The Ohio State Buckeyes' Week 13 matchup with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights isn't really about RU much at all. The result shouldn't be in question next weekend during OSU's final regular-season game at the "Shoe" this season. Just like the team's dominant 48-10 victory over the UCLA Bruins on Saturday night.
Instead, the big question Ryan Day must ask himself, as Cleveland.com's Stephen Means writes, is whether or not the Buckeyes can feel prepared for TTUN following one final tune-up with a sub-par conference opponent.
It's about the Wolverines, Means notes. It all always was.
"That rhetorical question — asked following Saturday’s 48-10 win over UCLA — is meant to look at the entire puzzle, and evaluate where the Buckeyes are now that one game stands between them and a Nov. 29 trip to Ann Arbor," Means wrote.
"The only question OSU can’t answer right now is about a rivalry game, because its issues aren’t tied to X’s and O’s. But its ability to handle the other factors that come with that game and that opponent can still be heightened by whether the football flaws exist.
"This team officially has one game left to answer the only question that actually matters to the grand scheme of what this season is all about.
"Is it finally ready to conquer the only mountain left for this program to climb, by beating a team it hasn’t beaten since 2019?"
To the uninitiated, Day has nothing left to prove after winning the College Football Playoff National Championship last year, after running through a legendary gauntlet of opponents: the Tennessee Volunteers, Oregon Ducks, Texas Longhorns, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
To those in and around Ohio, it's known that a repeat doesn't define the 2025 as a successful one as much as defeating the rival Wolverines. Day might be willing to trade a title for a win over his elusive rival.
Which, in a way, makes two weekends in Ann Arbor a near-championship-level affair. Rutgers is a tune-up game, but probably the most important tune-up in school history.