It's a full-circle moment that Ohio State will be playing for a national championship after a magical three-game run through the College Football Playoff, but it can be full circle for no man more than Jack Sawyer.
No Ohio State player took it more personally than the Central Ohio native that his class failed to beat Michigan four straight years. He should have had a full-circle moment with a game-saving interception in the fourth quarter against that very Wolverine team on Nov. 30, only for the Buckeyes to ultimately still lose.
Now, if Ohio State goes on and wins a national title, his legacy will be the 83-yard game-sealing scoop-and-score that captured a 28-14 win for the Buckeyes over Texas in the College Football Playoff semifinal. His path of adversity and the team's over the past four years is perhaps a microcosm of how the contest played out.
The Buckeyes' offense struggled for most of the night while its defense kept it in the game, but the unit rallied through bumps, bruises, earlier offensive line struggles and a ferocious Longhorn defense to march 88 yards in 13 plays and score a go-ahead touchdown. Texas got all the way to Ohio State's 1-yard line on 1st-and-goal with a chance to tie, only for OSU to stuff the Longhorns on back-to-back runs and force an incompletion that led to Sawyer's jaunt.
Eleven Warriors' Dan Hope and Andy Anders recap an emotional victory that has Ohio State on the doorstep of achieving its ultimate goal on the latest episode of After Carmen, which you can watch at the top of the page.
