With apologies to whatever advertising mad men berthed the similar slogan for the Southeastern Conference: Football at Ohio State isn’t just something they engage in on fall Saturdays.

It truly does just mean more in Columbus, which is why Saturday’s College Football Playoff 1st-round game will likely take on more weight there than anywhere else in the country.

Why?

Because legacy matters at Ohio State. And these Buckeyes, well, they don’t have any to hang their buckeye-festooned helmets on at this moment.

When 9th-seeded Tennessee rolls into town to take on the 8th-seeded home team Saturday night at a jam-packed and frosty Ohio Stadium, the pressure of what has been gauged as the largest fan base in all of college football will be breathing down Ohio State’s collective neck.

That’s because success is judged by precisely 2 standards at the The: Beating Michigan; and winning Big Ten championships. And in case you’ve been living under a rock for the better part of the past 4 years, Ohio State has accomplished precisely bupkus of either. That means Ohio State’s current seniors haven’t either vanquished the archrival Wolverines or won a B1G crown.

No gold pants. No gold rings. No legacy of note.

No pressure, right?

The expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, which Ohio State earned a spot in despite stumbling as a 3-touchdown home favorite against Michigan in The Game on Nov. 30, seems tailor-made for the Buckeyes to earn redemption. Then again, this isn’t a team that expected to need a second-chance shot at redemption in the first place.

Ohio State entered 2024 with audacious goals, and an audacious NIL-funded roster to go with it — a rumored $20 million worth of 5-star talent assembled from sea to shining sea with exactly 1 goal: win every game.

That didn’t happen, of course. A trip to Eugene saw the Buckeyes fall 1 stride too long and 1 second short in a 32-31 loss to Oregon. And of course, there is That Team Up North — the figurative thorn in the Buckeyes’ side since practically eternity.

It is one thing, you can suppose, to lose to Michigan in Ann Arbor in a season that the Wolverines go on to win the national championship. Because, heck, someone’s gotta win it, right? But at Ohio Stadium, with Michigan reeling at 6-5 and not expected to put forth more than just a token effort?

Reams have been written, both here at SDS and across the land, about Ryan Day’s job status entering Saturday’s Playoff 1st-round game. We won’t delve further into that topic, other than to point out again that it would be insane to cast aside a coach who is 66-10 (a gaudy .868 winning percentage).

The bottom line, though, is that Ohio State’s players are the ones also feeling the added pressure of not getting it done — either in the B1G or against the hated rival. Yes, Day will be (too harshly, in my opinion) judged for the record against Michigan, as well as the lack of conference championships. But it is the players on the field — especially the ones raking in very large stacks of legal tender this season — who are making (and not making) the plays.

And making the plays against the Western Michigans and Purdues and Northwesterns of the world doesn’t mean a hill of beans when Ohio State isn’t booking a trip to Indianapolis for the conference championship game or handing out 14-carat pants-shaped charms. These seniors can only wistfully stare at their bare fingers and unadorned necklaces and wonder what it is like to accept a trophy under falling confetti and not have to ignite brawls on their home turf over a planted block-M flag.

Now, Day has spent the better part of this week proclaiming that the goal all along was to earn a Playoff spot — which is fine and good and probably has a strong percentage of truth to it. But crack any Buckeye open and squeeze the truth from that nut, and it’ll say that all is lost for 2024 unless Ohio State not only vanquishes Tennessee this weekend but goes on and captures the Big Enchilada.

Expectation is privilege, any athlete will tell you. For those lucky enough not only to be Division I football studs but also talented enough to adorn the Scarlet and Gray, that burden of expectation comes with the territory. After all, as noted former Buckeyes scholar-athlete Cardale Jones put it: “We ain’t come to play SCHOOL.”

But with all the legacy milestones gone by the wayside, all the Script Ohio formations wasted on 4 years of combined Buckeyes talent that earned nothing of significance other than a healthy Name, Image and Likeness salary, Saturday against Tennessee is the 1st step on these seniors’ final path to immortality — with no room for further failure.

No pressure, right?