ATLANTA — In the end, the story of Ohio State’s national championship was simple enough to describe in four words.
Just too many dudes.
Same as it ever was in college football.
You can give players the right to change programs every year, you can pay them amounts of money that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago, you can finally embrace a 12-team playoff that theoretically gives everyone a shot to win a national title.
But the very real parity college football has created over the last few years only goes so far.
It’s a coronation that wouldn’t have seemed possible seven weeks ago when the Buckeyes lost to Michigan, in what would have been a self-immolation of their title aspirations in any other season before this one. Now? It’s the most obvious outcome to the 2024 season and a lesson about the true nature of the 12-team Playoff.
Yes, it’s great for the Indianas and SMUs and Arizona States and all the nowhere programs that will get their turn in the spotlight.
But it’s even better for the Ohio States and the Georgias and the handful of elites who – no matter the system – stack blue-chip talent on National Signing Day and get even more of it in the transfer portal.
The reason is simple: Unless something goes badly, badly wrong, they’ll never run out of chances in this system. And by the end, there’s really no difference in what we saw for so many years and so many mismatches in the BCS and the four-team CFP.
In years past, this Ohio State team would have been crushed for losing twice. The performance against Michigan would have gotten people fired. Its $20 million roster failing to make the old CFP would have been endless fodder for social media snark. It would have been remembered as one of the most embarrassing failures in college football history.
Instead, the Buckeyes and coach Ryan Day have a CFP trophy and redemption, plowing through this Playoff field and creating arguably the most impressive body of work any champion has ever had.
It beat No. 1 Oregon.
It beat No. 3 Texas.
It beat No. 4 Penn State.
It beat No. 5 Notre Dame.
It beat No. 7 Tennessee
It beat No. 8 Indiana.
You can complain all you want about whether this title run diminishes regular-season games, but you can’t argue the résumé. When you beat six of the top eight teams as the CFP committee ranked them, there’s little doubt you’ve accomplished something incredible.
But in this era of college football, that’s more or less what it’s going to take to win the Playoff. And you’re not going to do it without the bevy of five-star athletes that few programs can attract.
The Ohio State offense that made a good Notre Dame defense look pedestrian on Monday? The only starter who wasn’t a four- or five-star recruit is the quarterback, Will Howard, who transferred from Kansas State and more than did his job this season. But let’s be real: His life was relatively easy throwing to Jeremiah Smith (five-star), Emeka Egbuka (five-star), Carnell Tate (five-star), Gee Scott (four-star) while handing off to TreVeyon Henderson (five-star).
Sure, you can do what Notre Dame did this season and put together a nice mix of top recruits with some older transfers and ham-and-egg your way to the title game. You can even beat a more talented but somewhat dysfunctional opponent, as the Irish did in the quarterfinals against Georgia.
But you’re probably not going to do it twice. Because in this sport, the talent gap matters. It might matter more than ever. And on Monday night, it was massive.
Credit Notre Dame for hanging in after falling behind 31-7, even making Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly sweat for a moment when they needed a couple more first downs to officially wrap this up. But when the time came, it was Smith – the five-star of all five-stars for this Buckeye offense – getting easy separation from man-on-man coverage downfield and hauling in a 56-yarder to clinch the title like it was nothing.
Ohio State didn’t just have the most talented roster in college football this season, it had the most time. The Buckeyes didn’t have to be perfect from Day 1, which is what college football has demanded from its champions forever. They just had to prevent the bottom from falling out.
This is the trade-off college football has made with Playoff expansion. More than half the programs in FBS can enter every season with reasonable hope they can be part of this tournament if everything breaks right. But the universe of teams that have enough depth to survive three or four Playoff games while also having the firepower to take down a monster is always going to be very, very small.
Because of how many teams were in the mix to make the playoff, the remarkable number of relevant late-season games and the cracks in traditional powers like Alabama, the college football universe felt flat for much of this season.
What we learned Monday, though, is that recruiting stars matters more than anything in the end. It has always been thus in college football, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.