Well, I've had a week to process it and I still have a huge smile on my face! The Ohio State Buckeyes...the team that many said didn't belong in the College Football Playoff, won the whole damn thing!
They went up against the #1 team in the nation from the mighty SEC, and knocked them off! Ezekiel Elliot ran all over Alabama to the tune of 230 yards and 2 touchdowns.
Then against the Oregon Ducks, he ran all over them for 246 yards and 4 touchdowns.
But what impressed me the most in the National Championship, was the defense. The Buckeyes were facing the team that scored quickest, and scored the most in all of college football. The Ducks averaged almost 50 points a game, and their touchdown drives averaged just over two minutes.
Would the defense be able to get a stop or two? Would they be sucking wind by the fourth quarter, allowing Oregon to just gash them?
The Buckeyes held them to 20 points, and forced the Ducks to punt more times in a single game than likely any time in the past three years.
The Buckeyes have changed the perception of their team. People now call them an "SEC team in the North," Urban Meyer has made this team into what he wanted them to be. Physical, fast, tough. They are mentally tough...losing Braxton Miller, then having JT Barrett come in and lead them to the brink of the Playoffs and losing him in the *ichigan game...third string QB Cardale Jones leading them through the Big Ten Championship, Sugar Bowl, and then caping it off with a National Championship.
There has always been a target on Ohio State's back in the Big Ten. They have won 7 conference championships in the past 13 years. If you include their vacated share of the Big Ten championship in 2010. that gives them 8 of 13. They've won a total of 24 Big Ten championships, second only to *ichigan's 42.
Now that they're the National Champions, that target is only going to be bigger.
The Buckeyes are expected to run the table this upcoming season, win the Big Ten, and be a top two seed in the College Football Playoffs.
They were there a year earlier than Urban Meyer expected. The perception of the Buckeyes now is that they could be a dynasty in the making.
I'll take that perception any time! O-H! I-O!
