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Ohio State ended the regular season on the sourest note possible with a loss at home to a Michigan team they seemingly had no business falling to, but that didn’t prevent them from earning a spot in the College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes will host Tennessee next weekend, and it sounds like the school’s athletic director is worried about Vols fans invading Ohio Stadium based on a request he shouldn’t have to make.
Based on a survey of more than 2,000 college football fans that was conducted earlier this year, Ohio State supporters ranked only behind members of the Alabama faithful as the most annoying group the sport has to offer, and an analysis of “mean tweets” directed at various teams listed the Buckeyes as the third-most despised program in the country behind Colorado and the Crimson Tide.
I’d personally describe my feelings about the program as “deeply ambivalent,” but I do think Ohio State and many people who swear allegiance to the school have made themselves pretty easy to hate by doing things like attempting to trademark the word “THE” and proposing a real, actual law that would make it a felony to plant a flag in the field at the team’s stadium.
Ohio State will have the chance to win its first national championship in a decade after earning the No. 6 seed in the College Football Playoff, which gave them the right to host No. 7 Tennessee in the opening round showdown that will take place on December 21st.
After the matchup was announced, Kirk Herbstreit suggested Ohio State may have actually benefitted from playing on the road while citing the possibility of the home crowd turning against the Buckeyes if things don’t end up going the team’s way due to lingering frustrations with what unfolded against Michigan.
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork doesn’t seem too worried about that scenario unfolding based on what he had to say during a conversation with 97.1 The Fan on Thursday.
With that said, he did make a fairly strange request to Ohio State fans who currently have tickets for the playoff game, as he had this to say while attempting to ward off an invasion from Volunteers supporters:
“Don’t sell your tickets. Tennessee fans, they’re rabid fans. They are going to invade The Shoe. So let’s make sure we don’t have as much orange in there as people think.”
I can’t necessarily blame Bjork for going out of his way to make that request, but he also shouldn’t need to in the first place given what’s at stake; sure, the game with Tennessee is the first of four Ohio State will need to win to secure a national title, but they’re not going to be able to get another three unless they walk away with the victory.
As far as I can tell, none of the other ADs at the schools that will be playing host to a first-round matchup felt like they needed to explicitly communicate that kind of message, so while I’m not trying to pile onto Ohio State here, the optics are certainly less than stellar.