Ohio State Football: What counts as a failure?

Every year, Ohio State football fans expect the Buckeyes to compete for a national title. They have one of the most talented programs year in and year out. Fans expect that talent to equate to a lot of wins, which is a fair expectation. But some deem not winning a title any year a failure.

Is that true? What constitutes a failure for the Ohio State football team? The Buckeyes have only won two national titles in the last twenty years. Are the other 18 seasons failures because they didn’t win it all? That’s hard for me to justify if I’m making that argument.

What I can say is that I think last year was an abject failure. The Buckeyes lost two regular-season games and lost to TTUN. Any season you lose to TTUN could be considered a failure. It was the first time they’d done that since the 2011 season, which had a list of problems.

Losing to TTUN constitutes a failed season. What about other years where they win that matchup but don’t win a national title? Was the 2020 season a failure even though they got all the way to the National Championship Game? I don’t think so.

Figuring out what counts as a failed season is up to each individual Buckeye fan. In my opinion, as long as Ohio State has a realistic shot to make the CFP in a given season, it’s not a failure. By my definition, the Buckeyes have had a season failure four times since the CFP era started.

That definition is going to be different for each fan and for each program. But what I do know is that the Buckeyes shouldn’t have a failure of a season in 2022. The talent is too great and the experience on offense is too high.