There is no access to the alternate reality where Ohio State beats Michigan to close its 2024 regular season.
All other circumstances being equal in that timeline, do the Buckeyes still win a national championship? What happens in the Big Ten Championship rematch with Oregon that would have followed? Those are questions that can never be definitively answered. What can be answered, I’d say definitively, is that it sparked a great evolution in Ryan Day as a head coach.
His offense pounding its head into the brick walls known as Michigan defensive tackles Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant, two top-15 picks in the 2025 NFL draft, drove an important lesson through Day’s skull that he understood but failed to fully embrace in several key moments of his Ohio State tenure: It doesn’t matter how you win, only that you win.