The Ohio State Buckeyes and Penn State Nittany Lions will battle for Big Ten supremacy. This is what college football is all about.
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[FOX SPORTS INSIDER WITH MARTIN ROGERS]
In todayās FOX Sports Insider: OSU and Penn State give CFB fans another massive showdown with Playoff implications ... LaMelo Ball is unable to escape the spotlight ... and can Ben Simmons sink his second three?
Ohio State is the most dominant team in college football this season and the betting favorite to win the national championship. It has one guy (Chase Young) who was an early Heisman Trophy frontrunner and another (Justin Fields) who is emerging rapidly as a late one.
It has beaten its opponents by a combined margin of 417 points over the course of 10 swashbuckling wins, while thrashing the 13th- and 20th-ranked teams in the country into oblivion.
Opponents ā both of the scheduled variety and potential postseason foes ā fear them. Defensive coordinators get headaches just thinking about them. The College Football Playoff selection committee drools over them.
And if things somehow go wrong in the toughest game of Ohio Stateās campaign on Saturday afternoon, the Buckeyesā season could effectively be over.
Thatās how tight the margin of error has become in the fascinating 2019 college football season; one where the script gets torn up as quickly as it is written and where the most earnestly-argued predictions are swiftly made to look foolish.
Ohio State doesnāt accept any official rivalries beyond its eternal feud with Michigan, but the way things have transpired with Saturdayās opponent Penn State (FOX, 12 p.m. ET) has shown there is a lot more bubbling here than the usual hostilities.
The last three times these teams have met, the final score has been separated by a grand total of just five points, with the Buckeyes prevailing in a pair of one-point thrillers the past two seasons. In 2016, the then-unranked Nittany Lions conjured an unthinkable comeback to begin a run to the Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl.
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āThe last few years, because of the quality of team that Penn State is, thatās become a war,ā iconic former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer told the Big Ten Network. Meyer will be part of the FOX broadcast crew for Big Noon Kickoff on Saturday, live from the Ohio State Campus.
āMy first year we beat them up there (in Happy Valley),ā Meyer added. āAnd then we came back (home) and beat them soundly, and then from that point forward itās been overtime. We lost up there in a āwhiteout,ā and then these last two games weāve come (back) from a couple scores behind in the fourth quarter. My goodness ā two very good teams; two very good programs. Good players all over the field, but itās become a rivalry in a sense. There is so much on the line.ā
Heās not kidding. Just as fans in Columbus are dreaming of a potential title, especially with Alabama at least presumptively out of the Playoff reckoning, the whole thing could go up in smoke. The bookmakers, at least, are still firmly on the side of the Buckeyes, who are -1000 favorites to win the Big Ten (compared to +900 for Penn State), [according to FOX Bet](. OSU is also a +195 favorite to win the national title, compared to whopping +15000 odds for the Nittany Lions. (Yes, thatās plus fifteen thousand.)
But as weāve covered, this is college football in 2019, where seemingly nothing is certain. Could it really be that Saturdayās game might be an eliminator not only for one-loss Penn State but also the home team, even after a season in which commentators have purred over their apparently unstoppable march to victory after victory?
[FiveThirtyEight]( Playoff prediction model]( certainly thinks so. It believes that a loss would drop Ohio State to just a 10 percent chance of reaching the Playoff, while defeat for Penn State would cause a fall to less than 1 percent.
It would take a lot for the Buckeyes to overcome a loss ā and at that point things would be entirely out of their own hands. It would likely take a Penn State defeat in the Big Ten title game and a bunch of other carnage elsewhere. And that still might not be enough.
Back in 2016, Ohio State did make the Playoff, even when Penn State won the Big Ten title. This year, Penn State would have likely done enough to get a top four spot if they are able to run the table between now and the end of the regular season.
Head coach James Franklin knows there is no bigger challenge his team can face ā and heās ready for it.
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āMy message to the team: (Ohio State) is going to make plays ā weāve got to match them,ā Franklin told reporters. āIt needs to be one of those types of games, like a heavyweight fight. That guy delivers a blow, you counter. Thatās what itās going to need to be.ā
Despite the nail-biting nature of the last three encounters, the Buckeyes are strongly favored on Saturday, with home field seen as a crucial factor. As of Friday morning, [FOX Bet]( has the Buckeyes as massive 19-point favorites. New coach Ryan Day has momentum on his side. The team has not lost at home since a defeat against Oklahoma in September of 2017.
LSUās win over Alabama pushed it to the top of the committeeās favor, but Ohio State is about as strong a No. 2 as you could imagine.
āThe complete nature of the dominance and the overall quality we have seen from Ohio State ... you can do the eye test; you can do the analytics,ā FOX college football analyst Joel Klatt said. āItās pretty much no question they are the most complete and dominant team in the country.ā
Much of that can be attributed to quarterback Fields, who has never let his composure slip and has grown significantly in confidence over the past few months. FOX expert and former USC Heisman winner Matt Leinart believes Fields has a serious shot at challenging LSUās Joe Burrow for this yearās Heisman Trophy.
āJoe Burrow has had his opportunity; the national spotlight games,ā Leinart said. āJustin Fields has that (national spotlight) the next three weeks. You always talk about the Heisman race in November ... Justin Fields has three massive games to close that gap.ā
Saturdayās clash is Fieldsā latest chance to shine, but it is so much more than that. Itās the latest installment of a battle that has provided extraordinary entertainment and simmering tension for the past three years.
Each team faces its toughest test of the season, with zero margin for error. Like LSU vs. Alabama two weeks ago, this is a playoff game before the Playoff ā and everything that has happened so far, all the plaudits and praise and the 19 wins between them, count for nothing now.
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Hereās what others have said ...
Audrey Snyder, The Athletic: The reality is that step from great to elite isnāt going to be easy to make, especially on Saturday. This is as big of a game as I can remember in my 10 seasons on the Penn State beat, and itās one fans had circled since the start of the year. The reality is most people in the preseason ā myself included ā didnāt think Penn State would start 10-1. Now that the Lions are 9-1, everyone pinpoints their flaws.
Tim May, Lettermen Row: Thereās no mistaking the big news of the week with Chase Young returning from a two-game hiatus against Penn State. While the watch is on to see whether Young, with 13.5 sacks this season, can top Vernon Gholstonās school-record 14 set in 2007, it says here that defensive tackles DaVon Hamilton, Jashon Cornell, Robert Landers and others who work the interior will take advantage of the distraction to wreak some havoc of their own.
Nathan Baird, Cleveland.com: By law of averages, Ohio Stateās players know their late-game challenge is coming, perhaps as soon as Saturdayās game against Penn State at Ohio Stadium. Even great teams typically have to grind out one or more victories along the way.
[IN OTHER WORDS]
- The youngest Ball brother has taken his show to Australia, yet he canāt seem to escape the spotlight. [Mirin Fader at Bleacher Report]( looks at the life of LaMelo.
- No one has any idea what to make of Josh Allen ... but he may be the Billsā best playoff hope. Robert Mays at [The Ringer]( explains.
- Les Carpenter at [The Washington Post]( the story of an NFL player and his familyās escape from Liberia ā where his uncle is the president.
[THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED]
[THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED](
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[VIEWER'S GUIDE]
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No. 9 Penn State vs. No. 2 Ohio State (FOX, Saturday, 12 p.m. ET)
This is the big one. The 9-1 Nittany Lions will enter as huge underdogs, but they hope to hand the Buckeyes their first loss of the season and entirely shake up the CFB Playoff picture.
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[BET OF THE DAY]
[BET OF THE DAY]
Odds provided by [FOX Bet](
Ben Simmons 1+ made 3-point shot: +550
The Philadelphia 76ers will host the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night, and thereās a chance that one Ben Simmons bucket could net you (no pun intended) a $650 payout on a $100 bet (or a similar margin of return). Hereās the caveat: Simmons has only attempted one three so far this season. The good news for you is that three-pointer came in his most recent game, and heās one-for-one on the season so far. Maybe heās feeling froggy. It might be worth the risk for you to bet that heās filled to the brim with confidence and ready to try again from behind the arc.
[WHAT THEY SAID]
"Don't cuss. Don't argue with the officials. And don't lose the game."
ā John Heisman
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