Ohio State Has College Football’s Best Résumé, Defense Continues to Carry Buckeyes and Don’t Sleep on Rutgers

Real Pod Wednesdays

Ohio State football is the No. 1 team in the country as it enters the final month of the regular season while Ohio State basketball season begins next week.

We talk about both sports on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, though our discussion mostly centers around the football Buckeyes, who earned the top spot in the initial College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday night. We think that ranking is well-deserved, and we explain why – and why it does matter – on this week’s show.

Ohio State’s defense led the way to that No. 1 ranking, and it led the Buckeyes to another win this past weekend at Wisconsin, where Ohio State earned its first double-digit victory in Madison since 2000 with a 24-10 win over the Badgers. We get into how the defense continued to impress us, how both TreVeyon Henderson and Marvin Harrison Jr. showed they’re special players and the concerns we have about Kyle McCord from both an inconsistency and health standpoint.

As the Buckeyes head to Rutgers this weekend to play another strong defensive team, we discuss the challenges the Scarlet Knights could present and make our predictions for a game that we don’t expect to be the cakewalk games against Rutgers have typically been.

We shift gears in the final segment of the show by conducting our annual draft of the Ohio State men’s basketball team, with each of us picking seven-man lineups from Ohio State’s 2023-24 roster in a snake-draft format for a hypothetical game of Buckeyes vs. Buckeyes.

The full rundown for this week’s show:

• 2:18: Ohio State hasn’t yet looked like college football’s best team, but it has the best résumé
• 7:05: No. 1 ranking doesn’t change Ohio State’s goal, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter
• 12:13: It’s hard to argue with any of the top five, but Oklahoma should be ahead of Texas
• 18:13: Defensive-driven theme continues in Wisconsin win
• 19:49: Jack Sawyer, Tommy Eichenberg, Jordan Hancock among defensive standouts in Madison
• 22:31: Sonny Styles could end up playing his best position by filling in for Lathan Ransom
• 27:02: TreVeyon Henderson shows how big a difference he can make for Ohio State’s offense
• 29:49: Marvin Harrison Jr.’s Heisman candidacy is becoming increasingly real
• 33:22: Kyle McCord’s plateauing performance, health both concerns entering November
• 39:34: Greg Schiano has turned Rutgers into a competitive team once again
• 41:24: Ball control, defense will be Rutgers’ keys to keeping game close against Ohio State
• 45:36: Why we still expect Ohio State to cover despite Rutgers’ improvement
• 47:30: Buckeyes’ growing injury list headlined by Miyan Williams’ season-ending surgery
• 51:00: Drafting head-to-head lineups from the 2023-24 Ohio State men’s basketball roster