Ohio
Editorial Roundup: Ohio
Columbus Dispatch. April 15, 2022.
Editorial: Whereas your groceries go up, DeWine, LaRose, Huffman, Cupp waste thousands and thousands to maintain energy
The $25 million price ticket to carry a second major can be far more than sufficient it that was all. It’s not all.
In typical instances, it could be laborious to attract a hyperlink between the costs of bacon and gasoline and the price of redistricting – a course of that determines how legislative districts are divided in Ohio.
Political Cartoons
These usually are not typical instances.
Like elsewhere within the nation and state, folks right here in Higher Columbus are nonetheless recovering from financial pains introduced on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Add to that lingering provide chain points, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the present nationwide charge of inflation — annual client worth will increase reached one other 40-year excessive of 8.5% final month — and it’s clear why individuals are watching what goes in and comes out of their purses and wallets so much nearer.
Consultants count on much less dramatic rises in inflation over time. That point cannot come quick sufficient for many paying increased costs for items and providers.
Over the previous 12 months, as an illustration, the price of poultry, fish, eggs and meat reminiscent of bacon has jumped 13.7%, a Forbes advisor simply reported. Furnishings and bedding jumped 5.8%, electrical energy rose 11.1% and the price of ladies’s clothes went up 10.1%.
Why are we speaking about redistricting?
Redistricting determines how you might be represented on the Statehouse in Columbus and the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Again in 2015 and 2018 Ohioans overwhelmingly voted to interrupt from partisan gerrymandering which supplies one political get together a bonus over the opposite throughout redistricting — a course of in Ohio that each 10 years has leaders redraw the maps that divide voting areas for political illustration.
Voters didn’t search a 50/50 break up, however they did demand equity.
Ohio leans proper and the maps ought to replicate as a lot. However with map after map, the Republicans who management the Ohio Redistricting Fee have proven they need dominance, not the honest illustration each American deserves.
Teams suing over Ohio’s legislative maps — former U.S. Legal professional Normal Eric Holder’s Nationwide Redistricting Motion Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio — have requested the excessive court docket to carry fee members in contempt of court docket for approving barely tweaked state Home and Senate maps they created from maps that had already been rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court docket.
The newest map approvals got here after fee members ditched maps created within the public’s eye by employed mapmakers.
The Ohio Supreme Court docket rejected these state Home and Senate maps Thursday in a 4-3 determination.
The state wants legislative maps by this coming Wednesday to conduct the second major Aug. 2, the final potential date, in keeping with election officers.
What does any of this need to do with the value of bacon?
The smoking scorching mess that has been redistricting in Ohio is an instance of presidency waste at its worst.
Not solely are elected officers enjoying a sport with who will symbolize you, they’re making you pay for it.
If these had been completely different instances maybe the continued price of this embarrassing episode won’t be such a difficulty.
In spite of everything, the additional $25 million or so Secretary of State Frank LaRose estimates it’ll price Ohio taxpayers to carry a second major election resulting from months of shenanigans from him and different Republican members of the fee is a drop within the bucket when you think about the dimensions of Ohio’s common fund: roughly $35 billion this 12 months.
However these usually are not typical instances. (By the way, there are not any instances when $25 million in public cash is chump change.)
It could be dangerous if the price of the first election was it.
As Jessie Balmert of the USA TODAY Community Ohio Bureau which serves the Dispatch and 21 different information organizations, has spent months reporting, it’s not.
Neither is the almost $100,000 the state paid two mapmakers for creating the ditched maps that had been apparently too honest for the style of 4 of the 5 GOP members of the seven-member fee — LaRose, Gov. Mike DeWine, Senate President Matt Huffman and Home Speaker Bob Cupp.
These mapmakers, College of Florida professor Michael McDonald and Nationwide Demographics Company’s Douglas Johnson, had been to make $450 an hour for the maps by the way in which.
The fee has spent one other $60,000 for workers journey, computer systems, mapmaking software program and map promoting. Attorneys’ charges — largely to defend the lopsided maps — are already round one million {dollars}.
On prime of all that, greater than $9 million — largely for dashing up the map importing course of — has been allotted for the Could 3 major.
Who’s shifting duty for wasted tax cash?
Some Republican lawmakers are screaming “judicial activism” and pointing fingers for delays on the Ohio Supreme Court docket led by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, and the Democrats difficult the maps in court docket.
O’Connor — who’s leaving the court docket on the finish of the 12 months resulting from age limits — has been threatened with impeachment.
State Rep. Ron Ferguson, of Wintersville, needs to punish the court docket by taking the $25 million for the second major from its $204 million price range.
That’s a ridiculous resolution.
This chapter would have been closed way back if lawmakers would have merely adopted the need of the folks laid out proper in entrance of them.
The $25 million and many of the relaxation might have been used to raised serve Ohioans because the state recovers from the worst pandemic because the so-called Spanish flu greater than a century in the past.
As a substitute of discovering methods to rebuild a resilient Ohio, Republican members of the redistricting fee and their colleagues within the Normal Meeting have targeted on methods to make sure they’ll stay employed regardless of how a lot or what it prices you.
With regards to redistricting, it’s their palms stealing cash out of your purse and pockets.
Youngstown Vindicator. April 17, 2022.
Editorial: ODOT, all highway employees’ security at all times crucial
Ohio’s 2022 Division of Transportation development season is underway, and this 12 months ODOT is making an attempt $2 billion value of labor on 829 initiatives.
Ninety-five cents of each greenback spent goes towards preserving present infrastructure, in keeping with a current presentation made on the ODOT District 4 places of work in Canfield.
Within the Mahoning Valley alone, 18 initiatives between Mahoning and Trumbull counties totaling about $40 million are both slated to start within the subsequent few months or have already began.
However whereas employees fan out throughout the Buckeye State to enhance the security of our roads, bridges, sidewalks and different infrastructure, it will be significant we hold the employees protected, too.
Final 12 months, there have been 4,796 crashes in Ohio work zones, 35% of them occurred with employees current. ODOT employees, autos, and gear had been hit 154 instances final 12 months. Thirty folks died in these crashes.
“The women and men engaged on these development initiatives are doing harmful work. Motorists could make it much less harmful by paying additional consideration, transferring over, and slowing down after they see our crews,” ODOT Director Jack Marchbanks mentioned.
After all, this is applicable not simply to Ohio Division of Transportation employees, however to all highway employees — together with native crews from Trumbull and Mahoning counties and in addition from native townships and municipalities.
Decrease pace limits in work zones usually are not there to inconvenience drivers. They’re meant to maintain each employees and drivers protected. It takes a great deal of nerve and religion in humanity to hold out your job whereas automobiles are whizzing previous even at 55 mph. The women and men toiling to enhance our roads shouldn’t need to take care of those that disregard the pace restrict and drive dangerously in work zones.
Marchbanks is correct. Concentrate, decelerate and transfer over when you can. These in road-work zones rely on the remainder of us to maintain them protected whereas they get the job performed.
Elyria Chronicle. April 14, 2022.
Editorial: GOP voters ought to stick to LaRose
Though he’s a former U.S. Military Inexperienced Beret, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose invoked a nautical theme in explaining why his fellow Republicans ought to wish to hold him on the job.
“They know I’ve been a gradual hand on the rudder,” he instructed us throughout an endorsement interview.
Throughout his first time period, LaRose, a former state senator, has targeted on protecting Ohio’s elections safe and honest.
He known as the 2020 election “probably the most profitable election that Ohio’s ever had,” and regardless of having voted for then-President Donald Trump, he acknowledged that Joe Biden gained sufficient Electoral School votes to change into president of the USA.
Sadly, the 42-year-old LaRose’s major opponent, former state Rep. John Adams, doesn’t share the incumbent’s practical tackle the result of the 2020 election.
A small enterprise proprietor and a former Navy SEAL, Adams, 62, of Sidney, has insisted the election was stolen from Trump. Throughout an endorsement interview, he pointed to a number of debunked conspiracy theories and different sources to bolster his claims, however the truth stays that Trump misplaced honest and sq..
Adams additionally argued that doubt about election outcomes was cheap just because so many individuals “lack confidence within the electoral course of.”
“You can not belief any of the outcomes,” he mentioned.
Individuals imagine and say a whole lot of issues, however that doesn’t at all times make them true. So many Republicans imagine the election was stolen primarily as a result of Trump and his acolytes hold saying it was, regardless of all of the proof on the contrary.
Within the 2020 election, as an illustration, LaRose’s workplace discovered 27 “doubtlessly unlawful” votes out of almost 6 million forged in Ohio. That’s round 0.0005% of the overall. That’s a rounding error, not proof of widespread fraud.
Not solely that, however elections boards across the state conduct post-election evaluations. In 2020, the accuracy charge was 99.98%, whereas in 2021, it was 99.99%. In lots of counties, no errors had been discovered, LaRose mentioned.
The explanations for the errors had been often innocuous. For example, LaRose instructed us ballots typically get caught collectively. In a single occasion, he mentioned, a voter used a purple glitter pen to fill out an absentee poll, which brought about the vote-tabulating machine to have bother studying it.
These kinds of issues occur however, once more, they don’t seem to be proof of fraud.
Furthermore, the errors had been caught, which reveals the system works in Ohio. Those that are suspected of breaking election legal guidelines have rightly been referred to prosecutors for additional investigation and potential costs.
Though LaRose, disappointingly, has toyed with the concept voter fraud is an even bigger drawback exterior Ohio than it truly is, he has defended the sanctity of Buckeye State elections.
He’s fond of claiming, “In Ohio’s elections, it’s straightforward to vote and laborious to cheat,” a sentiment we agree with.
Adams sees issues far otherwise. He insisted that Ohio’s elections had been nowhere almost as safe as LaRose claimed. He known as for extra audits of elections, stricter voter ID legal guidelines, eliminating early voting and extra frequent purges of the voter rolls.
He even prompt that Ohio’s election machines weren’t safe and floated a return to paper ballots. LaRose rightly disagreed with that evaluation.
No credible proof exists that voting machines, which aren’t even related to the web, had been hacked, and LaRose has made bettering cybersecurity a precedence.
Which isn’t to say that LaRose has prevented any missteps. For example, he’s confirmed overly partisan as a member of the Ohio Redistricting Fee, which retains churning out gerrymandered congressional and state legislative maps. The Ohio Supreme Court docket’s rejection of these has led to chaos within the major election, scheduled for Could 3.
Regardless of amendments to the Ohio Structure designed to curtail gerrymandering, whichever get together held the bulk on the fee, on this case the GOP, was going to hunt partisan benefit.
That makes LaRose’s conduct disappointing, however not sudden.
Although he isn’t innocent for the turmoil, LaRose has labored laborious to verify county boards of elections are ready for the first. That speaks to his professionalism.
The winner of the Republican major will face Democrat Chelsea Clark within the fall. She’s a businesswoman and member of the Metropolis Council within the Cincinnati suburb of Forest Park, and she or he is unopposed in her get together’s major.
The higher Republican candidate to face her is LaRose.
Toledo Blade. April 17, 2022.
Editorial: Assist people navigate Medicaid modifications
Lengthy earlier than the pandemic struck, navigating Medicaid was robust for the typical applicant and recipient. There’s no have to make it more durable with modifications on the way in which when the coronavirus public well being emergency ends.
A modest proposal by some Ohio legislators is smart. Rent some assist to verify individuals who want it and qualify keep on Medicaid. That’s good coverage, and a solution to keep away from folks falling out of the security web. The very last thing Ohio wants is people who find themselves working after which penalized for making some cash by dropping their Medicaid.
It’s a really difficult state of affairs, however it comes all the way down to modifications through the pandemic. Ohio needed, understandably, to maintain federal Medicaid {dollars}. In the course of the pandemic, that required the state to maintain people on the rolls till the federal well being emergency ended. That successfully stopped redeterminations. In July, they begin up once more. Estimates are that a whole bunch of 1000’s of Ohioans might lose protection. That might be silly and value cash in the long term.
Holding folks wholesome saves taxpayer {dollars}. The most effective care is preventive care and early detection of significant sickness. These are issues that Medicaid offers.
It’s not unsuitable to rent an outdoor vendor to display Medicaid redeterminations. What should be prevented is making alleged financial savings a precedence. That will sound nice. However reducing folks off of well being care creates hazards and bills down the highway.
Offering helpers to work with folks on their Medicaid redeterminations is sound coverage and ahead fascinated with the associated fee to taxpayers of people that can’t afford to pay for the prices of significant sickness.
Staying on Medicaid may save them and their fellow residents.
Marietta Occasions. April 18, 2022.
Editorial: Authorities wants to recollect those who stepped up
It has been greater than two years since federal officers started calling for American-made private protecting gear to assist us fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Small companies all around the nation pivoted to reply the decision… or tried, to, anyway. However the struggles they’ve confronted since then are an ideal instance of two issues very unsuitable with our economic system: we drown ourselves in purple tape; and we don’t study classes.
Right here is an evaluation of the expertise of 1 firm that attempted to make face shields and N95 masks in Missouri:
“Up to now, it has been a web drain of funds and assets and power,” mentioned Halcyon Shades proprietor Jim Schmersahl.
In truth, the Related Press did an evaluation of producers that started producing PPE after the federal government’s name.
Although their efforts had been fueled by a way of obligation to their nation, patriotism alone doesn’t maintain a enterprise. Many who obtained state or federal cash to take action have been pressured to shut or cut back. In line with interviews with lots of these producers, the explanations had been logistical hurdles, regulatory rejections, slumping demand and fierce competitors from international suppliers.
Ohio awarded $20.8 million to 73 companies to fabricate pandemic-related provides, in keeping with state knowledge. Of 60 companies that complied with a current reporting deadline, greater than one-third now not produced PPE by the top of 2021.
“I’m nonetheless a agency believer in that — that we have to be making PPE right here on this state,” mentioned Missouri Gov. Mike Parson. “Sadly, a whole lot of entities went proper again to the place they had been getting it earlier than.”
They requested U.S. companies to adapt, these companies did, and governments virtually instantly forgot the provision issues that spurred their request within the first place and bought from abroad producers anyway.
“If the federal authorities doesn’t are available and assist help the U.S. manufacturing base, it’s virtually actually going to return to China, and we’ll be simply as weak as we had been in early 2020 and 2019,” mentioned Brent Dillie, the affiliation chairman and co-founder of Premium-PPE, a Virginia producer began through the pandemic, which has minimize about two-thirds of its roughly 300 staff.
What a large number — and one created by the forms and illogical buying practices. Dillie is correct. If we fail to study our lesson now, we’ll be in a good worse place to face the following disaster.
Copyright 2022 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Ohio
After beating Tennessee, Ohio State will finally get its rematch with Oregon
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State players had been thinking about a rematch with Oregon long before the Buckeyes crushed Tennessee in a first-round playoff game.
Their first chance to avenge the Oct. 12 loss to the Ducks looked to be the Big Ten championship game, but that slipped away when the Buckeyes lost to Michigan and gave up their spot in the title game.
Now, by virtue of Saturday night’s 42-17 win over Tennessee, the Buckeyes will see the Ducks again in a quarterfinal game on a grand stage — the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
“It’s going to be a heck of an opportunity for all of us,” Ohio State quarterback Will Howard said. “I think we’ve all been looking forward to this one, another crack at these guys. The way the last one ended didn’t sit right with me.”
In the first game, the Buckeyes led twice in the second half but couldn’t hold it. They were driving in the final minute. After a questionable interference penalty on freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith, Howard scrambled out of the pocket to extend a play and slid as time ran out, ending the 32-31 shootout on a mental error.
It would be the closest game of the season for top-seeded Oregon (13-0).
“We’re looking forward to the opportunity because it was not a great game for us,” Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said. “And I know, quite frankly, the guys got a little pissed off. They used that game as motivation. So, I’m sure they’re looking forward to another opportunity.”
The Ohio State defense — now statistically the best in the nation — allowed Heisman Trophy finalist Dillon Gabriel and the Ducks to pile up 496 yards.
“You get to watch yourself play, and watch the mistakes that you’ve made, and you see how they attack you,” Ohio State linebacker Cody Simon said. “But also, there’s a lot of football played in between that. They’ve changed. We’ve changed, and we’re just, we’re going to look at what we need to do, and trust the game plan the coaches have, and we’ll go and tackle them.”
Nearly everything was working right inside the frigid Horseshow on Saturday night, the first December college football game in the history of the 102-year-old stadium.
Howard threw two touchdown passes to Smith and compiled 311 passing yards — his highest total since the Oregon game. TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins rushed for two touchdowns apiece. The defense sacked Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava four times and limited him to 104 passing yards, his lowest total of the season.
Oregon coach Dan Lanning recognized the Buckeyes’ ability to be explosive.
“That’s an elite football that we just played,” Lanning said after the October game. “They’re really, really talented. They don’t have weaknesses.”
Other quarterfinal games include No. 6 seed Penn State against third-seeded Boise State on Dec. 31, and on Jan. 1 it will be No. 5 Texas against No. 4 Arizona State, and No. 7 Notre Dame versus No. 2 Georgia.
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Ohio
Tennessee overwhelmed in humbling Playoff loss at Ohio State: ‘It stings’
COLUMBUS, Ohio — By the time the beating was finished, most of the thousands of Tennessee fans who flooded into Ohio Stadium were gone.
At least two remained — one in a Peyton Manning jersey and another in a coonskin cap — and hovered over the tunnel as the stone-faced Vols walked into the beginning of the end of their season.
They offered encouragement and some high fives in contrast to the derisive “S-E-C” chant coming from the Ohio State student section as the Buckeyes celebrated a cherished Rose Bowl berth that eluded Tennessee.
Ohio State 42, Tennessee 17.
The Vols’ 21-0 hole after the game’s first 12 minutes was too deep to escape. Ohio State’s talent at edge rusher and receiver overwhelmed Tennessee.
Cutting the lead to 11 at halftime offered a brief glimmer of hope until Ohio State forced a punt on the second half’s first possession and followed up with a 65-yard touchdown drive to slam the door for good.
GO DEEPER
Tennessee fans’ orange invasion of Ohio Stadium: ‘Don’t tell us we can’t do that’
“Everybody was just disappointed,” Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said.
The offensive line struggled to provide quarterback Nico Iamaleava with clean pockets. Tennessee’s receivers couldn’t find space in the secondary, forcing Iamaleava to hold onto the ball and try to create an offense built from scraps of quarterback scrambles.
The secondary struggled to cover Ohio State’s stellar receivers and even when they did, freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith and NFL-bound senior Emeka Egbuka hauled in contested catches anyway.
“They made some plays. That’s gonna happen against a good team,” Heupel said. “What we didn’t do is come back and find a way to get on the right side of it. That’s defensively, offensively, it’s everybody.”
Nico Iamaleava on his 20 carries: “I didn’t expect to run that many times.”
Josh Heupel said some of those were him scrambling.
— David Ubben (@davidubben) December 22, 2024
Injuries, Ohio State’s defense and the early struggles forced Tennessee to try to morph on the fly into a team it isn’t.
Dylan Sampson, the SEC’s Offensive Player of the Year, suffered a hamstring injury late in the regular-season finale against Vanderbilt and aggravated the injury early on Saturday. Tennessee knew entering the game Sampson would be limited, but he was barely available and couldn’t continue after briefly returning in the second half.
He carried the ball at least 19 times in every SEC game this season. He carried the ball twice on Saturday.
Iamaleava hadn’t run the ball more than a dozen times all season. Between called runs and scrambles, he had to carry the ball 20 times. The Vols’ longest passing play of the day was just 21 yards. Iamaleava finished with a season-low 104 passing yards despite throwing the ball 31 times, just the third time this season he’s topped 30 attempts in a game.
“It sucks to go out that way,” Iamaleava said. “That’s not who we are, man.”
He averaged 8.3 yards per attempt during the regular season, good for 21st nationally. He averaged 3.3 yards per attempt on Saturday.
“When we’re not creating explosives, whether it’s poor calls or execution, it puts you in a phone booth,” offensive coordinator Joey Halzle said. “We didn’t stretch them enough. We didn’t force them to respect us going by them enough to make them change up what they were doing. When you let them play comfortable and play in their game plan and don’t make them change, it creates long nights like what happened tonight.”
The defense gave up 311 yards through the air to Will Howard, a quarterback who had just one 300-yard game this season. Tennessee had surrendered 300 passing yards in just one other game this year, to Carson Beck and Georgia.
The Vols lost by 25 in a game in which they won the turnover battle, 1-0.
“Their skill on both sides of the ball was as good as you’ll see,” Heupel said.
Defensive coordinator Tim Banks said the Buckeyes offense didn’t do much the Vols hadn’t prepared for on film. They just did it well and consistently won 1-on-1 matchups.
A breakthrough season crescendoed to the program’s first College Football Playoff bid and arguably the biggest game for the program in at least two decades.
Tennessee fans flooded into Ohio Stadium by the thousands. Instead of witnessing another breakthrough, they were forced to shiver through a breakdown on the sport’s biggest stage and a game that was barely competitive, just like the three first-round games that preceded it.
The only matchup of Big Ten and SEC teams in Round 1 produced the most lopsided result of the opening weekend of the expanded Playoff, with the Big Ten team’s players parading around their home field with roses between their teeth.
Tennessee has looked the part of a good team all season, but losses to Georgia and Ohio State laid bare the reality that the Vols have yet to ascend into the sport’s upper crust and aren’t ready to chase the kinds of titles that have eluded the program since 1998.
Ohio State’s offensive game plan showed aggression and a desire to stretch the field early, making it clear that Tennessee would not be facing the same Buckeyes team that lost a brawl at the line of scrimmage against Michigan three weeks ago.
The Vols came up against one of the nation’s most talented teams. For 60 minutes, the Buckeyes looked the part, flexing at Tennessee’s expense.
“It stings losing like that,” linebacker Will Brooks said.
It was tough to swallow for Heupel, who used the word “disappointed” 10 times in his 14 minutes with reporters after the loss. Multiple times, he was left shaking his head.
He saw the same thing that the thousands of fans in orange witnessed, too.
“Disappointed in our performance for our fans,” Heupel said. “People that have watched us, it wasn’t our best football tonight.”
But it’s the football Tennessee will be left to ponder as it enters an offseason that started earlier than anyone in orange hoped. As Heupel addressed his team, he began by using that word, acknowledging the disappointment of Tennessee’s first trip to the Playoff before pointing to the future after closing a stretch of 30 wins in three seasons.
“Everybody better let that soak in,” Heupel said, “and it’s gotta propel you to whatever’s next.”
(Photo of Nico Iamaleava: Saul Young / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
Ohio
Ohio State's blowout win over Tennessee sets up epic Oregon rematch. It's just a shame it's happening in the quarterfinals
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Are you not entertained?
No, you’re probably not.
Four College Football Playoff first-round games, four outcomes by at least two scores. Two of those were outright blowouts (in State College and Columbus), a third was a dud made closer with two late touchdowns (in South Bend) and a fourth in Austin featured our only suspenseful fourth-quarter moments (thank you, Clemson).
Here in Columbus, the Buckeyes left us wondering a couple of things after a 42-17 drubbing of Tennessee:
Why couldn’t they do this against Michigan?
Are they back to being the favorites to win it all?
Perhaps, they are! After all, no other college roster is more talented, as they reminded us Saturday night in capping college football’s first-ever slew of on-campus playoff games.
Let’s take a look at how ugly this got so quickly. Ohio State’s first punt came with four minutes left in the second quarter. Tennessee’s first pass completion came six minutes into the second quarter. Suddenly, it was 21-0 and the more than 25,000 Tennessee fans who made the journey north were left angry and shivering in wind chills of below 20 degrees.
The Buckeyes (11-2) showed what they can do when they’re cooking and, boy, were they cooking. By cooking, we mean targeting two of the most explosive and talented receivers in the country. Jeremiah Smith and Emeka Egbuka tore through the Vols for 11 catches and nearly 200 yards.
Toss in an Ohio State defensive front that swarmed first-year starter Nico Iamaleava and the Buckeyes were well on their way to a win that should lower the heat on the Ryan Day Pressure Cooker, from boiling to less boiling. Afterward, even Day acknowledged that he and the coaching staff called Saturday’s game “more aggressively” than that last outing here against Michigan.
“You’re defined by the way you handle adversity in life,” he said. “To see the way they responded, they had a look in their eye.”
Up next: a rematch against Big Ten champion Oregon in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day — a glorious matchup of a team with college football’s best resume against a team with college football’s most talented roster.
Last time they met, back in October, the Ducks won 32-31 on a last-second finish in a thriller in Eugene. Whether these two should be meeting again so early in a 12-team playoff is certainly a question worth pondering.
But, alas, that’s what the format giveth. Instead of seeding teams based on the CFP selection committee’s rankings, the format calls for the four highest-ranked conference champions to be seeded Nos. 1-4 — a rule that, while understandable as an incentive for league champs, creates unbalanced seeding.
For instance, the committee’s No. 6-ranked team, Ohio State, was seeded eighth and now is pitted against the top seed in the quarterfinals. Look for the format to undergo changes, potentially starting with this very seeding rule that grants byes to only conference champions, as explained in this story last week.
But back to those blowouts.
The ACC got knocked out in the first round, its champion downed by the SEC’s runner-up and its runner-up crushed by the Big Ten’s runner-up (if you’re debating conference strength, those results should be helpful). The Big Ten’s third-best team took down the SEC’s third-best team in Columbus. And Notre Dame quite easily handled the Big Ten’s fourth-best team.
In all, the winners scored 145 points and the losers 68. All higher seeds and home teams won.
Chalk, is what they call it.
This doesn’t necessarily mean these teams — SMU and Indiana, in particular — should have missed the playoff field. Perhaps it only means that, in college football at least this year, the separation between those great teams and those good teams is a wider gap than we first realized.
This isn’t completely new. Don’t you remember all those CFP semifinals the last decade? Fourteen of the 20 semifinal matchups resulted in outcomes of at least two scores. Eight of those were at least three-touchdown blowouts.
It happens.
But what it does tell us, as someone here in the Ohio Stadium press box whispered to this writer, “Maybe this will show everyone that we shouldn’t expand anymore.”
Fourteen teams? Sixteen?
Maybe not.
And it’s now up to Boise State and Arizona State to prevent a nightmare for many college football fans and stakeholders: an All-SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame semifinal.
The Sun Devils meet Texas in the Peach Bowl, and the Broncos tangle with Penn State in the Fiesta. Boise State and ASU were ranked No. 9 and No. 12 by the committee but got the third and fourth seeds because of that pesky conference title rule we earlier mentioned.
Can they deliver? As underdogs against the sport’s big brands, they’ll have plenty across the country rooting for them.
Meanwhile, in Pasadena, we’ll get what many expected in the preseason to maybe be a national title game matchup: Oregon vs. Ohio State.
It’s a mouthwatering duel, backdropped by the sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains. In fact, as midnight struck here in Columbus, Rose Bowl officials readied dozens of single cut roses to be handed to Ohio State players and coaches.
What a difference that three weeks makes, huh? The last game here ended in an embarrassing midfield flag-planting brawl and a shocking loss to three-touchdown underdog Michigan — a fourth consecutive defeat to the Wolverines in this heated rivalry series and one that seemed to turn off some fans here.
“You don’t just move on from the game,” Day said. “You identify the issues and let the players speak. You put a plan together to get these things fixed. To say it doesn’t weigh on you, it does. These guys have a lot of pride.”
Despite efforts from Ohio State administrators, many Buckeyes fans sold away their tickets to this playoff bout. Visiting teams get 3,500 tickets to CFP first-round games. The Vols brought at least 25,000 strong, peppering this 102,000-seat stadium in orange. It was more visiting fans than some long-time Ohio State reporters had ever seen in this venue.
By the start of the fourth quarter, many of them were gone, exiting into the chilly night for the jaunt down Interstate 71 having suffered what was the ugliest of the first-round blowouts. After all, OSU out-gained Tennessee 473-256 in yards and played its third-string — third-string — quarterback in the final minutes.
As a final goodbye on this cold Saturday night, Ohio State stadium operators played over the speakers a familiar refrain for those in orange: Rocky Top.
Back to Tennessee they went. And off to L.A. go the Buckeyes, deliverers of the most crushing win of this historic weekend in the sport.
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