Ohio State can learn from Georgia
Cade Stover is tired of talking about the Ohio State football team’s second straight loss to Michigan, and he’s probably not the only one.
It’s not because he’s downplaying the significance of the loss or isn’t hurting as a kid from Ohio who grew up learning how unacceptable it is to lose to your rival.
It’s just that right now, he can’t focus on those emotions because there’s even bigger food still left on his plate despite recent disappointments.
“All our focus is on Georgia right now,” Stover said. “That one stings, yes. But right now, we’re focusing on winning this game right now, and we’re not worried about that.”
The Buckeyes backed into the College Football Playoff as the No. 4 seed despite not winning their conference championship and losing their last game in a pretty convincing fashion before heading into the postseason.
Now they have to bury those emotions and see if they can make what happened on Nov. 26 a little less important. They’ll do so while also knowing that a possible Michigan rematch is on the table if they can just get to Los Angeles.
Interestingly enough, no one better understands the position they’re in than the team they have to face: Georgia. That’s because the Bulldogs were in this exact same position a year ago when they lost to Alabama in the SEC championship game.
“It really centered things,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said of the loss. “You recalibrate, and you look back, and sometimes the reality of your weaknesses pop up a lot more in a loss. We like to say, ‘Why do you got to lose to learn?’ You shouldn’t have to do that, but it certainly is a wake-up call in teams I’ve been with. It recentered everybody and refocused everybody.”
Georgia was undefeated heading into that conference title game last season as the clear No. 1 team in the country and home to a historic defense. Then the Crimson Tide picked them apart and paved the way for Bryce Young to win the Heisman Trophy while his team secured the top seed in the playoff.
No, Alabama and Georgia are not rivals the same way Ohio State and the Wolverines are. But the emotional ties that have been built since Smart left Alabama coach Nick Saban’s staff made up for at least some of that.
The Game was basically an unofficial Big Ten championship game.
The only difference is that Georgia didn’t have to head into a Sunday announcement hoping it could still get into the postseason. The loss hurt, but they knew they had to move on quickly.
“It was definitely a tough feeling,” Georgia cornerback Chris Smith said. “We went all year without losing a game, then we get to the SEC championship, and we take an ‘L.’ We definitely felt that. We felt that all the way up until our next game. We knew that we had the chance to get another opportunity to go out there and play for a championship. Once that time came, we wanted to focus on that.
“Win the Orange Bowl (and) get to the national championship. Doesn’t matter who’s there. We’re coming to win the game.”
They also didn’t spend a bunch of time thinking about what would happen if they got another crack at Alabama. Doing so would only be to their detriment by overlooking what was right in front of them. Georgia’s only job was beating Michigan. If that meant when they got to Indianapolis for the national championship game,
an Alabama rematch was waiting for them, so be it.
“Just go back to work,” defensive lineman Zion Longue said. “That’s what everybody that’s what everybody’s No. 1 thing was, going back to work. If you need to condition more, condition. If you need to hydrate more, hydrate. If you need to sleep more, sleep more. We knew we were gonna have another opportunity at them, and you saw what happened.”
That’s why after their semifinal win, there didn’t seem to be a big celebration for having accomplished something. There was an understanding that salvaging this season would mean winning a national title, and that had not yet been accomplished.
“Taking it one step at a time, one day at a time,” linebacker Smael Mondon Jr. said. “Taking 24-hour wins as coach Smart likes to say. So just one a day and just keep chopping away like that.”
Ohio State is trying to adopt that approach this week. Of course, they’d love a second crack at Michigan. But they can’t live in a world of hypothetical rematches or worry about things that are now in the past. All they can do is put all of their energy into facing a reigning national champion.
“We learned more on that last year than we did all our wins,” linebacker Chaz Chambliss said. “Most people say you learn more in your losses than your wins, and we did in that game. We learned what we didn’t want to feel again after that game.”