Pete Thamel pushes back on belief that Michigan loss would loom over Ohio State national championship

ESPN’s Pete Thamel believes adding a national championship to their resume would exercise any Michigan Wolverines-sized demons for the 2024 Ohio State Buckeyes.

As the Buckeyes prepare for Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game against Notre Dame, Thamel pushed back against the notion that Ohio State’s loss to Michigan in November would hang over a potential national title victory, explaining why winning a championship changes the conversation for Ryan Day’s team.

“Winning championships changes everything. It just changes everything. I don’t think that Michigan loss is going to loom over a championship,” Thamel proclaimed, via the ESPN College GameDay Podcast. “I think the only people who think that are the people in maize and blue clinging to that, because they’ve watched their rival march towards a championship, much like [Ohio State] did last season. … Will there be pressure next November, when Ohio State plays Michigan? Sure. Absolutely there will be. That will hang over.

“But I really do think a championship is a paradigm changer. I really do think the noise about Ryan Day’s job status is late November was just noise. I mean, he’s been a consistent top five coach, in every conceivable metric.”

While Thamel isn’t convinced that Ohio State’s season will be a failure if they lose in the national title showdown on Monday, Desmond Howard certainly believes it’ll be cataclysmic for Day if the Buckeyes come up short.

“Catastrophic. I mean when you look at the reason we’re here, to put it in context, don’t forget a year ago Michigan won the national championship. And right after that game, Ryan Day and the athletic director, they had like an emergency meeting,” Howard stated, via SportsCenter. “They had just lost to Michigan three years in a row, and they hadn’t even been to the Big Ten Championship. So the AD said, ‘What do we need to do?’ At that point they dug into the portal. They spent the most money on high-end talent in the portal during the offseason. That’s why the whole offseason was about loading up. They stacked the deck.

“They did that for three reasons – No. 1, to beat Michigan again, which obviously they didn’t do. No. 2 to win the Big Ten Championship game – they didn’t play in the Big Ten Championship game. But, No. 3, to get to the national championship. They’re here, they’re in the natty. And so Monday night we can see if everything they put into the offseason was worth it.”

Time will tell if Ohio State can get the job done on Monday, but Pete Thamel thinks if they do, they’ll be able to celebrate without any strings attached, even if the fans in Ann Arbor try to throw some barbs their way.

On3’s Barkley Truax contributed to this article.