Florida is a pit of vipers.
Not just because it is a literal pit, filled with vipers, but also because (in terms of football) it is a large, talent-rich state with several significant college football programs all vying for supremacy.
This constant battle between Gators and Hurricanes and Seminoles was something that I found fascinating as a kid growing up in the late 90's. In part because I didn't really understand why anyone would live there in the first place; my first few reactions to the state as a kid were "Disney World is fine" and "why is everything here slightly wet" and "it's impossible to avoid being itchy, no matter where you are or what you're doing."
What I didn't realize is that millions of people also have those exact same reactions, go "hell yeah, let's buy a condo," and then happily set up shop on a rapidly-eroding coastline to sweat and watch seagulls fight over a bag of Fritos. None of that made sense to small, Ohioan me.
But I also liked watching college football, and Florida once had undeniably the coolest college football in the country.
My heart, of course, belonged to the Buckeyes, but watching coaches like Steve Spurrier re-invent the college football offense (and actually, you know, win a championship by doing so), or players like Warrick Dunn run over dudes, or programs like Miami make winning so effortlessly badass was thrilling and exciting in the way that college football is supposed to be.
Then it all blew up.
After placing at least a pair of teams in the top 10 every year from 1987-98, the Big Three (Florida, Miami, and Florida State) has failed to do so in nine consecutive seasons. None finished in the top 10 in either of the last two. The programs’ eight-year national title drought is the longest since Miami won the state’s first in 1983, and last fall’s combined 18-19 record was their worst since 1976.
That's from Matt Baker at the Tampa Bay Times, as part of his series breaking down the three most important college football programs in the state of Florida, and while his conclusions about what caused their downfall (bad coaching hires, a talent exodus, lack of investment, etc.) aren't particularly surprising, it's at least instructive for understanding how Ohio State is able to exist relatively unopposed within the state of Ohio.
Hiring at all levels has been key.
It is frankly unprecedented that Ohio State has managed to hit on every single head coaching hire for their football program for literally the past 70 years. Not to the lofty standards of "winning everything all the time," but the Buckeyes have never been even mediocre for longer than a season or two in a row for literally four generations at this point. That's due to a combination of luck and institutional competence, but it has kept Ohio State hegemony in place.
Had the Buckeyes missed on a hire or two, or found themselves in a decade-long string of middling finishes, Ohio might've been easy pickings for other programs looking for high school football talent. Instead, the Buckeyes remain the absolute premier landing spot for the best players in-state.
But that is all window dressing.
There are no real challengers to Ohio State's throne because there are no real challengers to Ohio State's throne. As Miami and Florida State and Florida beat each other to a pulp (either on the playing field or during battles for money, attention, or recruits), the Buckeyes only have to worry about... the Bearcats? Maybe? Once or twice a decade?
It's wild that a state as large and football-crazy as Ohio is a relative college football monoculture, but the Buckeyes have been so good for so long that they are absolutely omnipresent outside of the actual localities of their would-be in-state rivals. You'll find a ton of anti-Ohio State contrarians in southwest Ohio, but that's exactly it: their fandom only exists in relation to how much they have to hear about C.J. Stroud throwing for a million touchdown passes (as a sidenote, it'd be fascinating to go back in time 90 years when this wasn't the case and see what Ohio college football fandom looked like).
None of this is exactly news, but the larger point that I want to make here is that as we move forward with NIL, and eventually superconferences that shake up the entire college football world, Buckeye fans should actually embrace these changes.
Ohio State football has an incredibly stable position to operate from no matter what form college football takes in the next decade, and the likelihood that the Buckeyes will turn into a Florida or Miami or Florida State is low. And, actually, getting lower; most programs simply don't have the institutional capacity to leverage NIL the way Ohio State can, and certainly don't have a $200 million athletic department budget to draw from.
Ohio State isn't invincible. A bad head coaching hire here, a key administrator retiring there, and maybe someday the Visigoths from Cincy show up and dismantle everything. But for now, there is peace in the Buckeye state, under the watchful eye of a football team in Columbus.
