A Jersey Guy: Ohio State as an "Underdog?"

Ohio State has not been receiving much national respect lately.

The point spread is a modest 7 points, but the wise-guy chatter on the street suggests it should be a lot more.

And most of the post CFP playoff analysis has focused on the "worthiness'' of Ohio State as an unbeaten Big Ten champion, but a champion which had played only half of a normal 12-game schedule.

And then there was the locker room blackboard stuff, enhanced when Clemson--which is the one-touchdown favorite to beat the Buckeyes in the CFP semifinals in New Orleans on January 1--Coach Dabo Swinney voted OSU No. 11 in his final ballot of the year.

Suddenly, OSU was merely a football team whose credentials for being a Final Four team were being seriously challenged.

In this crazy COVID-19 dominated college football season, the most unexpected event could very well happen--which is for THE Ohio State University to be celebrating  in Miami on the night of January 11 with a football national championship.

Here's why.

Last spring, when the predictions about the 2020 CFB season did not factor in COVID-19 issues, OSU was pretty much a consensus choice as the pre-season No. 1 team.

OSU coach Ryan Day had a Heisman leading candidate QB in Justin Fields returning along with enough talent to at least guarantee the Buckeyes a Final Four slot and a legitimate shot at another national championship.

COVID changed all of that.

The Big Ten shut down for the season in August and then tried to jump start the process in October with mixed results at best.

OSU and Fields, which was the leader in a Big Ten player and fan protests over the conference decision to suspend play, was in crisis mode almost every week, losing both games to play and eligible players because of COVID-issues.

The Buckeyes won ALL of their games, as expected. But there were only 6 of them and there really wasn't a quality Top-10 win among them, primarily because the normal Big  Ten power elite schools such as Wisconsin, Penn State, Michigan and Michigan State went belly-up this season.

The Buckeyes had a couple of games cancelled and even when they were able to play the locker room was seldom filled because of the number of COVID-19 cases.

It was like a pro golfer entered in The Masters who begins the tournament with a full set of custom made clubs and finishes with half a bag of Building 19 bargains, including a driver, a 5-iron, a pitching wedge, a putter and not much more.

Day did not say much publicly, but the frustration mounted, especially when the Buckeyes credentials were questioned.

Maybe OSU simply is an average team and Clemson will roll right past the Buckeyes into either another showdown with Alabama or a third meeting of the season with Notre Dame.

Maybe Fields, who won't win the Heisman this year, is what his stats suggest this season, a mistake-prone QB who needs lots of work before he can advance to a star level quality player at the next level.

If nothing else, it will take a superior effort in the NFL Combine to get some of his rookie bonus money back.

But almost nothing has gone as scheduled this season. This looks like a set up--a healthy and hungry OSU marches through the South (New Orleans and Miami) and posts a pair of victories to complete an 8-0 national championship season.

This, of course, depends on OSU staying healthy for the next 17 days.

Unlikely? 

Yes.

Impossible?  

I wouldn't bet against it.

***

It won't happen next season or perhaps in 2022, but you can book that within the next few years, ESPN/Disney will have a College Football Bowl Vacation, which will include multi-bowl game package of watching a series of non-New Year's Day games at a newly constructed 15,000-20,000  stadium at the ESPN Orlando-Disney World headquarters.

The network which has been in the business of "buying'' minor bowls the past several years will take a group of minor bowls and schedule them in day/night double-header fashion over the Christmas and New Year's December period, offering football, Florida and Disney World as vacation deals.

Gone will be the days of bad weather, uncertain crowds and assorted other logistical nightmares in packaging the non-New Year's bowl games.