The first postseason tournament in major-college history has crowned its champion, and what a bunch it is. An Ohio State team that needed a 59-0 victory in the Big Ten title game just to slide into the four-team field overcame No. 1 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and then, on Monday night, mostly overcame itself to claim the tall gold trophy.
To say the inaugural College Football Playoff yielded a classic final is to laugh in the face of conventional wisdom. The Buckeyes gave the ball to favored Oregon four times and still they prevailed. In the history of the sport, has any team lost what’s invariably called the turnover battle 4-1 and won 42-20?
If Ohio State’s final step was a half-stumble, it should in no way diminish these Buckeyes. They won behind Cardale Jones, their massive No. 3 quarterback, and Ezekiel Elliott, a tailback considered the third-best runner in his conference. They won because the best big-game coach in college football laid claim to being the absolute best coach in college football, Nick Saban included. They won with a team even Urban Meyer believes is a year ahead of schedule.
“We finished the year as a great team,” said Meyer, who took his third national title in Year 3 as Ohio State’s coach. “From Game 1 to Game 15, I’ve never seen a team improve like this.”
In winning Monday, Ohio State did what nobody was sure any team could: They held the flying Ducks and the Heisman-winning quarterback Marcus Mariota to 20 points after spotting them seven. If not for the four errors, the Buckeyes might have won by five touchdowns.
A disjointed first half yielded 607 yards but only 31 points. Oregon scurried 75 yards in 2:39 after the kickoff but wouldn’t score again — and then only a field goal — until 48 seconds remained in the second quarter. The Ducks dropped third-down passes to quash two drives and saw Thomas Tyner halted at the 1 on fourth-and-goal from the 3.
The Buckeyes’ halftime lead could easily have been more than 21-10. Jones botched a wraparound handoff to Elliott at the Oregon 39 with Ohio State leading 14-7, and on the next series Corey Smith shook loose for a 47-yard gain to the Ducks’ 12 but fumbled after being hit.
Another deep Jones pass to another Smith — Devin this time — positioned the Buckeyes to make it 21-7, which Jones did by bouncing away from a pile and backing into the end zone. The Ducks, who’d been irresistible much of the season, had been outscored 21-0.
Elliott, the MVP of the Sugar Bowl, was again hitting holes and breaking tackles. He’d rushed for 98 yards by halftime, only one fewer than Oregon managed as a team. (He would finish with 246, his third consecutive 200-yard game.) His 33-yard burst tied the game at 7, and a 17-yarder took Ohio State to the 1, whereupon Jones found tight end Nick Vannett at the pylon to make it 14-7.
Ohio State took the ball first in the second half and stormed across midfield, but Jalin Marshall couldn’t hold a pass that the Ducks’ Danny Mattingly could. Granted its reprieve, the Ducks needed one play to score. Mariota threw long for Byron Marshall, running free off a play-action fake. Marshall nearly made the worst play in the three-game history of the College Football Playoff by dropping the ball as he crossed the goal line. Replay showed he’d held it just long enough.
That touchdown made it 21-17. Yet another gaffe — in a play reminiscent of Jameis Winston’s goofy fumble in the Rose Bowl, Jones dropped the ball while retreating under duress — made for Turnover No. 4. Suddenly the Ducks were driving for the lead. But Baylis caught Mariota’s pass just beyond the end line, necessitating another field goal. It was 21-20, and the Buckeyes were lucky to be ahead.
But the beauty of these Buckeyes is that they just keep playing. They trailed Alabama 21-6 in the Sugar Bowl and scored the next 28 points. Here, another Elliott-powered drive ended in an Elliott touchdown as the third quarter ended. Early in the fourth, Elliott scored again to make it 35-20.
Having nearly thrown the game away, Ohio State snatched it back. And even as the Buckeyes celebrate this title, we’re left with a thought: If they were indeed ahead of schedule, what might they be like when they’re all grown up?
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