Paul Finebaum evaluates if Ohio State should be the clear favorite to win the national championship

No team has looked as great as Ohio State has through two rounds of the College Football Playoff. Does that mean it’s rightful, though, that the Buckeyes are as heavily favored as they are to win it all?

Paul Finebaum doesn’t see why not. While on ‘McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning’ on Monday, Finebaum said they have to be that favored at the moment. That’s despite his own doubt of the Buckeyes just last week in the quarterfinals of the CFP.

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“I mean, you have to take that approach,” said Finebaum. “But, you know, it’s, you always get a little nervous jumping on these national narratives because we’re often proven wrong.”

“I mean I was a little bit hesitant on Ohio State last week because, based on their track record, it was hard for me to believe they could be as consistent as they turned out to be,” Finebaum admitted.

With that, it goes beyond that for Finebaum. Ohio State isn’t just the best team in this year’s expanded field for him but is one of the best ones over the last half decades during the playoffs in the 2020s.

“But, yeah, right now, you’d have to be in that camp,” said Finebaum.

“I mean it would be foolish to say, ‘Oh, no. They don’t look like the better team’ when they’ve been not only the better team. I mean, I’ll lean on you guys. I’m trying to come up with a team that has looked better than Ohio State in a long time,” Finebaum said. “I would go back, maybe, to 2020 Alabama – was winning games convincingly during that COVID-year run to the national championship.”

There was more than enough reason for concern about the Buckeyes coming into the CFP. Another season-ending loss to Michigan, this being the worst of their current four-game losing streak in the Game, cost them a chance at a Big Ten Championship and dropped them to the No. 8 seed.

However, all that Ohio State has done since then is dominate. They won their games over No. 9 Tennessee and No. 1 Oregon in The Rose Bowl by an average margin of 22.5 with the average largest lead in those games being by 33 points. They started up 21-0 over the Vols and up 34-0 over the Ducks respectively with neither game being close the rest of the way in the three-plus score victories.

Because of that, Ohio State is a very, very heavy favorite to win the national title at minus odds as compared to the three remaining teams with two games to go with their semifinal to end this week before the championship game two weeks from today.

“For two straight games, they’ve played about as spectacularly as you can possibly play,” said Finebaum