I know that there is a certain level of doom and gloom around Buckeye Nation at this moment, as Ohio State’s starting quarterback Julian Sayin is injured and apparently out for at least “several” weeks, if not the entire rest of the season. But, if I may, I ask that you put your worry away for the moment, because, friends, I come bearing glad tidings.
I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I have stumbled upon what might be the single most important statistical discovery in the history of college football. And while I am neither a mathematician nor a trained statistician, I am an Ohio State graduate with a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel and an unwavering belief that correlation absolutely equals causation when it benefits the Buckeyes.
So, with those impeccable credentials established, I am prepared to make a prediction with 100% certainty: Ohio State is going to win the national championship following the 2027 college football season.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Matt, how can you possibly make that declaration when we are only halfway through the 2026 season, don’t know who will be on next year’s roster, and have absolutely no idea whether Ryan Day will have figured out how not to be systematically crushed by the weight of big games?”
I admit, those are all reasonable questions, but, with no disrespect intended, I must say that they are also wholly irrelevant, you uneducated fool. The answers to your spurious questions have nothing to do with recruiting rankings, returning production, quarterback play, defensive efficiency, coaches’ tendency to turtle in big moments, or any of the other silly schematic and on-field details that supposedly determine the ultimate outcome of football games.
No, my fellow Buckeyes, the answer is much simpler and yet far more complicated than that: The College Football Playoff is apparently expanding, and my deep, nuanced understanding of history (I was a History major for my first two years at OSU before changing to communications because I wanted to be a political speech writer, before I realized I wasn’t smart enough to be a political speech writer and pivoted to sports) tells us that means Ohio State is going to win the whole dang thing next year.
According to multiple reports, the CFP is nearing an agreement to double its field from 12 to 24 teams beginning with the 2027 season. The proposal hasn’t officially been approved, but the expectation is that college football’s powers-that-be (led by the Big Ten) will soon decide that the only way to improve their wildly profitable postseason is to make it approximately 47 months long.
And while there are certainly reasonable arguments to be made about whether such an expansion would diminish the importance of the regular season, put unnecessary strain on players, or turn the sport’s postseason into a slightly more organized version of the NCAA basketball tournament, I would encourage everyone to focus on what actually matters here.
Ohio State is undefeated in national championship games during the inaugural season of an expanded College Football Playoff. Not statistically above average. Not winning against the spread. Not undefeated-ish. Undefeated. Perfect. Flawless.
Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?
In 2014, college football abandoned the Bowl Championship Series in favor of the shiny new four-team playoff. Naturally, Ohio State responded by winning the inaugural tournament, despite losing two starting quarterbacks during the season and entering the postseason with a third-stringer named Cardale Jones.
The Buckeyes beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl before dispatching Oregon in the national championship game, proving once and for all that the only thing standing between Ohio State and a national title had been a sufficiently large postseason bracket.
For the next nine seasons, the playoff remained at four teams, and the Buckeyes did not win another championship. Coincidence? I think not.
Then, in 2024, the CFP expanded from four teams to 12, giving deserving programs additional opportunities to compete for the national title and, more importantly, allowing Ohio State to overcome an otherwise unforgivable loss to Michigan.
Sure enough, the Buckeyes rattled off arguably the greatest four consecutive victories in CFB history by beating Tennessee, Oregon, Texas, and Notre Dame, becoming the first national champions of the 12-team era.
Two expansions. Two Ohio State championships.
In statistical terms, that’s a 100% success rate. In scientific terms, that’s what we (and by we, I mean people who have watched “Bill Nye the Science Guy”) call a law of nature. And in Columbus, that’s what we call grounds for printing the commemorative T-shirts approximately 15 months early.
Now, some overly pedantic individuals might point out that a sample size of two is insufficient to establish a meaningful statistical trend. To those people, I would simply ask why they hate science, Ohio State, and fun.
Others might argue that the Buckeyes’ two championship teams were loaded with NFL-caliber talent, featured outstanding coaching staffs, peaked at precisely the right time, and benefited from the expanded access designed specifically to afford blue-blood programs more of an opportunity to participate in the postseason, thus enhancing the financial windfalls of the networks broadcasting the games and in turn the institutions selling the rights in the first place. And while those observations are, I suppose, technically accurate, they conveniently ignore the much more compelling explanation that somebody in the CFP office changed the number of teams in the bracket, meaning that the Buckeyes had to win.
Honestly, I’m starting to wonder why the Ohio State athletic department hasn’t been lobbying for annual playoff expansions all along. Imagine how many national titles OSU could have won if we’d gone from four teams to six in 2015, eight in 2016, 10 in 2017, and so on. By now, we’d have enough trophies to require an entirely new wing at the Woody.
Of course, none of this means that Ohio State can simply show up in 2027 and expect someone to hand them the national championship trophy. The Buckeyes will still have to win games, overcome injuries, develop young players, and presumably survive at least one completely inexplicable offensive game plan. But history and science tell us that those are merely administrative formalities.
Because whether the playoff expands to 24 teams, 32 teams, or eventually reaches its inevitable conclusion of allowing every FBS program to participate in a single-elimination tournament sponsored by FanDuel, DraftKings, Kalshi, whatever the hell Novig is, and (of course) Pop-Tarts, one thing is abundantly clear: The next time college football unveils a bigger playoff bracket, Ohio State will be the last team standing.
The numbers don’t lie, and unlike the College Football Playoff selection committee, I would never dream of manipulating the data to arrive at my preferred conclusion.