Ohio State will "Scarlet the Shoe" and wear all-scarlet uniforms for the first-ever College Football Playoff game at Ohio Stadium.
Before tickets went on sale to the general public Thursday, Ohio State announced that its Dec. 21 matchup with Tennessee will be a Scarlet Out. As seats became available, the Buckeyes also confirmed Eleven Warriors assistant producer Josh Poloha's scoop that the team will wear all-scarlet uniforms for the game.
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) December 11, 2024
Tomorrow morning : https://t.co/Fjxgjo0xdu pic.twitter.com/G05uJDU4gf
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) December 12, 2024
Ohio State wore its all-scarlet uniforms in a 33-24 win over Penn State in 2021. The Buckeyes have not worn the uniforms for the past three Scarlet Outs: a 54-10 win over Iowa in 2022, a 20-12 win over Penn State in 2023 and a 21-17 win over Nebraska in 2024.
Ohio State's announcements came after it teased Buckeye Nation with a social media post full of scarlet circle emojis on Tuesday. It also came after the school's associate athletic director for marketing and live events, Caleb Clark, posted Monday that he looks forward to Buckeye Nation seeing "what we're cooking up" for the Tennessee game.
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) December 10, 2024
Trust me, yall are gonna want to see what were cooking up for the game next Saturday.
— Caleb Clark (@CalebClarkOSU) December 10, 2024
Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said Thursday on 97.1 The Fan that Ohio State also plans to have a drone show and pyrotechnics for the game against Tennessee as it looks to create as exciting of an environment for the game as possible.
“The in-game atmosphere is going to be a little more controlled by the CFP. Our staff will do it, but the scripting, how music's played – like Tennessee will have an intro video when their team runs on the field, we wouldn't do that for a normal visiting team, right? But we'll be able to do a lot of similar things that we do now, but the script will be a little more tame, if you will, in terms of what the CFP will allow,” Bjork said. “Not as many sponsor reads, not as many sponsor activations, but it also allows us to maybe do more things that are, like we're doing a Scarlet Out, right? So we want that to be an atmosphere that we can really latch on to.
“So maybe more things that we can do with our LED boards, with our video board that normally would be a sponsor, now we can make it about atmosphere. So we'll have pyro, we'll have a drone show. I mean, we're going to do as many things – having a night game, people have been clamoring for night games, so now we have it. So we want to go all in.
“Ticket revenue goes to the CFP. We can only keep concession revenue, parking revenue. We can have a few fees attached to tickets. The pregame stuff will all be pretty similar to what we do now. So the Fan Fest, Skull Session, the pregame radio show, all those things. College GameDay is going to be here. SEC Nation is going to be here. Big Ten Tailgate. McAfee is going to do his in-game broadcast, kind of the simulcast that they do. So it's going to be a massive, massive production, and it's going to be an awesome atmosphere.
“What we need Buckeyes to do is wear scarlet, don't sell your tickets, because Tennessee fans, they're rabid fans. They're going to try to invade the Shoe. So let's make sure we don't have as much orange in there as people think. And so I think it's just going to be an awesome atmosphere.”
