Buckeye Nation has a big question in the back of its mind: Would winning it all change Ohio State? Would The Game be diminished? To say this would be uncharted territory would be a massive understatement. So, a good way to try and answer this question is to look at historical examples.
In the past 50 years, only two teams have lost to their primary rival on the last Saturday of the regular season and still won the national championship. LSU in 2007 and Alabama in 2017.
Former Alabama head coach and current ESPN analyst Nick Saban had some thoughts about that very scenario and his own experience with it. When clown Desmond Howard was trying to downplay Ohio State’s playoff run, Nick Saban responded with this.
“We lost (Alabama) to Auburn, which is like Ohio State and Michigan. We went on to win a National Championship, and guess what, Des, no one remembers.” He said.
Since that National Championship in 2017 that came without an SEC title and without an Iron Bowl win, the Alabama-Auburn rivalry has changed. In every season since, if you reversed the results of the Iron Bowl, it wouldn’t have stopped Alabama from getting to where they eventually got anyway. And LSU and Arkansas stopped being each other’s primary rivals shortly after that in 2011.
Does the Iron Bowl still matter? It sure does. Does it matter as much as it used to? As much as it did in only three years previous to 2017? The answer is an emphatic no. Would the Kick-Six have mattered as much as it did if Alabama had gone on to play for and win the National Championship that year anyway? Probably not.
I’m certain that if the Cincinnati Bengals or Cleveland Browns had a season where they were 11-6 and 0-6 in the AFC North but still won the Super Bowl, they wouldn’t care at all about the regular season against the hated Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens.
But I’ll be the first to tell you the Iron Bowl isn’t The Game. NFL division rivalries, as great and bitter as they are, are not The Game. But would a national title despite a loss in The Game make it more like the Iron Bowl? Would the college Football national championship be more like the Super Bowl? It’s a new, previously thought impossible dynamic.
While it’s something for us fans to think about, I don’t think I’ll know unless it happens. If you have an opinion on this, I’d love to hear it in the comments and on social media! If Ohio State hoists the national championship trophy on the night of January 20th, we’ll get to hash this out for real. Hopefully, it’s a discussion we get to have!
Until then, it’s Ohio Against the World! Go Bucks, Beat Notre Dame!