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It is finally an Ohio State football game day again, and for the first time in three weeks, the No. 4 Buckeyes (5-1) will be back on the field at The Horseshoe for a Homecoming matchup against the Nebraska Cornhuskers (5-2). With OSU heading into the second half of the regular season, we wanted to take the pulse of the Buckeye fanbase and see where their expectations are for the rest of the season.
So, in our weekly fan survey, we polled Buckeye Nation about where they thought Ohio State would end up in terms of the College Football Playoff. And, while I have been a Buckeye fan since birth, the results surprised me quite a bit. We also asked fans what they thought the margin of victory would be in the Nebraska game later today.
Check out the results to both questions below and if you disagree, feel free to chime in at the bottom of the article in the comments section.
Question 1: Where do you think Ohio State will be seeded in the College Football Playoff?
A lot can happen in six weeks of a college football season — as we have already seen this fall — so it is difficult to make definitive statements about what will or won’t happen, especially in the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff. But, I feel pretty confident in reading these tea leaves.
By rule, if Ohio State is in the top four of the CFP — as 26% of respondents selected — that means that they made the Big Ten Championship Game and won it. It is impossible to get a top-four seed — and the bye that comes with it — without being a conference champion.
But what interests me is the fact that a plurality of voters seem to be predicting that the Buckeyes will make the Big Ten Title Game and lose to Oregon, Indiana, or whomever they match up against.
If OSU wins out, that means that they would have beaten the Hoosiers and Penn State, giving them the tiebreaker over them in a head-to-head matchup. Those two teams don’t play each other, which would result in the Buckeyes having the tiebreaker in a situation that seems them all finish 8-1 in the B1G. Assuming that Oregon wins out — which seems fairly probable, especially if they beat No. 20 Illinois today — that would give us a Bucks and Ducks rematch for the title.
So, the 39% of respondents who picked OSU to be a No. 9 through No. 12 seed appear to be predicting that the Buckeyes will lose that game. Because if they win the conference championship game, they will be No. 1 through No. 4, but if they win out and don’t make the B1G title game, they would certainly be No. 5 through No. 8 and hosting a first-round CFP game.
I’m not sure that what we saw in Eugene last weekend was enough to convince me that Oregon is unbeatable, but I do understand the apprehension that fans have to pick the Buckeyes to win any big games at the moment.
Question 2: What will the margin of victory be in Saturday’s game against Nebraska?
When FanDuel opened betting for today’s game last Sunday, they installed Ohio State as a 23.5-point favorite. Since then, the number has increased and as of the time of this writing, the Buckeyes were up to 25.5-point favorites. The gold-standard college football analytics system SP+ predicts a final score of 33-11 in favor of the Buckeyes
So, while a plurality of respondents were pretty close to both of those projections, it still seems like they are underestimating the Buckeyes by a few points. Earlier this morning, various members of the LGHL staff made their predictions for the game, and most were in the same neighborhood, but I went 38-10 in favor of the home team.
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