More whining about Ohio State’s schedule?

Whenever somebody wants to jump on the bash-the-Buckeyes bandwagon, you can always expect them to go one of two routes. 1) the “Can’t win a National Championship” argument, and 2) the “Schedules only weak teams” argument.

Refuting the first argument is easy. 2002 wasn’t that long ago.

The second argument has become so commonplace that it’s been accepted as fact. That’s irritating, to say the least. But what makes it so repulsive to me is that it’s just as easily refuted, but ESPN commentators would just rather spurt out that line rather than look at the basic facts.

Here are the teams that Ohio State has faced since the start of the 2005 season. Judge for yourself;

For the record, here are the facts about the Buckeyes scheduling over the past 3+ seasons;

• 42 total games scheuled
• 18 games against ranked opponents
• 24 games against unranked opponents
• 13-5 against ranked opponents
• 23-1 against unranked opponents

That one unranked loss? Illinois, last year….and they went on to a BCS Bowl, so the argument could be made that they were underrated when they were unranked.

The end result is that 43 percent of our total games are against ranked teams.

Do your research, sportswriters…nearly every other game is against a ranked opponent, and that is NOT a cupcake schedule.

And if you want a little hint about whose schedule to question….try Penn State. They’ve played 11 ranked teams (26 percent of their total games) in the same time frame, and they’re only 6-5 in those games. Now there’s your overrated team.

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