Now that Michigan football and Ohio State have played a few common opponents, the crux is Penn State. The Buckeyes won at home, 20-12, while the Wolverines won in Happy Valley, without head coach Jim Harbaugh, 24-15.
But that wasn’t enough to vault the maize and blue ahead of the scarlet and gray.
College Football Playoff rankings committee chair Boo Corrigan said Ohio State gets the edge because of not only having wins over Penn State and Notre Dame, but also because of who else the Buckeyes have played.
“Yeah, again, looking at Ohio State, the wins over Penn State that they now share with Michigan, Ohio State has the win over Notre Dame, 5-0 against teams with winning records, top 5 defense,” Corrigan said. “Their offense, to your point, put up 38 last week, and Michigan continues to come along and continues to be dominant in the games that they’ve played.
”As we go through it each week, we continue to look at everything, and after Week 11 we ended up with Ohio State at 2 and Michigan at 3.”
‘Michigan continues to come along’ is an odd saying given the Wolverines have dominated every team they’ve faced. Penn State is the only team that ended up being within two scores of the maize and blue, whereas OSU has had several games fall into that region.
The only Big Ten team with a winning record Ohio State has beaten that Michigan has not faced is Maryland, which the Wolverines face on Saturday. The Buckeyes did beat the Irish, and while it’s not as impressive, Michigan has a win over UNLV (8-2). The Wolverines’ wins over Rutgers (6-4) and Indiana (3-7) were more impressive, while the wins over Penn State (8-2) and Michigan State (3-7) are at least even, though Michigan played both on the road and had higher scoring margins against both of the latter. OSU also played a Football Championship Subdivision team, Youngstown State, which certainly could be an ample trade off for playing Notre Dame while Michigan only played Group of Five schools — even if one, UNLV, has a stellar record at this point.
While Ohio State has an impressive defense, Michigan’s defense is ranked higher in total defense (No. 1), scoring defense (No. 1), passing defense (No. 1) and rushing defense (No. 13).
Yet, when it came to looking at Ohio State, despite Georgia overtaking the Buckeyes at the No. 1 spot, Corrigan proclaims there’s little difference between No. 1 and No. 2.
“As we’re looking at it, it’s them, but it’s also what the teams around them do,” Corrigan said. “So we’re trying to take everything — you’re seeing improvement from a lot of the teams that we’re talking about in how they’re playing. In some cases players coming back from injury and just making sure that we’re trying to read the whole piece of what’s going on, and Ohio State has been hit by the injury bug, as well, and seeing them have their guys back on the field continues to impress the committee.
“You can’t get much closer than those two.”
In the end, it matters little, because the No. 2 and 3 teams will face each other in Ann Arbor on Nov. 25. But the rationale makes little sense.