Buckeyes Fighting To Keep Playing Together As Long As Possible

This season is eventually going to end for Ohio State, and when it does, a group of nearly two dozen seniors will have played their final game together as Buckeyes. Based on Wednesday’s 41-21 win over Oregon in the Rose Bowl, this team is not yet ready to call it a night.

Ohio State has now reached the College Football Playoff semifinals where they will face the Texas Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl, and they’ll be doing so with designs on playing just one more time together after that.

This season hasn’t always been easy. It hasn’t always been pretty. But so far in the playoffs for the Buckeyes, it has looked like both.

No team is playing as well as Ohio State is right now, which may be a surprise to some based on how they played in their regular season finale against Michigan.

Asked how this difficult journey has been for Buckeye head coach Ryan Day, he answered in precisely the way you’d expect a football coach to answer.

“Well, in this game, there are ups and downs along the way, and when things are going good you’ve got to hug the guys you love the most and when things aren’t, you’ve got to hug them even harder. And you just hang in there and you keep swinging,” he said. “I talked to these guys about it a couple of weeks ago. That’s life. And this team is resilient. And when you surround yourself with great people, with great character, you find yourself working through difficult times.

“At the end of the day, we wanted to win a national championship, and the way that we got here wasn’t what we expected. It wasn’t what we planned for. But nonetheless, we had an opportunity to come back and play Oregon after we had already played them early in the season, and that’s the only thing that mattered. And the guys have been doing a great job staying focused.

The reason for the focus is clear.

“The players have stuck together and they’re fighting to stay together because the winner gets to play together another week. The loser doesn’t,” Day said. “So those guys have worked hard to stay together, and now we’ve got an opportunity to go play Texas. There’s a lot of football ahead of us.”

Much of this season has been about Ryan Day and the two regular season losses to Oregon and Michigan for the Buckeyes. The criticism that he faced — and continues to face — for the loss to the Wolverines has been heard by Day and his players. The bounce back against Tennessee and Oregon has been impressive.

But is it a point of pride for Day?

“Every game is big at Ohio State,” he said. “And we knew that when we came and when we decided to come to Ohio State. And certainly this game is huge for a lot of reasons. But I think the most important thing for our team is that we had a chance to play together for another week. To me that’s the most important thing.

“Every game here is important. So when you lose, you’ve got to figure out how to move forward. But when you recruit great people, with high character who care about each other, when you go through difficult times, you stick together. You don’t splinter. These guys are the ones playing, not me. I’m just there to direct them and make sure we’re all going in the right direction. These are the guys who are the warriors who are doing it on the field. And I just can’t say enough about these guys.”

So now the Buckeyes will return home and begin preparing for the Texas Longhorns, who will get to play in the biggest stadium in the state of Texas. The Buckeyes will again have their backs against the wall, which suits them just fine because that just means there’s only one way to go.

This Ohio State football team just won the Rose Bowl, which is usually a great capper to a season. This time, however, it was part of the path to the CFP semifinals.

“I think for us, we literally are taking it one week at a time,” Day said. “I keep saying it, we’re fighting to keep this team together because we have a great group of guys.”

The end may be near for this football team, but there are still a couple of loose ends they need to tie up first.

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