Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Ohio State was always the best, but Buckeyes made sure to keep it interesting

ATLANTA — And now, 12 thoughts from the last night of the first 12-team College Football Playoff.

1. Way back on Dec. 4, a few days after Michigan’s fourth consecutive win against Ohio State, a reader asked me whether the Buckeyes fan base would forgive Ryan Day if he turned around and won the national championship. I assured him the narrative around Day would change completely if that happened.

“But let’s be real,” I said. “The Buckeyes are not going to win the national championship.”

It’s incredible this company still pays me to write about this sport.

2. Of course Ohio State won the national championship. The Buckeyes (14-2) had the most talented team the whole time. We’d known that for a full year, ever since all those juniors put off going to the NFL to return for one more season.

But boy, did they go out of their way to make it interesting.

No one will ever be able to explain how all that talent managed to score just 10 points at home against their barely .500 rival, not even Day himself. “It wasn’t like at the end of the year we were broken,” he said following his team’s 34-23 national championship win over Notre Dame on Monday. “We had an awful day (against Michigan). I don’t know how else to describe it.”

But 2024 Ohio State had the good fortune to suffer that awful day in the first year of a bigger Playoff. The Buckeyes just needed to get in, which they did, and get things right, which they absolutely did.

Though not before at least a few more minutes of drama.

3. Notre Dame (14-2) opened the national championship game by grinding out a big-boy 18-play, 9:45 touchdown drive complete with nine rushes by quarterback Riley Leonard. At the time, it felt like a statement. If so, Ohio State did not receive it.

The Buckeyes, behind a near-flawless performance from QB Will Howard (17 of 21 for 231 yards and two TDs, 16 rushes for 57 yards), scored touchdowns on each of their first four drives. And then, a field goal on the fifth. They led 31-7 well into the third quarter against a Fighting Irish team not exactly built to score quickly.

Except that’s exactly what the Irish did, as soon as Ohio State handed them an opening in the form of an Emeka Egbuka fumble. Notre Dame got within 31-23 with 4:15 left after two long Jaden Greathouse touchdown catches and two successful two-point conversions. (We’ll get to that missed field goal later.)

Years from now, when Ohio State fans reminisce about their 2024 four-round Playoff run, the first play that comes to mind will either be Jack Sawyer’s field-long scoop and score against Texas or Howard to Jeremiah Smith for 57 yards to set up Jayden Fielding’s championship-sealing field goal.

4. I’d estimate there were around 45,000 Buckeyes fans in Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Monday, roughly 60 percent of the crowd. As a jubilant Day lifted the trophy, I found myself wondering how many of them hated his guts just seven weeks earlier.

If a coach has gone on a more remarkable hero’s journey, I do not recall it. There have been others who overcame a slow start to their tenure. Day’s nemesis Jim Harbaugh had to take a pay cut in 2021 because he kept losing to his rival. But Michigan fans were, at worst, split on Harbaugh. Ohio State fans were collectively done with Day seven weeks ago. And I didn’t blame them. The man is paid $10 million a year to do two things: Beat Michigan and win national titles. As of Nov. 30, he wasn’t doing either.

But by Jan. 20, he had taken a giant step toward having a street named after him on campus. He just led Ohio State to its third national championship this century, following in the footsteps of Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer. He’s been a head coach for six seasons and reached at least the Playoff semifinals in four of them.

Later this week he’ll ride in a parade and get toasted by most of the same folks who wanted his head not long ago. And that newfound adulation will last until … well, until the Buckeyes open against Texas in a little over seven months.

“This game can give you the highest of highs and the lowest of lows,” Day said. “It can take you to your knees some days as a player, as a coach. And I’ve been there before.”

5. Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork was the first I can recall in the NIL era to openly advertise how much his football team was worth — $20 million — in interviews this summer. While much appreciated by reporters, he unwittingly upped expectations for this star-studded team even higher than they already were. As Day acknowledged Monday night.

“When you hear that number, that doesn’t mean a whole lot other than the fact that the market value for our guys in Columbus at Ohio State is pretty high,” he said. “When that got tagged on us early, there was a lot of pressure put on our players.”

And of course, the boosters didn’t throw all that money to land or retain Howard, Smith, Sawyer, TreVeyon Henderson, Quinshon Judkins, Egbuka, JT Tuimoloau and Caleb Downs to finish fourth in the Big Ten. And yet, they did finish fourth in the Big Ten. Except the folks who wrote those checks have no reason whatsoever to remember that.

“After all the things that have been said throughout the year,” said Day, “these guys are going to be cemented as one of the best stories in Ohio State history.”

6. As miserable an ending as it was to their regular season, the Buckeyes may have benefited from not reaching their conference title game. Day, offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and defensive coordinator Jim Knowles essentially got to hold a second set of preseason practices, during which they finally figured out how to unleash all their shiny toys at the same time. Ohio State played four top-10 teams — Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame — and the only time it trailed was the six minutes it took to score after the Irish’s opening touchdown.

The Buckeyes ran Tennessee out of the Horseshoe after the Vols’ fans invaded it. They broke off four 40-plus yard touchdowns on undefeated Oregon to start the Rose Bowl. Sawyer ran back that fumble to the house against Texas in the semifinal. And Howard’s near-perfect night let the Buckeyes run away from Notre Dame in the title game.

Whatever went wrong during the regular season was washed away in a four-game run of really good players making really big plays.

7. Marcus Freeman reached the national championship in just his third season as Notre Dame’s head coach, one year before he turns 40. He and his players were understandably not in an appreciative mode immediately after.

“We didn’t get it done, and it hurts,” said Freeman. “My job is to figure out why, and I will.”

But once a little time passes, we’re all going to look back and salute what the 2024 Irish did: They made us take them seriously.

8. The last time Notre Dame reached a national championship game, in 2012 against Alabama, the game was over after the first series. Crimson Tide running back Eddie Lacy bulldozed his way to a 20-yard touchdown and it was obvious to everyone watching there was a massive athleticism disparity between those programs.

That’s not at all what happened Monday, starting with the game’s opening series being an Irish touchdown drive. Yes, Ohio State controlled much of the game thereafter, going up 21-7 at halftime, but Notre Dame fought back. And when Drayk Bowen stripped Egbuka on the first play of the fourth quarter, the Irish had a chance.

9. Viewers were understandably puzzled when Freeman chose to kick a field goal, down 31-15 with 9:27 left, from the Ohio State 9. He defended it afterward, saying fourth-and-goal from the 9 was just too long. Ultimately, it’s not why the Irish lost. In fact, they still got within one score, after Greathouse made his second 30-yard touchdown catch of the second half with 4:15 left, followed by a successful trick play on the two-point conversion.

Greathouse (six catches, 128 yards, two TDs), a sophomore and former top-100 recruit, put on a show during the Playoff. He and running back Jeremiyah Love were part of Freeman’s first full recruiting class in 2023, the kind of high-end athletes Notre Dame has been attracting ever since Freeman took over for Brian Kelly three seasons ago.

The Irish lost because Ohio State still has more of those guys. Like Smith, who helped put the game away when he burst past Irish cornerback Christian Gray and hauled in that 56-yard catch just before the two-minute timeout.

“I told these guys, they’ve left this program better. I don’t care if you were here for one year or you’ve been here for six years; our program is in a better place because of the examples (they’ve) set,” said Freeman. “The outlook of Notre Dame football is extremely high.”

10. While Howard, who transferred from Kansas State, was the star quarterback of the evening, Notre Dame’s own one-year QB, Leonard, had himself a night as well. Known more for his running ability than his passing skills, the Duke transfer went 22 of 31 for 255 yards, two TDs and zero picks. His 161.4 passer rating was his highest against a Power 4 opponent since Oct. 12 against Stanford — and Ohio State’s defense is a whole lot better than Stanford’s.

While this Notre Dame team was primarily defined by its defense and its running game, it likely does not get to Monday without a veteran like the former Blue Devils starter behind center. He benefited as well.

“I’ve just learned so much in the last year,” said Leonard. “I don’t even recognize the person I was before I got to Notre Dame, and it’s all credit to these guys beside me and everybody else in the locker room.”

11. It’s wild that this is the first time the Big Ten can claim back-to-back national championships since Michigan State’s in 1965-66. (And even that’s a bit dubious, as the Spartans’ second was awarded by the National Football Foundation.) Granted, there was no official national championship game until 1998, and the Big Ten’s ironclad Rose Bowl contract kept a few potential champions before then from playing for one.

But it’s also just the reality of that conference’s history, going back to the Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler days, that a lot of its best teams went belly-up on the big stage at the end of the season when they finally faced an old USC team in the Rose Bowl or an SEC team in the BCS/Playoff.

But Michigan won its 2023 crown decisively, taking down SEC champion Alabama and then a 14-0 Washington team. And 2024 Ohio State took down four consecutive top-10 foes, including two from the mighty SEC. It was probably even sweeter for Buckeyes fans to celebrate this one in the same stadium that hosts the SEC Championship Game.

12. I’ll have more to say in the coming days about the first 12-team Playoff now that it’s completed, but I can’t imagine ESPN, for one, could be happier about how it played out. The first round was a letdown, but then came an instant classic Texas-Arizona State Peach Bowl, two down-to-the-wire semifinals and a big-brand championship game that wasn’t officially over until the final 30 seconds.

I had fun. I hope you did as well. Thanks for tagging along with me on this five-month adventure.

(Photo: Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)