Chapin: Buckeyes’ season far from finished

Well now I have to figure out what to do with my Saturday afternoons. It sure is going to be weird not watching Ohio State football games, it’s a shame their season is over.

What’s that you say? The season isn’t over? The Buckeyes are still going to play Kent State on Saturday and Cincinnati the following weekend and the Big Ten schedule after that? But I thought … all the experts said … isn’t it true they have nothing to play for?

Of course the experts over-reacted following Ohio State’s upset loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday, a day that was historically bad for the Big Ten Conference.

The Associated Press dug up the league’s record of 8-29 since 2010 against ranked opponents from the other Power Five conferences (SEC, Big 12, ACC, Pac-12). But I would bet that the other conferences — except maybe the SEC — probably have similar records against ranked opponents from Power Five conferences.

Without looking it up myself – maybe one of you SEC fans out there can do the research — you have to figure that the bottom feeders and middle-of-the-pack teams in those leagues are losing to ranked teams at the same rate that Big Ten teams are losing. The statistic, because it is somewhat obvious (all conferences are going to have losing records overall against ranked opponents), becomes almost meaningless.

Anyway, the Big Ten had a terrible weekend. According to the experts, that means the Big Ten champion will not make the four-team playoff field at the end of the season. I can recall similar pronouncements about various teams and conferences over the past decade or so when there were only two positions available for national championship consideration under the aegis of the Bowl Championship Series. Why will it be more difficult now with four available spots?

Every year it seemed a title contender would suffer an upset loss and be doomed by the pundits only to creep back into the picture by the end of the season. And speaking of upset losses, each year there seemed to be one or two in the final weeks of the season that jumbled the top of the BCS rankings. These were upsets that no one saw coming, but seemed to come each season nonetheless.

The 2007 season is a case in point. Ohio State at 10-0 was atop the BCS standings until an upset loss to Illinois. The Buckeyes dropped to seventh in the rankings and needed a lot of things to happen to get back into the top two. Sure enough over the next three weeks the six teams ahead of OSU — including LSU, which took over the top spot — lost and the Buckeyes found themselves in the title game against … wait for it … LSU, which jumped from seventh to second in one week.

The point is anything can happen in a college football season and usually does. It is way too early to count anyone out.

Of course, the Buckeyes will eventually count themselves out if they are not able to get some things fixed. But that’s a subject for another column.

Write Vindicator sportswriter Doug Chapin at dchapin@vindy.com.