspective of knowing how many people would die and cut off a limb just to be in a position we’re in right now.”
Ohio State quarterback Will Howard agreed, acknowledging that the season feels long but also that the uphill hike was expected.
“We all knew this was the format and we all understood we were going to be playing football until Jan. 20, if we make it that far. We expected to be here,” Howard said.
The NFL is on the horizon for Howard and a dozen other Buckeyes, but there is a job to complete before taking the first step on that extended journey. Ohio State punches the clock Friday at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, whose long season ended prematurely Sunday. That’s one NFL tradition Day and his players have no intention of following.
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