Sometimes clichés and coachspeak have their place.
For years, one of the biggest ones at Ohio State has been “brotherhood.” Players and coaches consistently speak of the bond between themselves; how winning isn’t about proving any point, but about battling for your brothers in arms.
The seniors of the Buckeyes’ 2024 football team finished telling a four-year story on Monday that will live on forever in Ohio State lore. Countless heartaches through the course of their careers concluded with the ultimate jubilation of a College Football Playoff national championship win over Notre Dame. And perhaps the greatest contributing factor was their brotherly bond with each other.
“I just can't even put it into words,” senior wide receiver Emeka Egbuka said. “It's a culmination of everything that I've felt over the last four years here, and just sharing this moment with my brothers, and just indebted to Jesus for this moment.”
Fifth-year veterans like linebacker Cody Simon, defensive tackle Ty Hamilton and right tackle Josh Fryar trace their Ohio State origins to the turmoil of COVID-19 and a national championship loss against Alabama in the 2020 season, even if they weren’t contributors at that time. The story for the majority of the Buckeyes’ seniors starts in 2021, however.
That’s when many of them signed with Ohio State as part of one of the most highly-touted recruiting classes in team history. The Buckeyes landed seven five-star prospects as part of the nation’s No. 2 class, though one of them transferred out after his freshman year, Quinn Ewers. They entered with momentum as Ryan Day’s program appeared to be on the cusp of greatness, having earned eight straight victories over Michigan and having made the four-team CFP in each of Day’s first two years with a national title game appearance.
Neither of those trends held for when the 2024 seniors were freshmen. Ohio State was upset on the road by Michigan and missed the CFP, though it responded with a win in one of the best Rose Bowls ever played against Utah. 2022 brought the Buckeyes’ first home loss to the Wolverines since 2000, but similar to 2024, they got a second chance in the CFP against Georgia at the Peach Bowl.
On the same field where Ohio State captured its first national title in 10 years Monday, the Buckeyes saw a 14-point lead evaporate in the fourth quarter before a last-second field goal sailed wide left for a 42-41 loss. Georgia blew out TCU in the ensuing national championship game, adding to the heartbreak.
“I think it's just a bunch of hard-nosed people,” Hamilton said of the resiliency of his fellow seniors. “We got guys like Jack Sawyer, JT, Emeka Egbuka, Tre. Guys will go out there and really grind every single day and really bring a passion to what they do every single day. They don't take days for granted. It just shows it pays off. I'm just thankful to have teammates that really care about the sport, really care about what they're doing, and the love of the brotherhood, man.”
Then came 2023, the third year of the vaunted 2021 class when Ohio State was supposed to be at its peak. That team rode into Ann Arbor with an 11-0 record and title ambitions once more, facing an 11-0 Michigan squad with a Big Ten Championship game and CFP spot on the line. In another game that came down to its final drive, the Buckeyes fell 30-24 and watched the Wolverines win a national title a couple months later.
A whimper of a Cotton Bowl in which the Buckeyes lost 13-3 to Missouri felt like the sunset of a gut-wrenching tenure for that 2021 class as many of them had NFL draft stock. The assumption was that at least some would join wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. and defensive tackle Mike Hall in bolting for the professional ranks.
Instead, they came back to see each of the bowl locations associated with Ohio State heartache in the previous five paragraphs play a role in this season’s title run.
“I was thinking to myself, in 2021 we went out to the Rose Bowl against Utah, won the Rose Bowl,” Fryar said. “We won the Rose Bowl this year. We went to the Cotton Bowl last year and we laid an egg and then this year we won. And then two years ago we had the most heartbreaking loss against Georgia, came back here this year and won the national championship. God works in mysterious ways. You put trust in him, it’s unbelievable.”
“I just can’t even put it into words.”– Emeka Egbuka on what the national championship meant to Ohio State's seniors
Defensive end Jack Sawyer, a Central Ohio native and lifelong Ohio State fan, spearheaded the return of his fellow seniors following that Cotton Bowl. He’s been called “The Buckeye,” “Captain Buckeye” and other such names by teammates during this year’s CFP run. How fitting it was, then, that at the very same Cotton Bowl where the despair and call to return started that Sawyer made a play that will live forever in OSU history, a strip-sack 83-yard scoop-and-score with less than two minutes to play that sealed a 28-14 win over Texas. And it came against Ewers, his former roommate.
JACK SAWYER SCOOP-AND-SCORE
— ESPN (@espn) January 11, 2025
Ohio State is one step closer to advancing to the national championship! pic.twitter.com/BPoV5FBRGZ
Sawyer said he hasn’t considered the fact that he’s now a Buckeye legend. The brotherhood and the metro he’s from is what was on his mind after he and his teammates hoisted the CFP national championship trophy.
“Honestly, I haven't still even thought about it,” Sawyer said of his legacy. “I'm just so happy to be able to celebrate this with this group of guys. It's not about me at all. It's about this team and Coach Day and the city of Columbus has been waiting for this for a long time, for 10 years. And I'm just so happy for this group of guys and the stuff that we went through and heard, and to keep getting up and keep showing up for practice and going as hard as we can and approaching with a positive attitude and trusting in God's plan. And here we are, national champs, and they can never take that away from us.”
Sawyer is far from the only senior with an amazing journey to relive. Really, there’s too many to contain in one story. Simon went from a pariah early in his career to one of the best linebackers in the country, cornerback Denzel Burke responded to an awful outing earlier this season against Oregon to be a glove in coverage down the stretch, Jordan Hancock not only emerged as one of the best nickels in the country over the last two years but became a weapon at safety this season – the list just goes on and on.
“I think if you just pick one, you'll be taking away from somebody else,” Day said. “Donovan Jackson, I could talk about him for 45 minutes. What he did this past year and the unselfishness and the play – he went from guard to tackle and became one of the best tackles in the country. He was going to the NFL, and then at the last second decided he wanted to come back and play.
“Lathan Ransom, I could talk forever about Lathan Ransom. The fact that the last time he was at the Rose Bowl was when he broke his leg, and to have the courage to go play the way he did in that Rose Bowl at Oregon and the inspiration he's had, these guys will tell you, you talk about a guy who just was, like, obsessed with winning this season, Lathan Ransom.
“You can just keep going through – like Ty Hamilton. You talk about one of the most unselfish, unsung heroes on this team, all he does is work. He comes in and works every single day. That's Ty Hamilton. All these stories need to be told now. They need to be heard.”
All their leadership, all their scars, all their experience came to pass in a meeting after a fourth straight loss to Michigan, the ultimate despair for a class that had been through so many. It was only players and Day.
“Anything that anyone wanted to say, they got a chance to say that,” Ransom said. “That says so much about Coach Day. Being vulnerable. Being able to hear what everyone has to say, players have to say, critiquing. I mean, Coach Day took some critique from the players. I think that shows how great of a leader he is. That's why we go out there and we play so hard for him.”
The run Ohio State went on for its redemption was unprecedented. The Buckeyes beat the No. 2 (Notre Dame), No. 3 (Oregon) and No. 4 (Texas) teams in the final AP poll. They beat six of the seven other teams in the top eight of the final College Football Playoff rankings – Georgia the only team absent from that group – during the season.
“No one thought we could do this,” Sawyer said. “I remember going into that Tennessee game, a lot of doubters, maybe rightfully so. But we persevered and trusted in God's plan and we were able to come out as national champs.”
“Five top-five teams,” Ransom said. “SEC teams, too. Everyone says we can't beat SEC teams. We beat SEC teams. We beat undefeated teams. We beat Texas. Like, anyone that wants to say (negative things) and come for Coach Day's head, man, y'all can't.”
The emotions in Ohio State’s locker room after beating Notre Dame to complete their four-year arc were perhaps best expressed by Fryar.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet. But when I first tasted this cigar, it sunk in,” Fryar said.
What did that cigar taste like?
“Sweet victory. Sweet, sweet victory,” Fryar said. “All the blood, sweat and tears for five years – it’s unbelievable.”
The scent of victory cigar smoke permeated the locker room air as the seniors shared in their triumph with the rest of Ohio State’s team. But none of it would have been possible without their brotherhood.
“We knew coming back we all had one goal in mind, and that was to win it all,” Jackson said. “Every senior, great leadership throughout every single position room. Even when we won the first couple playoff games, we were still hungry. We were still that good type of paranoid, we were like, ‘We got to keep going.’ So just being able to end it through all the older guys, it was perfect.”
“These guys are brothers for life,” Hamilton said. “You don't get too many times that you get to be with a team that really cares for each other. It's not just about stats and stuff like that. It's not always about winning. It's guys that really will lay their life down for each other.”
