Longtime Buckeyes writer says 2026 season will be tough but could end with another title

Expectations are high for Ohio State football fans this season after the team came up short in last year's College Football Playoff. Bill Rabinowitz has covered the Buckeyes for more than a decade. Thank you for joining us.

Bill Rabinowitz: Nice to be with you, Stu.

Stu Osborne: Ohio State starts the season ranked No. 1 for the first time since 2015. Is this ranking indicative of the talent that's returning this year?

Bill Rabinowitz: It is, I mean, you have Julian Sayin back at quarterback, you have Jeremiah Smith, a wide receiver who's widely considered the best college football player in the country. You have an experienced offensive line. You do have a retooled defense, but Matt Patricia showed last year that he's really good at his job.

I was not surprised that they were No. 1. I didn't think it was a given by any means. I don't think they're an odds-on favorite, but I do think that when you look at who they have. Yeah, there's every reason to think that they could be the national champion, but they do have a very tough schedule.

Stu Osborne: Now I'll get into that. Some say they have probably one of the toughest, if not the toughest schedule in the country. Twelve games, six of them are against top 25 preseason ranked teams, including that tough week two matchup at Texas. Do you think Ohio State can survive this gauntlet?

Bill Rabinowitz: Well, we're gonna find out. I mean, they could be really, really good and lose two games. If Ohio State's 10-2 this year, I know Buckeye Nation's pretty demanding and demands perfection. 10-2 would be a very good record for this season, for the regular season. And the advantage of going through that schedule if they make the playoff, which most people think they will, but it's not a given, is that they'll be toughened by the schedule where they weren't last year. And I think that really bit them when they had to play Indiana and Miami.

Stu Osborne: Now you mentioned 10-2, you know, in years past that would have been seen as a letdown year, but in this new age where the expansion of the College Football Playoff, like you said, if you lose to a ranked team in a ranked versus ranked matchup, those losses might not necessarily hurt you down the line.

Bill Rabinowitz: Yeah, in a 12-team playoff, if Ohio State's 10-2, they're in. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt about it. I could even make the case that if they're 9-3, they could get in depending on what else happens around the country, what those losses look like, how impressive they were in their nine wins. I mean Ohio State doesn't want to tempt fate by trying that.

Stu Osborne: Ryan Day was recently quoted as saying he's never truly happy with his team. Do you think that's his way of keeping them humble, making sure they just keep grinding and not settle?

Bill Rabinowitz: Yeah, a little bit. I'm the one who asked that question. It was at the end of a press conference at which he seemed pretty happy about most things. So I said, you know, are you happy? He said, I'm never happy. He's like, oh my God, what if I said a coach who's happy?

So I thought that was kind of amusing. You know, there are questions. There's no question about that. I mean, the defense in particular lost a lot of players. You don't lose Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles and Arvell Reese, who are all top high first round picks and not feel it.

But I do think that they feel with the transfer reinforcements that they got, and the experienced guys they have coming back, that they're gonna still be pretty good on defense.

Stu Osborne: Kind of in the vein of national championship talks, you wrote a book, Buckeye Brotherhood, about the 2024 national championship team. I hear that the audiobook's coming out soon.

Bill Rabinowitz Yeah, it's actually out on Audible, which is an Amazon company, so you can go to Amazon and look it up or audible.com. And yeah, I'm a writer, not a speaker, so that was a challenge to actually do the narration myself, but I think it came out pretty well. I've gotten a nice response from it. For a while when it came out it was the number one football book on audio book, whatever that means. So yeah, I hope people who like audiobooks will check it out.

Stu Osborne Well, here's hoping we have a season where you have enough material to write another book about a championship. Buckeye writer Bill Rabinowitz, thank you for your time this morning.

Bill Rabinowitz Thanks, Stu, thanks for having me on.

You can find Bill's work on Substack.