The Ohio State football team just won one of its biggest games of the year, the first College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday night and the Buckeye basketball season is about to begin.
That – not to look past another game that could be a test for the football Buckeyes against Nebraska this week – gave us a lot to pack into this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, but we still managed to cover it all in just over 70 minutes.
Our review of Ohio State’s 33-24 win over Penn State leads off the show, as we spend the first 23-plus minutes of this episode discussing the good and the bad from the Buckeyes’ performance against the Nittany Lions. While any win over Penn State should be recognized as a good win for Ohio State, it was an unspectacular performance for the Buckeyes’ offense – specifically in the red zone – and we analyze whether that should simply be a chalked up as a bad game or if there are issues that other top defenses could exploit.
Our reaction to the initial College Football Playoff rankings of 2021 begins at 23:35 (forgive the decreased audio quality for this segment, as it was recorded over Zoom while the rest was recorded in our studio). While Dan believes the Buckeyes’ No. 5 ranking supports what he’s already been saying for weeks that Ohio State will almost certainly make the playoff if it wins out, Griffin plays devil's advocate as we discuss the one scenario that could – though that doesn’t mean it actually will – keep the Buckeyes out of the four-team field even if they’re a 12-1 Big Ten champion.
If you just want to focus on the upcoming matchup rather than think about CFP scenarios right now, fast forward to 35:15, where we discuss this week’s game against the Cornhuskers. We explain why Nebraska can’t be dismissed as a threat even though it has a 3-6 record, then make our score predictions (which just so happen to be almost identical) for Saturday’s game in Lincoln.
We shift gears to the basketball court for the final 16 minutes of this week’s show (beginning at 54:05). After briefly discussing our takeaways from Monday’s exhibition against Indianapolis, we draft head-to-head lineups for a hypothetical intrasquad game between the players on this year’s Ohio State basketball roster, so listen in and let us know who you think drafted the better team.
You can listen to Real Pod Wednesdays in the audio player above or wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
