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Ohio State's blowout win over Tennessee sets up epic Oregon rematch. It's just a shame it's happening in the quarterfinals

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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:

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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.

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Ohio State's Will Howard had one of his best games of the year Saturday, completing 24 of his 29 passes for 311 yards and two touchdowns. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)

Ohio State’s Will Howard had one of his best games of the year Saturday, completing 24 of his 29 passes for 311 yards and two touchdowns. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)

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.

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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.

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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?

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Maybe not.

The College Football Playoff quarterfinals are set. (Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports)The College Football Playoff quarterfinals are set. (Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports)

The College Football Playoff quarterfinals are set. (Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports)

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.

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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.

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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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Ohio State coach’s quarterback son commits to Big 10 rival

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Ohio State coach’s quarterback son commits to Big 10 rival


Ryan Day will have some very familiar competition in the Big 10 soon.

The son of the Ohio State football coach, R.J. Day, announced his commitment to Northwestern for the Class of 2027 on Sunday.

Northwestern plays in the same conference as Ohio State and the schools will face each other.

R.J. Day, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound quarterback from — not surprisingly — Columbus, Ohio, has started for three years at St. Francis DeSales HS as he heads towards his senior season.

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Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day enters Ohio Stadium before the Ohio State Spring Football Game on April 18, 2026 in Columbus, Ohio. Getty Images

According to reports, the younger Day had other offers from Purdue, Syracuse, Cincinnati and South Florida, as well as others.

Northwestern has eight quarterbacks on head coach David Braun’s roster.

And the offensive coordinator for the Wildcats is Chip Kelly, who served in the same role for Ryan Day at Ohio State when the Buckeyes won the title in 2024.

Kelly, the former head coach at UCLA and Oregon, was also the offensive coordinator at New Hampshire when Ryan Day was the team captain from 1998-2001. 

Most recently, Kelly was the OC with the Las Vegas Raiders before he took the job with Northwestern.

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“It’s really surreal when you think about the relationships that we’ve had with those two as a family over the years,” R.J. Day told ESPN earlier this month. “Coach Kelly coached my dad in college, so that adds another layer to it.”



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Urban Meyer recalls Pete Rose’s texts about Ohio State football

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Urban Meyer recalls Pete Rose’s texts about Ohio State football


Cincinnati Reds legend and well-known gambler Pete Rose was possibly more than just curious about Ohio State football’s 2012 season when he texted Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.

Appearing on “The Triple Option” show with Alabama running back Mark Ingram May 6, Meyer told a story about his relationship with Rose.

After OSU hired Meyer, the Reds asked him to throw out the first pitch at a game. Meyer threw to his son, Nathan, and walked into the dugout, where Rose, MLB’s all-time hit leader, was waiting to greet him.

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“I couldn’t get enough talking about ‘Big Red Machine,’ and he wanted to talk college football,” Meyer said on the podcast, explaining how the two spoke for hours and exchanged numbers.

Meyer said that during his first season, Rose texted him early on. He wanted information about the team, like news on Braxton Miller’s shoulder injury.

“I told that to someone, and they said, ‘You’re an idiot. Do you know he’s trying to get information from you for gambling, and you could get in trouble?’ ” Meyer said.

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Though Meyer asserted that he never disclosed much, he started to steer the conversations clear of college football after he realized Rose potentially wanted information for gambling.

The two had another conversation in Las Vegas, where Rose told Meyer he gambled daily after retiring.

Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the sport, something he admitted to in his 2004 autobiography. Rose was reinstated in 2025 and so is considered eligible for the Hall of Fame.

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Still baseball’s most prolific hitter (4,256 hits), Rose died in 2024.



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8th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational held in Girard

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8th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational held in Girard


GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) – Over 100 athletes came together for the 5th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational Saturday morning in Girard.

These athletes represent five different schools across Trumbull County to compete and spread the message of inclusion, achievement, and sportsmanship.

The Invitational continued its long-standing tradition of honoring the legacy of Randy Suchanek while celebrating the dedication and accomplishments of Special Olympics athletes throughout the region.

“You can hear all the excitement for this, for the athletes that are here today,” said superintendent Bryan O’Hara. “They work hard all year long to participate. We’ve always worked hand in hand with the rotary to get this accomplished is a lot of work behind the scenes.”

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Participating schools included Ashtabula, Geauga, Columbiana, Kent-Portage and Trumbull Fairhaven

“There’s a lot of nice participation from girard students as you see behind us, and a lot of participation from the community helping out,” Girard-Liberty Rotary co-president Andy Kish added.

O’Hara added that the event keeps everything in perspective, seeing the athletes compete in the spirit of fun, along with the courage and determination that they show.

Alex Sorrells contributed to this report.

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