ESPN REPORT: Ohio State players train in tears after having three key players suspended by NCAA after facing….

This week, ESPN’s Bill Connelly published a piece analyzing how every college football championship since 1966 would have been decided by a playoff. Connelly built a College Football Multiverse and replicated the eight-, twelve-, and sixteen-team playoffs from the previous six decades of the sport using his SP+ method. His models yielded clear winners for every one of those years.

Given the current popularity of multiverses, let’s visit an alternative reality where college football accomplished a remarkable progressive feat sixty years ago. For the sake of argument, let’s say Duffy Daugherty’s efforts to advocate for an eight-team playoff consisting of the top two independent teams and six conference winners—or, conceivably, champions from other conferences—were successful.

Daugherty intended to ignore the bowls and spread out the playoff over a three-week period in December. To add some fun to the idea, let’s assume the Rose Bowl is appeased and agrees to this whole thing by having the finals always held in Pasadena, while the quarterfinals and semifinals are held on campus. Quite conveniently, we’ll argue that everything begins with the 1966 season, which had one of the most contentious outcomes ever recorded.

I’m going to use historical SP+ rankings to replicate an eight-team playoff for every season beginning in 1966. Rather than simply selecting the team I think will win each game, I’m going to go full ESPN Analytics and select a simulation at random from 10,000 to see what would have happened in a certain postseason. We’ll go into greater detail on the outcomes of the more contentious seasons in recent college football history if there had been a playoff.

Four national titles were won by Ohio State: in 1970, 1975, 1996, and 1998. The years 1968, 1973, 1993, 1997, 2018, and 2019 saw the Buckeyes place second.
Penn State, Kansas State, and Alabama won the national titles that Ohio State was supposed to win in 1968, 2002, and 2014.
As a head coach, John Cooper won three national titles: one in 1986 at Arizona State and two in 1996 and 1998 at Ohio State. You did indeed read that right.
As Ohio State head coaches, Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer were never the recipients of national titles. Tressel’s teams did not make it to the championship games in 2002, 2006, or 2007. Meyer’s squad missed the championship game in 2014, and in 2018, they came in second to Alabama.
The 2019 Ryan Day squad attained the national title, but Joe Burrow and LSU prevailed. His 2020 squad lost to Oklahoma and Alabama in the championship game.
It’s difficult to imagine how The Local Team’s supporters would feel in Connelly’s world.

Four titles were won by Ohio State in both scenarios. It was victorious in ours in 1968, 1970, 2002, and 2014. It was victorious in Connelly’s in 1970, 1975, 1996, and 1998. In the second scenario, Buckeye Nation would be vying for a national title.

In Connelly’s world, Cooper is not only the Buckeyes’ two-time champion and three-time national champion, but also one of the most criticized Ohio State coaches in ours. In contrast, Connelly’s view views Tressel and Meyer as two of the most adored Ohio State coaches.Years spent as Buckeyes were fraught with disappointment. What are all three of them leaving behind in this alternate reality?

While Day’s 2019 squad lost to Clemson in the CFP semifinal in reality, Connelly’s squad advanced to the championship game but was defeated by LSU. The Buckeyes were competitive but did not win the national championship in 2020, 2021, 2022, or 2023 in both realities. Is Ohio State still the favorite to win it all in 2024?

All are interesting to think about, but none have a solution.

ADHERING TO THE NORMS. A new head coach is needed for the Ohio State men’s basketball team.

Is Jake Diebler, the former assistant coach who is now an interim coach, the one who made the Are the Bucks playing well? Dusty May, the head coach at Florida Atlantic who led the Owls to the Final Four the previous season, is a good candidate. Or maybe Sean Miller, the head coach of Xavier who has led the program for 19 years and achieved four Elite Eights?

There are certain requirements the coach must fulfill, regardless of who Ohio State chooses to appoint to the position. A few former Buckeyes, including Ron Stokes, CJ Walker, Jerry Lucas, and Clark Kellogg, gave Adam Jardy of The Columbus Dispatch an explanation of these standards last week: