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Paul Finebaum, Desmond Howard agree. The B1G needs to find Ohio State a sixth game
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Despite logistics and a ticking clock, Ohio State should earn their way into the Big Ten Championship Game, so says ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum on Wednesday morning.
With the cancellation of this week’s game against Michigan due to COVID-19 protocols, Ohio State is currently 5-0 heading into the conference championship game. Given that the Big Ten created a threshold of six games in order for a team to qualify for the championship game, Ohio State either needs to find another game quickly for this weekend or the conference will need to waive the requirement.
Reports have indicated that the Big Ten, given the nature of the season, might waive the six-game requirement. Finebaum calls bogus on that idea.
“I think they should find Ohio State a game, that way they don’t take all the heat for changing the rules [for Ohio State], even though that’s not a big deal as we’ve said a couple times. It just makes more sense — give Ohio State a legitimate route into the B1G Championship Game,” Fienbaum said on ESPN’s Get Up. “It really is fairly simple. You’re worried about hurting feelings, the B1G has hurt feelings from the beginning. When they shut down, they made everybody mad, when they came back, they made some people mad. That should not be the issue any longer.
“You have to be flexible. And I don’t know why it’s taken until Wednesday to get this figured out. …We started talking about this 10 days ago. How come we’re ahead of the B1G on what they should be doing?”
Also on the ESPN panel on Wednesday morning was former Michigan and NFL star Desmond Howard, who added that “I think they should try to find Ohio State a game and I think they will find Ohio State a game.”
“When you look at the comments coming from the athletic directors from the B1G, you can tell that everyone is trying to finagle a way to figure out how they can get Ohio State into the B1G Championship Game because they want to get them into the College Football Playoff. That’s the B1G’s best team,” Howard said.
One opponent that has been bantered about is No. 5 Texas A&M (5-1) who could boost their own stock in the College Football Playoff rankings by beating Ohio State. But the Aggies would have little to gain from such a match-up that could and would help a contender for the four-team playoff.
“I would love to see it happen. There aren’t many good college football games this weekend, other than the Army-Navy game, all the contenders are pretty much gone,” Fienabaum said. “So it would be fantastic. But the odds of it are infinitesimal.”