Does the Buckeyes’ schedule help or hurt College Football Playoff chances

Ohio State now knows what its 2020 football schedule will be. How will the strength of it help or hurt the Buckeyes’ playoff chances?

Get ready. Now that the Ohio State football schedule is out, you’re going to see a lot of predictions. But what people aren’t asking is if that same strength of schedule will help or hurt the Buckeyes’ playoff chances. Michigan defensive end Kwity Paye’s comments, while funny since he said the schedule is easy and the Wolverines are on the schedule, does ask for examination on how easy OSU’s schedule is. I don’t think the answer is a simple one.

Just looking at the newly released schedule, Ohio State should be favored in all of its games. However, without playing other conferences there’s the unkown common opponent factor. Sure, this could be said of any conference, but the Big Ten is starting late and some consider it very top-heavy.

The strong teams on the schedule will be Penn State and Michigan — maybe Nebraska. The unknowns will be Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan State. However, none of the teams the Buckeyes will face will be perceived as a major test, except for maybe Penn State, which happens early in the season. Michigan is always a rivalry game, but if the past 3,220 days (as of writing this) are a predictor, the Maize and Blue isn’t the challenge some might think they are.

So does this schedule really hurt the Buckeyes? Well, not so fast. The Big Ten is a Power Five conference, and while it could be seen as a little top-heavy, looking at the bowl games from last year, there are some signs that could help the Buckeyes. Michigan State beat Wake Forest, Indiana hung tough and lost by one to Tennessee, and for a while, Illinois hung with Cal and played them well in the second half.

Now, that was last year, but perception year-to-year, no matter what anyone says, does play into things, even though it’s not supposed to.

[lawrence-related id=37444]

[lawrence-related id=37433]

Ohio State football 2020 schedule: Predicting every game on new fall restart slate https://t.co/M01vGOoeAc

— Buckeyes Wire (@BuckeyesWire) September 19, 2020

Without inter-conference play, the College Football Playoff Committee will have to get creative to judge who the four best teams are. How a team did in the bowls last year and what kind of “style points” the Buckeyes are able to muster might play into it. So while on the surface there could be questions about the Buckeyes schedule, they can only play the cards they are dealt, and in the Big Ten, those cards are are a little more stacked than other decks.

[vertical-gallery id=37328]

2020 Big Ten Football Schedule. 5 Things That Matter. Who Gets Missed? Winners, Losers, Changes

With the Big Ten announcing that it will play a ten-game, conference only schedule, what does it all mean? Who wins, loses, and what’s next?

With the Big Ten announcing that it will play a ten-game, conference only schedule, what does it all mean? Who wins, who loses, and what’s next?

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

Big Ten Football Schedule 2020

[jwplayer WdoAImj1]

5. Big Ten 10-Game Schedule. The Basics …

The Big Ten released its 2020 football schedule. And the key parts are …

– Ten games, no non-conference dates. This was put forth before by the Big Ten, but now it’s settled. It’s all Big Ten vs. Big Ten battles spread out over the season.

– Unlike what the other Power Five conferences appear to be doing – kicking things off in mid-to-late September – the Big Ten is going to start right away on September 5th. Actually, it’ll all start on Thursday, September 3rd when Ohio State goes to Illinois. This allows each Big Ten team to have to built in weeks off along with an open date on November 28th for a possible make-up game.

– Also unlike the other Power Five conferences, the Big Ten is keeping its championship game for December 5th.

– Ohio State and Michigan don’t play on the final weekend. Go ahead and make your jokes about how the Big Ten doesn’t want Jim Harbaugh to end the season with a loss, but the October 24th date sets itself up to be something special, especially if it’s a night game.

– November 21st – the final weekend scheduled for the regular season – is all interdivisional games, and so is the first week of the season. The schedule is front loaded with divisional battles with the flexibility to fill in the gaps later if there has to be a week off.

NEXT: What Big Ten teams do the other Big Ten teams miss?

Pages: 12345

Ohio State football’s 2020 conference only schedule – 5 Things that stand out

The Big Ten has released the revised, conference-only football schedule for 2020 and there are five things that stand out for Ohio State.

We now finally know what the Ohio State football season will look like on paper. That’s because the Big Ten released the entire conference-only schedule on Wednesday, so rather than guess, assume, and opine on things that are theory only with the revised schedule because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we now have some real plans to look at.

There are some things that stand out about the new schedule and we’ve pulled out five things that stood out to us as we scanned the layout of everything with what’s being called a “Jenga” schedule. Keep in mind, just because we’ve now got a slate of games doesn’t mean that the season is a guarantee to be played.

However, at this point, at least there’s a robust plan to do everything possible to have college football this fall while keeping the health and safety of all involved at the forefront of everything.

Next … The Game

Pages: 123456