If next year’s College Football Playoff structure was already in place, Ohio State would be preparing to host Penn State at Ohio Stadium today.
While this year’s College Football Playoff won’t begin for another 17 days – though today is the start of bowl season – next year’s CFP will have already started by now. The CFP schedules for both 2024 and 2025 call for first-round games to be played on the third weekend of December with one game on Friday and three games on Saturday, with the games to be hosted by the higher-seeded teams playing in the first round.
Under that structure and based on this year’s final College Football Playoff rankings, Ohio State would have been the No. 7 seed and Penn State would have been the No. 10 seed, meaning the Buckeyes would have hosted the Nittany Lions in Columbus for the second time this season in one of the four first-round games.
Even though Ohio State already played Penn State once in a hard-fought game that the Buckeyes won 20-12, they certainly would have welcomed the opportunity to play the Nittany Lions again with a chance to still win a national championship.
“The 12-team playoff sounds super exciting, just different teams that you could play,” Marvin Harrison Jr. said last week. “If there had been a 12-team playoff this year, we might have played Penn State again ... Games like that would definitely be exciting, and whether I'm playing in it or watching it (next year), I’ll definitely be a fan of the 12-team bracket.”
Elsewhere, No. 5 seed Florida State would have gotten the opportunity it deserved to compete for a national championship, starting with a first-round game against No. 12 seed Liberty, who would have earned the guaranteed berth for the highest-ranked Group of 5 team. No. 6 seed Georgia would still have a chance to three-peat, starting its playoff with a game against No. 11 seed Ole Miss in a rematch of a 52-17 Georgia regular-season win, while No. 9 seed Missouri would be playing a first-round road game at No. 8 seed Oregon rather than preparing to face Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl.
It’s fair to wonder if the final rankings would have looked the same as they did if there was an actual 12-team CFP this year. The playoff selection committee may have been more inclined to keep the unbeaten Seminoles in the top four and give them a first-round bye – forcing Alabama to play in the first round instead – if it wasn’t the difference between actually making the playoff or not. It’s also reasonable to think the committee may have adjusted the rankings to avoid Ohio State/Penn State and Georgia/Ole Miss rematches in the first round, though the selection committee has always maintained that it does not manipulate the rankings to create more desirable matchups.
A rematch with Penn State on a day where temperatures in Columbus are expected to top 50 degrees might not have been exactly what Ohio State fans have envisioned when they’ve thought about the possibility of a future home playoff game at the Shoe – which certainly has the potential to mean welcoming a Southern team in much colder weather at some point.
It also wouldn’t make up for the fact that the Buckeyes lost to Michigan and failed to qualify for the Big Ten Championship Game for the third year in a row, which is why Ohio State isn’t in the actual playoff this year. Accomplishing those goals won’t necessarily make or break Ohio State’s CFP hopes in future seasons, but they’ll still be important goals – especially since winning a conference championship will be a prerequisite for earning a first-round bye in the 12-team format.
But it’s certainly fun to think about Ohio State hosting a playoff game in front of more than 100,000 fans wearing scarlet and gray this weekend. And it would certainly be preferable to the alternative of playing in a non-playoff Cotton Bowl – a game that, while certainly not “meaningless,” is still effectively a glorified exhibition rather than a game with any real stakes for a program that expects to compete for championships this year.
The past couple of weeks also could have been much different if the Buckeyes were playing in a CFP game this weekend. It’s hard to imagine that Kyle McCord would have entered the transfer portal on the day it opened if Ohio State was in a playoff; instead, he’d be looking to beat Penn State for the second time this year and redeem himself after throwing two costly interceptions against Michigan. Julian Fleming presumably would be playing against the Nittany Lions rather than potentially transferring to them this weekend, and no one would have to wonder if Harrison (or any other potential NFL draft entrant) had already played his last game as a Buckeye.
Alas, the College Football Playoff decided to wait until next year to expand to 12 teams, so Ohio State knew going into this season that just one loss – especially if it came against the team up north – could derail its playoff hopes. No one would be questioning that Ohio State deserved a chance to compete for the national championship if this year’s playoff was 12 teams – or even if it was only eight – but no one is feeling sorry for the Buckeyes that they aren’t getting that opportunity after losing their most important game of the season.
It’s still hard not to think about what could have been, though, with playoff expansion just one year away. A berth in a 12-team playoff wouldn’t have guaranteed anything; it could have ended with a loss to a Penn State team Ohio State already beat, which would have been a tougher pill to swallow than anything that could happen in the Cotton Bowl. Even assuming the Buckeyes beat Penn State again, they would have then had to knock off the No. 2 seed Washington in the quarterfinals just to make the semifinals.
Get that far, however, and Ohio State likely would have faced a highly intriguing semifinal matchup of either a battle with Quinn Ewers’ Texas Longhorns or a rematch of last year’s semifinal loss to Georgia. Had the Buckeyes made it to the final round, they could have potentially had the opportunity to avenge their loss to Michigan on the sport’s biggest stage.
The Buckeyes still have the opportunity to end this season with a win – which only one of college football’s top 12 teams will be able to do next year – but that won’t take much sting out of having to watch from home when the final four-team playoff commences three days later.
