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The Ohio State University has the best college football team money can buy this season.

The Buckeyes are still one victory away from winning their precious national championship. Notre Dame will offer a stiff challenge in what should be an old-school showdown between two Rust Belt powers.

Dare we say that more folks than usual will cheer on the Fighting Irish as the lovable underdogs in this one?

That $20 million Ohio State invested in players paid off with a pro-caliber roster. The Buckeyes smashed Tennessee, smashed Oregon and ultimately outmuscled Texas to reach the College Football Playoff title game.

We’re still trying to figure out how the Buckeyes lost to Michigan 13-10 in another agonizing failure in that rivalry series. That defeat had many Ohio State boosters calling for coach Ryan Day’s head.

“No great accomplishments are ever achieved without going through adversity,� Day said. “That’s just the truth. And we’ve gone through our share of adversity, and that’s life.�

(The adversity wasn’t that bad, pundits have been quick to note, as Day makes $10 million a year and most of his best players are earning more to play college football than they will make in the NFL. But you can see his point.)

Texas was probably going to fall to Ohio State anyway, but Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian will spend the offseason defending his stupid second-and-goal play call on a potential game-tying sequence.

After the Longhorns had an inside run stuffed at the goal line, Sarkisian got clever and called a pitch play to the short side of the field. This did not fool the Buckeyes, who blew up the play, put Texas in a long-yardage scenario, then iced the game with strip sack touchdown on fourth down.

“Football is not meant to be easy,� Sarkisian said afterward. “It’s a tough sport. It’s physically grueling. It’s mentally grueling. But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.�

Yeah, well, he should have changed that play call. The replay of defensive end Jack Sawyer’s dramatic defensive touchdown will run for decades.

Here is what folks have been writing about the College Football Playoff:

• STEWART MANDEL, The Athletic: “In the old days, the four-team field was announced in early December, then the teams went into hibernation for a month. They finally came back for New Year’s to play a pair of semifinals that were sometimes great but sometimes anticlimactic. This year, by the time the teams got to the semis, we’d been invested in their stories for weeks.

“Like following an Olympic swimmer on his quest for gold, we became (ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ native) Jeremiyah Love fans with his 98-yard touchdown against Indiana and marveled when he trucked four Penn State defenders on a 2-yard touchdown. We turned on that Dec. 21 Tennessee-Ohio State game not knowing whether the Buckeyes still had a pulse post-Michigan. Three wins later, they’re on the brink of a national championship.

“Ohio State and Notre Dame will be playing for the third consecutive season, and yet this feels like an entirely fresh matchup. So much has happened since then. Perhaps Lou Holtz will perform the coin toss.�

• JOHN TALTY, : “Ohio State’s $20 million roster, one of the most expensive in college football, was on display throughout a gutsy win over the Longhorns. There was quarterback Will Howard, the hand-picked transfer Ryan Day wanted after nudging Kyle McCord out, who broke through on a 18-yard run on a bold 4th-and-2 call late in the fourth quarter. Howard would have scored had he not tripped himself up but it was enough to help set up Judkins’ touchdown four plays later. Howard had an interception but was calm when it mattered most and put together an effective 24 for 33 for 289 yards and one touchdown performance.

“There was safety Caleb Downs, who joined the Buckeyes after Nick Saban retired exactly one year ago, who extinguished any long-shot comeback efforts Texas might have had with an interception with less than two minutes remaining in the game. Downs, the 2023 SEC Freshman of the Year, was terrific this season in Columbus, earning first-team all-Big Ten honors.�

• DAN WOLKEN, USA Today: “They did not award a national championship ... Friday night, even though it kind of seemed like it. That will happen on Jan. 20 in Atlanta, when the Buckeyes face Notre Dame in another matchup of mega-brands and storylines deserving of its own due. But now, in this sport, there are no coronations.

“Ohio State could not have won this (Texas) game and cannot win a national title without unloading an unimaginable amount of emotional baggage. ... Now all that’s left is one more game to wash away the stench of disappointment they’ve had to live in after four straight season-defining losses to Michigan. Sixty more minutes to never have to hear that Day is overmatched and intimidated by the chair he sits in, even if it was never really true. Just 10 more days to hear about what hasn’t been done and celebrate what they did.

“But they have to win. There’s no other option.�

• ROSS DELLENGER, Yahoo! Sports: “Perhaps, the Wolverines sparked something in this team. The Buckeyes are playing like we all thought they would — the most talented roster in the sport and the preseason national championship favorites. They have outscored their three playoff opponents (Tennessee, Oregon and Texas) 111-52. And though the offense stumbled into dry spells on Friday, the defense roared to life.

“It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. In fact, that late-game goal line stand was the third such this year. They did it against Penn State, Indiana and Nebraska, too. Known for their explosive offensive players, the Buckeyes are bringing the wood under defensive coordinator Jim Knowles.�

• PETE FIUTAK College Football News: “Texas had the ball first and goal from the one-yard line. Yes, Ohio State is all-time amazing defensively in the red zone, but that’s where you let your O line with five future NFL starters give you four cracks at pounding it in. If you can’t do it, fine. If you get stuffed four times in a row — more like three times in a row after 1st and goal was stopped. Ohio State would’ve had the ball on its own one with more than two minutes to play.

“The ONLY thing you couldn’t do was lose yards, get sacked, turn the ball over, and/or see a Buckeye defender go the other way with the ball. All four of those things happened, and it was all set up by 2nd and one. The Seattle goal line pass leading the Malcolm Butler pick in Super Bowl XLIX remains the worst play call in the history of man, but the Texas decision to swing ball wide on second down is in the team photo.

“... For all the love and praise heaped on Steve Sarkisian as a play caller — and he had a solid game up until the end — he has to learn how to quit being so cute when the basic will do.�

Megaphone

“We didn’t get much movement at all, and we had a plan to try to get the ball on the edge. I can’t quite tell where it got leaky, but you know, it’s one of those plays that if you block it right, you get in the end zone. And we didn’t.�

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, defending his ridiculous red-zone play call.