Ohio State football: Is the National Championship getting rescheduled?

If you have been on any boards or logged on to Twitter in the last couple of days, you may have seen rumors circulating about the National Championship game between the Ohio State football team and Alabama getting rescheduled, is there any truth to the rumors?

Before the playoffs started, the CFP Committee crafted a contingency plan with make-up dates for all three playoff games, if COVID-19 caused any program to pause team activities. The National Championship Game’s make-up date, if COVID gets in the way, would be January 18, one week later than the originally scheduled date of January 11.

Are there COVID cases at Ohio State or Alabama? That remains to be unknown- perhaps there are some, but not enough to pause team activities for either team.

On Monday the Ohio State football team was practicing in Columbus, per the football team’s official Twitter account. The caption on the tweeted photo read “One of two teams still practicing,” indicating Alabama is also practicing.

While the Crimson Tide did not publicly share any photos or videos of practice, a video was posted on the football team’s Twitter and Instagram accounts on Tuesday morning. The video was in regards to the Joe Moore Award, which is given to the best offensive line in the country. The beginning of the video was time-stamped “1.4.2021” and featured a room full of team members, from multiple position groups.

If there are concerns within programs, team meetings are conducted virtually instead of in-person. Certainly a good sign, and suggests the game will not need to be rescheduled.

With Ohio State and Alabama still doing in-person gatherings, there is no evidence to suggest the National Championship Game will need to be pushed back to January 18. Obviously, this is a fluid situation and can change at a moment’s notice- we will follow-up with updates as they come.