12-for-12: Ohio State’s Perfect Season

Unfortunately, Ohio State will not be taking the field this fall after the Big Ten decided to cancel the 2020 fall season. While we here at Land-Grant Holy Land are equally as upset about it as all of you in Buckeye Nation, that isn’t going to stop us from providing you with the football content you crave over these next few months. We have a bunch of new and exciting series in the works, and we are all going to try and get through these tough times together.

This is 12-for-12: Ohio State’s Perfect Season. In lieu of an actual football season this year, we have put together a full 12-game schedule for the Buckeyes using one game from each of the last 12 years. The docket is complete with three non-conference opponents, nine Big Ten showdowns, and will also include a three-game postseason with a Big Ten title game and College Football Playoff matchups — for an actual total of 15 games. We tried to use the best matchups from each of the 12 years to fill the slots, but some had to be left out to avoid duplicate opponents in the regular season and to ensure every year was recognized.

As you can see, the season kicks off with Virginia Tech, just as the Buckeyes opened the year back in 2015, and the regular season concludes, as it always does, with The Game (2016 edition). There were so many really enticing matchups to choose from in putting together this schedule, with a handful of great battles against teams like Penn State, Michigan and Wisconsin through the years, but there had to be some tough cuts to try and avoid playing the same team multiple times during the regular season in order to make things more realistic.

Each week this fall, we will be covering one of these games as if they are happening in real time as we work our way through the entire schedule. This will include a brief recap of any storylines surrounding that year’s team and the matchup, as well as a full game summary complete with all sorts of clips and highlights. In addition, we will be keeping a running total of the Buckeyes’ stats as we go, finding out in the end who led Ohio State in some of the key statistical categories over this Frankenstein season.

We don't have all that much to work with this fall without actual football being played in the Big Ten, but we can try and have some fun with what we’ve got. Is it going to be a bit odd that Ohio State’s head coach/starting quarterback/star players keep changing week in and week out as we bounce around the years over the course of this series? Sure. But college football is inherently weird anyway, so just sit back and try to enjoy a fun and entertaining fake season comprised of some of your Buckeyes’ biggest wins over the past decade-plus.

We can’t replace the feeling of real Ohio State football broadcasting to your living rooms every week, but we can at least try and pass the time with some good ole nostalgia as we relive some of our favorite moments in time. The game recaps will be dropping every Thursday afternoon, beginning next Thursday with the Week 1 matchup against Virginia Tech as the Buckeyes travel to Blacksburg for the season opener.