COLUMBUS – What many people saw as the “easy” part of Ohio State’s 2015 football schedule comes to an end Saturday in Champaign when the 3rd-ranked Buckeyes face the Fighting Illini.
No. 3 Ohio State (9-0, 5-0 Big Ten) at Illinois (5-4, 2-3) Noon Sat./ABC)
The first nine games of the regular season were seen by most experts and pundits as something between a breeze and a cakewalk as far as their degree of difficulty.
The Buckeyes are a two-touchdown favorite, but Illinois is the last “easy” opponent the defending national champions will face before things get real: Games against Michigan State (8-1, 4-1 Big Ten East Division) and Michigan (7-2, 4-1) await in the final two weeks of the regular season. And, that is before hoped-for trips to the Big Ten Championship game, a College Football Playoff
Dash-cam of J.T. Barrett’s arrest on OVI charge released.
A win over the Illini would give the Buckeyes something else: A 30th consecutive Big Ten win.
No college football team has ever won 30 straight games in its conference, but that’s not something head coach Urban Meyer brings up at team meetings.
Florida State would have kept pace, but the Seminoles lost to Clemson last week.
NOTES: The Buckeyes’ 22-game winning streak is the nation’s longest…Ezekiel Elliott’s 14-game string of 100-yard games is the longest in FBS and his 138.2 yards-per-game average leads the Big Ten and is 7th in the nation…Meyer is 27-0 in October and November at Ohio State.