Ohio State is off this Saturday, enjoying a bye week that is now a customary part of any college football team's schedule. The bye week allows a welcome reprieve from an otherwise grueling schedule that keeps getting longer as bowl games proliferate and the postseason expanded to include conference championship games and a four-team college football playoff.
With no opponent tomorrow, we decided to look at the nature of the bye week itself. Our review of the past 67 Ohio State football schedules yielded a couple interesting findings and patterns about bye weeks and how Ohio State performs before and after them.
Here are three things you may not have known about bye weeks and Ohio State football.
Bye Weeks Are Relatively New Additions to Ohio State Football Schedules
College football fans take bye weeks for granted as the seasons get longer. However, they're relatively new things on the schedule.
Woody Hayes coached 28 seasons at Ohio State (1951-1978) and had just four seasons with bye weeks. Those were in 1963, 1971, 1972, and 1973.
Earle Bruce coached nine seasons at Ohio State had just one bye week. That came in the 1986 season.
Bye weeks started to regularly appear on Ohio State football schedules from 1990, three seasons into John Cooper's tenure. They've become regular additions to the schedule since. Only the 2006, 2007, and 2009 seasons stand out as seasons since 1990 without any bye weeks.
Bye Weeks Used to Be Early in the Schedule
Bye weeks now serve as midway points of the season, coming at or around the seventh week of the season. However, they used to be much earlier into the schedule.
Look at the following bar chart that graphs the number of games Ohio State played before it got its bye for all seasons since Earle Bruce took over in 1979. Years without any bars indicate there was no bye in that season.
Bye weeks are relatively new things and used to be much earlier in the schedule.
Notice that byes used to come quite early into the schedule. The first four byes from 1990 to 1993 came after the second or third weeks of the season. Thereafter, nine of the next 11 byes came after the first week of the season.
Astute Ohio State fans may see these seasons cluster on marquee "kickoff" games. For example, Ohio State played in the Pigskin Classic in 1994 and 2002. It played in the Kickoff Classic in 1995 and 1999. It also played in the BCA Classic in 1997.
This is also true for the rare bye weeks Ohio State schedules had in the Hayes and Bruce eras. Ohio State's bye in 1986 came after the 1986 Kickoff Classic. The bye weeks from 1971 through 1973 all came after the first week.
The 1963 season is unique because that bye week preceded the Michigan game at the end of the season. Ohio State has not had a bye week since that was after the penultimate game of the year.
The latest in the schedule a bye week has appeared since was 2012. Therein, Ohio State got its bye week only after its tenth game with two more games remaining on the schedule.
Jim Tressel Was Awful After Bye Weeks
One of Ohio State's most heralded coaches had a grisly record after bye weeks. All time, Jim Tressel was 3-4 after bye weeks from 2001 to 2010.
| Coach | Pre-Bye Record | Post-Bye Record |
|---|---|---|
| Woody Hayes | 3-1 | 3-1 |
| Earle Bruce | 0-1 | 0-1 |
| John Cooper | 10-1 | 8-3 |
| Jim Tressel | 6-1 | 3-4 |
| Luke Fickell | 1-0 | 1-0 |
| Urban Meyer | 6-0 | 5-0 |
It's even more peculiar that Tressel started 1-4 after bye weeks with the only win coming in the 2002 season. Therein, Ohio State finished the season as undefeated national championships.
Post-bye week losses surround that season though. Ohio State got a bye after opening the 2001 season against Akron and lost at UCLA in its second game. In 2003, Wisconsin snapped Ohio State's 19-game winning streak despite the extra week of preparation Ohio State had after beating Northwestern in its previous game.
The losses in 2004 and 2005 may have been the worst losses of those respective seasons. In 2004, Ohio State got a bye after winning at NC State but lost to Northwestern in its next game. It was Ohio State's first loss to Northwestern since 1971. In 2005, Ohio State got a bye after a 31-6 win over Iowa and lost at Penn State in the next game.
Jim Tressel won his next two games after byes (2008, 2010) but his post-bye week record is conspicuous among all Ohio State coaches since Woody Hayes.
