ARLINGTON, Texas — Quinn Ewers was drifting left, looking toward the goal line, his eyes locked on Texas’ last chance. There was no time to peek back at which defensive monster was bearing down on him from the blind side, but he already knew it was Jack Sawyer.
Of course it was.
For four months in the fall of 2021, they had been roommates at Ohio State. They had been close. And now here they were, physically closer than ever but emotionally separated by jerseys and traumas and the chance for redemption that only one of them would be able to cash in.
This breathtaking College Football Playoff had placed these two teams, and these two players, in a moment that only sports can create. Even among friends, there can only be one winner.
It was one play within a 60-minute game within a month of postseason football within a 16-game season within years of colliding narratives about coaching decisions and reputations and what it means to be burdened by a specific kind of failure.
And it was everything.
This time, it was Sawyer ripping the ball away, rumbling 83 yards down the sideline, an Ohio kid clinching the Buckeyes’ spot in the national championship game when they were left for dead in December.
“We heard a lot of things,” Sawyer said. “We kept swinging.”
And this time, it was Ewers on his stomach, a Texas kid watching helplessly as a national semifinal slipped away from the Longhorns for a second straight year.
This time, it was Ohio State 28, Texas 14.
“It sucks,” Ewers said. “He’s a great player, great individual, great person. So, you know, it sucks.”
They did not award a national championship here on 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. Every step toward a championship feels like an epic, and every failure a cataclysm.
Ohio State could not have won this game and cannot win a national title without unloading an unimaginable amount of emotional baggage. And Texas could not have lost it without wounds getting picked at until they bled.
A year ago, Ewers had a ball in the air that would have sent the Longhorns to the national championship game. It was never caught, and everyone in the program vowed to come back and make it right.
And here, in this very same building, Ohio State had to suffer the indignity of losing a meaningless Cotton Bowl to Missouri while Michigan — the program that had lodged itself in the Buckeyes’ collective heads — went on to win the title a handful of days later.
“No great accomplishments are ever achieved without going through adversity,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “That’s just the truth. And we’ve gone through our share of adversity, and that’s life.”
You can thumb your nose if you want at the notion of adversity for a football coach who makes $10 million a year and a roster of elite athletes collectively making $20 million playing a game that many of them will go on to make their careers.
But this is what they do. This is the world in which they live. And it can be cruel. It can hurt, especially when the narrative that they have failed feeds on itself year after year after year.
“Football is not meant to be easy,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “It’s a tough sport. It’s physically grueling. It’s mentally grueling. But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.”
Sarkisian, too, knows what it’s like to be the avatar of a football-mad state’s expectations and the subject of its ire. Or, at least, he will now.
Three plays before the collision between Sawyer and Ewers, Texas had the ball in first-and-goal at the 1-yard line. The clock had just ticked under four minutes to play. Ohio State had taken a 21-14 lead moments earlier, but Texas was on the doorstep, ready to surely tie the game. The Buckeyes’ defense looked gassed.
“We talked before the game about, how do you leave a legacy?” Day said, but it wasn’t only Ohio State’s legacy on the line. At that very moment, it felt like any outcome was possible.
On first down, Texas couldn’t stuff the ball into the end zone by running inside. Ohio State had brought in its biggest defensive personnel, daring the Longhorns to take the ball to the perimeter.
Then Sarkisian, who had called a near-perfect second half to get Texas in position to win, made the most consequential play-call of the entire college football season.
“We didn’t get much movement at all, and we had a plan to try to get the ball on the edge,” Sarkisian said. “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.”
Not even close. Texas’ pitch to running back Quintrevion Wisner didn’t just go nowhere — it went seven yards backward. In the blink of an eye, Texas had gone from a few feet away from tying the game to a desperate situation with only two plays to score. Time was running out, nearing the two-minute mark. This was all the Longhorns really had left.
And then Sawyer straight-up took it from them. Disaster.
That is the burden Texas and Sarkisian will carry the next time they arrive at this stage. And it’s the burden that Ohio State has never been closer to shedding forever.
“What means the most to me is that we’re going to compete for a national championship now, which is something I’ve always dreamed of bringing back to Columbus since I was a kid throwing the football in the backyard with my dad and an Ohio State jersey on,” Sawyer said. “And I was fortunate to make a big-time play like a lot of guys did all night long.”
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.
“We’ve got to finish this thing, and they know it,” Day said.
It’s better that it happened the way it did Friday night. In its first two playoff games, Ohio State cruised to wins over Tennessee and No. 1 seed Oregon, looking like an unstoppable juggernaut on its way to a coronation.
But that’s not reality in a sport of tiny margins at the highest level. In the end, it’s the tension — and performing with the excruciating pressure of the stakes hanging over your head — that ultimately validates you as much as the trophy itself.
“It’s really a one-and-done mentality. It’s adopting what the basketball guys have (in the NCAA tournament),” Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said. “You made the tournament, now survive and advance. And that’s our mindset. We knew (after the Michigan loss) that everything was ahead of us.”
What’s truly on the horizon, though, is always vague. When the teams are this good and there’s so much on the line, the moment doesn’t present itself until you can literally feel it breathing down your neck.
“I thought I was going to be able to get the ball off,” Ewers said. “Obviously, you know, it’s not like I tried to give him the game.”
Instead, Sawyer took it: To the end zone, to Atlanta for one more game and maybe to history.
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
