Ryan Day took quite a beating last year in the media and with certain fans after laying an egg against Michigan. Of course, he shut up many of his critics as the Buckeyes played angry and went on an epic run in the College Football Playoff to win Day’s first National Championship.

Still, four straight losses against Michigan hung over Day’s head. This year, Day and the Buckeyes entered the game as the better team, just like last year. But it was clear from the beginning that Day wasn’t going to play conservatively. Julian Sayin came out throwing, but he tossed an interception on his second pass of the game.

But the Buckeyes didn’t buckle under the pressure after falling behind 6-0. Sayin threw a touchdown to Jeremiah Smith and then later threw a TD bomb to Carnell Tate. The running game was also working with Bo Jackson and the other Ohio State backs. Ohio State outgained Michigan 419-163 as they controlled the game in a 27-9 victory.

Meanwhile, Bryce Underwood, Michigan’s $10 million freshman QB, finished the game going 8-18 with just 63 passing yards!

In the fourth quarter, the Buckeyes went to the ground game as their offensive lines just dominated the Michigan defense.

After the game, the Ohio State players celebrated of course, but they didn’t bother planting a flag. They know they expect to win this game, and Day was clear he wanted them to win with humility.

It was quite a weekend for college football, as many of us who love the game saw the crowds return and bring back the magic of the game. Yes, we still have issues with this top-heavy sport with Alabama and a few other dominant teams, but the traditions, crowds and games themselves make this an irresistible sport. No, NIL won’t ruin it. It will just continue to evolve, and likely in a better way.

As for the games this weekend, Ohio State and Minnesota kicked things off on Thursday night, as the Gophers came out to play and made things interesting for the first half. The Gophers have a monster offensive like in front of star running back Mo Ibrahim, and the Buckeyes have a young defense that clearly needs some more time to gel.

Meanwhile, C.J. Stroud was making his first start at quarterback and struggled in the first half. He had trouble throwing accurately on the run and couldn’t consistently get the ball to Ohio State’s talented receivers. That changed in the second half as Ryan Day schemed the receivers open and Stroud hit them in stride. The Buckeyes showed how Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson and the rest of the Buckeye receivers will torch opponents all season. And they have running backs as well, as Miyan Williams and true freshman TreVeyon Henderson both scored on long touchdowns.

Sadly, Mo Ibrahim is out for the season. Still, Minnesota should do some damage this season in the Big Ten. Meanwhile, some Oregon fans were getting excited as they watched Ohio State struggle in the first half, but that was before Oregon struggled to beat Fresno State on Saturday. Ohio State is a two-touchdown favorite heading into next weeks home game against Oregon, which seems about right. If Oregon’s star defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux can’t play next week, you might want to lay the points.

Saturday gave us so many great moments as we saw the fans flood back into stadiums, rocking to “Enter Sandman” and “Jump Around.” We had some great games and some fun upsets, but Alabama still destroyed Miami as expected. With all these games, we have to be careful not to read too much into one performance, but we’ve seen this movie before with Alabama. Right now it’s hard to imagine any team other than Ohio State or Georgia giving them a real game. We’ll see . . .

As for Georgia, they picked up a huge win against Clemson, but we saw the same strengths and weaknesses we’ve seen before. They have dudes on defense, but that goes with a mediocre offense led by an average QB. I wonder if Kirby Smart has what it takes to beat Alabama . . . he’ll likely get another shot this year.

As for Clemson, D.J. Uiagalelei looked bad. Forget the hype; this kid just didn’t look like a good quarterback. Again, it’s only one game and the Georgia defense chewed up the Clemson offensive line, but many of those sacks were on him. And he just wasn’t accurate throwing the football. Dabo Swinney has recruited studs at quarterback for years but this one seems different. I don’t see Clemson as one of the elite teams this year. You can take that knowledge as you bet the rest of the year at icecasino.

Oklahoma was another disappointment as their hyped “improved” defense looked like a mess. Are they a real contender this year?

It should be a great year, particularly if someone can figure out how to beat Bama . . .

That was hilarious! Pretty much everyone agreed that Bret Bielema came across as a bumbling fool when he tried to rip Ohio State’s schedule and then proceeded to have his over-hyped Razorbacks crap the bed against Toledo.

Bielema is a blowhard and also an overrated coach. He hopped aboard the Wisconsin train and basically just kept the same formula. He had some success while Michigan was down and Ohio State had to go through the Luke Fickell transition season until Urban Meyer restored order to the Big Ten.

Bielema parlayed that record to a monster contract at Arkansas, where suddenly he had to do real coaching in order to turn around a program and compete in the tough SEC.

Arkansas was the favorite sleeper pick of many experts, but now big mouth Bielema has become a laughingstock instead.

Let’s see if he can redeem himself with some wins in the SEC.

Pat Forde does his usually excellent job summarizing the Rutgers dumpster fire and the mess this has created for Jim Delany and the Big Ten.

But he also throws in an interesting nugget that explains some of the motivation behind targeting Rutgers in the first place. Big Ten dictator Jim Delany IS FROM NEW JERSEY, and his obsession with getting the Big Ten exposure in the New York market led him to the mediocre program.

Ohio State has taken some lame shots for its schedule this year, but as a Big Ten there are some issues with the schedule that lend credence to some of the criticisms. The Buckeyes are stuck with Maryland and Rutgers every year now on its schedule, while this year there’s no Nebraska, Wisconsin or Iowa. Not even a resurgent Northwestern in on the schedule. Of course, this is a fluke this year, as next year the Buckeyes have both Wisconsin and Nebraska along with a nonconference road game versus Oklahoma.

The end result is that adding Maryland and Rutgers has dragged down a conference that already face some issues with the issues at Penn State and Michigan. Fortunately the dominance of the Buckeyes on the national stage coupled with a resurgent Michigan State has helped elevate the conference, but Rutgers in particular could be a drag for years.

As Forde pointed out, Delany has done some good things over the years, but his resistance to a playoff and his decision to bring in Rutgers will likely stain his legacy.

After another wild day of college football, here are some observations:

– Barring a slew of wild upsets that let a 2-loss team into the mix, the real contenders for the final four spots is now down to nine teams – Mississippi State and Alabama from the SEC, Florida State from the ACC, Oregon and Arizona State from the Pac 12, TCU and Baylor from the Big 12 and Ohio State and Nebraska from the Big Ten.

– Ohio State made a huge statement with its road demolition of Michigan State as they posted 49 points on Sparty’s vaunted defense. Suddenly the Buckeyes are in the mix though they probably need some help.

– I don’t have much sympathy for Auburn despite their two late fumbles (other than feeling bad for the individual players who messed up). Auburn rode good fortune to get to the BCS championship game last year, so they really can’t gripe about some bad luck this year. Also, their defense blows.

– Alabama pulled out a huge win against LSU, but they’re getting a ton of love based on reputation. This isn’t the same dominating Alabama team.

– The TCU/Baylor debate will become heated as it’s hard to figure out who should be ranked higher. Also, with Ohio State playing at Minnesota this week, the Buckeyes and TCU will have a common opponent for sake of comparison. TCU beat the Gophers at home 30-7, so Ohio State needs to beat Minnesota handily, and they can also help themselves if they thump Minnesota on the road.

– Arizona State got a huge win against Notre Dame, though they benefited from a slew of turnovers. The Ohio State win over Michigan State was probably more impressive as it was on the road and they overcame two of their own turnovers and got none from Sparty. If you take into account the eye test, you’ll see the Buckeyes are as talented as any other team. They’re just young and you’ll need to overlook a bad, early-season loss against Virginia tech after they lost Braxton Miller and had inexperienced freshman TJ Barrett starting in his place. Now we see just how good Barrett can be.

That said, it looks like the SEC, ACC and Pac 12 teams control their own fate. How it plays out for the others is anyone’s guess.

The BCS is dead. Finally!

We’ve been complaining about it for years, and now we finally have a playoff system, so all of the debate around who is the best team in college football can at least be expanded to the four best teams who should play in the playoff. All of the debate on ESPN and other outlets will still be annoying, but at least the end result is somewhat more rational. Hopefully this will be a precursor to at least an eight-team playoff, but we can live with this for now.

With that in mind, now that the NFL Draft is over, people are starting to talk college football again, and you can have some fun looking over the college football futures as you contemplate who you like going into the 2014 season. There are plenty of teams that will give Florida State a run for the title, with Alabama, Ohio State, Auburn, Oregon leading the way. Then you have upstarts like Baylor who became a media and fan darling last season until they got smacked silly 52-42 by UCF in a huge Fiesta Bowl upset.

College football can be very unpredictable, and lately with all the new spread and hurry-up offenses things change very quickly. But we still see many of the regular names at the top.

One name that will get plenty of attention as usual is Ohio State, the team that many around the country love to hate. Urban Meyer has brought the program back after the brief hiccup during the Luke Fickell season, but the team has a ways to go before actually winning a national championship. You should keep your eyes on two critical factors: Braxton Miller and the defense.

You’ll see Miller in the futures as well, as he is again a legitimate threat to contend for the Heisman Trophy. Yet he is still an enigma, as he’s very injury prone and also very inconsistent. He’s an incredible runner out of the pocket. Frankly, at the next level, he should probably be a tailback. The reason has to do with his passing, which is still very mediocre. This year he’ll have some great receiving weapons, and he’ll also have some young backs who should do a nice job replacing Carlos Hyde. But the offensive line is very young, so this team likely will not be able to maul defenses with their running game like last year. Miller needs to step up and mature as a quarterback for the Buckeyes to have a chance at the playoff.

Then there’s the defense, which has been an embarrassment since Jim Tressel left Ohio State. Sure, they’ve had injuries, but the pass defense was a joke last season. Urban Meyer has pledged to fix it, and this year he promises to showcase press coverage from his young secondary. The key will be a dominating defensive line led by super-sophomore Joey Bosa. If the line lives up to the billing, then maybe the Buckeyes can finally get back to playing real defense again.

But the Buckeyes show how hard it can be to predict college football, so do your homework!

Where are all of the so-called “experts” who said Baylor would “crush” teams like Ohio State? We’ve seen this before with Oregon. Running up the score against weak competition just because you run a no-huddle offense through the whole game means nothing when you’re facing better teams. It’s particularly true when you face more physical defenses.

Baylor was embarrassed last night by Oklahoma State. After this game they shouldn’t even be in the top ten, let alone in the discussion for the BCS.

Meanwhile, the arrogant Oregon Ducks got embarrassed as well by RichRod’s Arizona team after several Oregon players said that the Rose Bowl was beneath them. Where will they go now? The Tangerine Bowl?

Finally, the once-mighty Florida Gators managed to lose at home to an FCS team in Georgia Southern.

Which team should be most embarrassed today?