It’s finally here. No more fanfare. We’re past the whacky practice schedules and puppy predictions, and now it’s time for some actual football. We are just a couple hours away from the first annual College Football Playoff championship game.
At this point, you have probably already read every major website’s breakdown of tonight’s title matchup between the Pac-12 Oregon Ducks and Big Ten-hailing Ohio State Buckeyes. You’ve followed the news of the last week with a fine-tooth comb and are fully aware of every basic stat and every talking head’s “big predictions” for the game.
So we’ll skip most of that and get into the fun stuff.
Here are a few odds and ends to look at headed into tonight’s title game:
The rivalry between these two programs can be traced way back on the NCAA timeline, starting with a men’s basketball championship game in 1939 (CollegeFootballTalk is really into that little tidbit for some reason). While fun for all the history buffs in the crowd, it gives us absolutely no indication as to who might win on the field at AT&T Stadium. Their first football matchup was in the 1957 Rose Bowl, with Ohio State going 8-0 all-time since that first matchup. In that same vein, OSU has won seven national championships, the first in 1942, while the Ducks are still in the hunt for their first title win.
Since Oregon and OSU didn’t face each other this past season, the only good indicator as to how they’ll perform is to look at their common enemies, for whatever that’s worth. And while they haven’ played each other in some time, the Ducks and Buckeyes share a familiar foe in Michigan State. The Ducks routed the Spartans 46-27 in Eugene back on September 6 while OSU notched a 49-37 road win in East Lansing on November 8. And while we’re on the subject of road wins…
Of the eight times these two teams have faced off against one another, this is the first time that both teams will be playing away from their home field. Not that it is too much of a concern, being that both rosters have had success on the road with Oregon notching five wins and Ohio State tallying four.
Both teams are near unstoppable when leading by ten or more points. Ohio State has notched ten victories with a ten-plus points margin while Oregon tops out at 12 wins. It would be easy to say that whoever gets an early two-touchdown jump has the best chance of winning Monday night’s game, except neither camp has a habit of giving up that many points. Is it safe to say that neither team is reaching 40-plus points like each did in their last battles? Not so fast…
The bulk of the attention in such a high profile game typically gets put on the quarterbacks, but it will be both Ohio State’s and Oregon’s defenses that will be doing much of the heavy lifting early in the game. Even with a receiving corps that is depleted due to both injury and suspension, the Ducks enter Monday’s tilt with the No. 2 ranked scoring offense in the country. OSU enters with the No. 5 ranked scoring offense and a rushing attack that will take some pressure off QB Cardale Jones–even though the third-stringer has a cannon for an arm and needs just as much attention paid to him as Marcus Mariota does from the Buckeyes’ defense.
On the subject of Jones, ESPN’s Ted Miller tweeted this morning that starting quarterbacks in the “BCS era” with eleven or fewer starts under their belts have gone 0-3 in title games, “with losses coming by an average of 17 points per game.” If such a stat holds true, it could spell disaster for the Buckeyes. However, Jones has already surpassed expectations after taking the helm of OSU’s offense, so perhaps it’s time to push the stats aside and just watch some football.
*Section Photo credit to Kirk Irwin, Getty Images; Featured Photo (above) credit to Jerome Miron, USA Today Sports.
