Ohio State knows what it feels like to get a chance at payback. Under Jim Tressel, those opportunities usually ended the same way: the Buckeyes took the loss, filed it away, and came back swinging.
Urban Meyer carried that trend forward for the most part, too. Ryan Day has had more mixed results, but there have still been plenty of moments when Ohio State turned an old wound into a fresh win.
That history matters this week because the Buckeyes are headed to Bloomington on Saturday, and last year’s game is hanging in the background even if nobody in Columbus is waving a revenge flag out loud.
Tressel made a habit of not losing twice to the same team in a row. In his first season in 2001, Ohio State dropped three Big Ten games, then got all three back on the road to the 2002 national title.
The Buckeyes also lost to Texas and Penn State in 2005, then beat both teams the next year by 17 and 22 points, respectively. Illinois beat Tressel in 2007, and never did again.
Purdue, Iowa and Northwestern each had their moments, but the Boilermakers were the only Big Ten team to beat Ohio State twice in a row during the Tressel years.
That streak was unusual enough to stand out. Wisconsin beat Ohio State in 2003 and again in 2004, and USC was another rare exception, sweeping the Buckeyes in a home-and-home in 2008 and 2009. Still, Tressel’s track record was simple: if a team got him once, it usually did not get him twice.
Meyer was built the same way. After taking over in 2012 following a season in which Ohio State lost five Big Ten games, he went 12-0 and beat all five of those teams the next year.
Michigan State got him in the 2013 Big Ten Championship Game, then took a double-digit loss at East Lansing the following season. Penn State beat Meyer in 2016, then watched Ohio State rally from 18 points down to win in 2017.
Clemson was the only program to beat Meyer twice in a row, doing it in the 2013 Orange Bowl and again in the 2016 CFP semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl.
Day has not been quite as automatic in these spots, but he has delivered more than once. After taking a loss to Clemson in the 2019 CFP semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl, Ohio State got its shot at the Tigers again in the 2020 CFP semifinal at the Sugar Bowl and blew them off the field. Day also answered losses to Purdue in 2021 and Iowa in 2022 with wins over both teams in Columbus.
He has also done something no other Ohio State coach had pulled off before: avenging a loss in-season. After Oregon beat the Buckeyes at home in 2021, Ohio State got its turn in Eugene in 2024, and the Ducks beat the Buckeyes for the second straight time. But Day followed that by crushing Oregon in the CFP quarterfinal at the Rose Bowl.
The one exception that still looms is Michigan. Day lost to the Buckeyes’ biggest rival four straight times from 2021 through 2024, and that stretch raised fair questions about whether the emotion of chasing revenge had started to work against him.
For now, though, Day is keeping the focus on the present. He said this week, "We can learn from the past, and some of the guys who played in that game can learn about all the reasons why we came up short. That’s fine, and that’s good, but the focus has to be on right now, and that’s it".
Publicly, that is the tone. Privately, Ohio State knows exactly what Saturday is about.
If the Buckeyes win in Bloomington, the talk afterward will almost certainly drift toward last year’s game and revenge. But the real challenge is simpler than the chatter: channel that feeling the right way against a talented, well-coached Indiana team on the road.
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