The Buckeyes have it all. The Ducks have their home turf to protect. Who wins Saturday at Autzen Stadium?
The Big Ten could expand with the Bears, the Packers, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Drake and Kendrick Lamar and still nothing would quite match Michigan-Ohio State on the rivalry scale.
You’re not really going to argue with that, are you? Good.
Still, in this college football world where traditions are being trampled left and right in the pursuit of TV billions, No. 2 Ohio State (-3½) at No. 3 Oregon (6:30 p.m., NBC 5) sure has a Big Ten game-of-the-year kind of feel to it. A rivalry? Not at all; not yet. Conference supremacy on the line? Sure, in case that means anything anymore. College Football Playoff implications? Yes, enormously so.
The Buckeyes and the Ducks are two of only nine unbeaten Power 4 teams left this season. The college football world is on edge for this game, which, one supposes, only makes it easier for the Big Ten to crow that expansion has been a good thing and not merely an audacious money grab.
But you didn’t come here for preachy cynicism, did you? Let’s get on with the football, then, starting with this nugget: Big Ten teams are 1-8 this season when crossing more than one time zone on a road trip. Does that signal danger for the Buckeyes?
“We’re going to stay on East Coast time,” coach Ryan Day said early in the week, “and I think we’ve got a good plan.”
It must be easy to feel good about game plans when your defense is No. 1 nationally in points (6.8 per game) and yards (202.4) allowed, when it stops the run (72.6) and the pass (129.8) with equal unyieldingness, and when your offense is a top 10 unit, too. Heading into the season, Pro Football Focus ranked the Buckeyes at the top of the heap on the defensive line, in the secondary, at running back — an embarrassment of riches — and the quarterback, Kansas State transfer Will Howard, has been an excellent addition so far.
