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Has Ohio State ever lost to Michigan and won the national championship?
On Monday night, Ohio State will play in the biggest, most consequential game of the college football calendar when it takes the field against Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
But even for a program like the Buckeyes, who enter almost every season with the goal of winning a national title, there’s a game on their schedule annually that’s arguably as important, if not more.
Ohio State football’s rivalry with Michigan is perhaps the most intense in college sports, a longstanding feud so intense that it doesn’t need any sort of cute nickname. It’s simply known as “The Game.”
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Whether the Buckeyes defeat or lose to the Wolverines has significant stakes. It can boost or sink a season. It’s the stage on which a player can become a legend. It defines, and sometimes undermines, coaching tenures. The magnitude of the rivalry, and his shortcomings in it, are by far the biggest reason that Ryan Day, who has won 87.3% of his games at Ohio State, has faced any kind of question about his job security.
Though it could be viewed as a catalyst for their run through the playoff, the Buckeyes’ 13-10 home loss on Nov. 30 to what was then a 6-5 Michigan extended their woes against the Wolverines, with the latest loss being the most perplexing yet. It knocked them out of the Big Ten championship game, killed the possibility of a first-round bye in the playoff and intensified scrutiny of Day.
It puts Ohio State in an interesting position, one in which it can win a national title and lose to its most hated rival in a single season.
Has it ever happened before? Here’s a closer look at Ohio State’s history with Michigan in seasons in which the Buckeyes won the national championship:
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Has Ohio State ever lost to Michigan and won the national championship?
If Ohio State manages to knock off Notre Dame Monday, it will do something that has never been done before.
In each of the Buckeyes’ eight national championship seasons, they defeated Michigan during the regular season.
At least some of that has to do with the way college football champions used to be crowned.
Unlike this season, when Ohio State was able to comfortably make the inaugural 12-team football playoff despite having two losses, even a single regular-season loss would have been enough to eliminate a team from being voted atop one of the major national polls. Even once a national championship game was instituted beginning in the 1998 season, a one-loss team would have faced sizable hurdles to be one of two teams selected for the BCS title game. During the Buckeyes’ most recent national championship run, at the end of the 2014 season, they made the four-team playoff field with a loss, though it came against Virginia Tech, not Michigan. They made the playoff as its fourth and final team in what was a much-debated decision at the time, with Baylor and TCU also having strong arguments for inclusion.
The Buckeyes had a loss in four of their eight national championship seasons. None of them, however, came against the Wolverines.
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Ohio State vs Michigan in national championship seasons
Ohio State hasn’t just beaten Michigan in its previous national championship seasons. It has won by considerable margins over the Wolverines.
Only one of the Buckeyes’ eight victories against Michigan in a national title run came by fewer than two scores (a five-point win at Ohio Stadium in 2002).
Here’s a look at the results of the Ohio State-Michigan game from the Buckeyes’ eight national championship seasons:
- 1942: Ohio State 21, Michigan 7
- 1954: Ohio State 21, Michigan 7
- 1957: Ohio State 31, Michigan 14
- 1961: Ohio State 50, Michigan 20
- 1968: Ohio State 51, Michigan 14
- 1970: Ohio State 21, Michigan 9
- 2002: Ohio State 14, Michigan 9
- 2014: Ohio State 42, Michigan 28
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Ryan Day record vs Michigan
This season’s loss dropped Day to 1-4 against Michigan since he became Ohio State’s head coach ahead of the 2019 season. The Wolverines’ current four-game win streak in the rivalry is their longest since 1988-91.
Day is 68-6 against all other opponents.
Yes, Ohio State has lost to Michigan and won the national championship in the same season. This occurred in the 2002 college football season when the Buckeyes suffered a regular-season loss to the Wolverines but went on to win the BCS National Championship by defeating the Miami Hurricanes in the title game. This serves as a reminder that a single loss to a rival does not necessarily define a team’s success in the grand scheme of a season.
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Ohio State vs Michigan, Ohio State football, college football rivalry, Ohio State national championship, Ohio State history, Ohio State vs Michigan rivalry, Ohio State Buckeyes, national championship winners, Ohio State football records
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