The Sports Page with Mike Bianchi January 21, 2025

In the sports page with The Orlando Sentinel at FM ninety six to nine.

In the games, Mike.

The Bulldog beyond you Jr. From thirty three yards.

You miss it and the Irish have hope. That's good and Ohio State National Champions, the longest toughest postseason climb in the history of the sport. And after all that, it's Ohio State together at the mountaintop. Champions of College Football.

Thirty four, twenty three, the final from Atlanta, Ohio State College Football Champions for the first time in ten years. Dog And it was kind of out of reach until it got interesting late in the game.

Yeah, Notre Dame Maade. Ohio State sweat a little bit at the end, as you just mentioned, but Ohio State did clinch it when Will Howard dropped back and through a perfect pass to Jeremiah Smith fifty six yards that set up the game clinching field goal. Ohio State was up thirty one to seven though, midway through the third quarter, and that's when the Bulldog went to bed.

Quite frankly, I did the same thing. I can't believe he said that.

I looked and said, there's no way that's just gonna come back turn it off.

But they did.

The Irish did make a game of it. But you look at the stats, Ohio State was just a better team. They outgained Notre Dame four hundred and forty five to three hundred and eight. Will Howard completed his first thirteen passes, never really got stopped. Ohio State punted just one time in the game. And you look at what Ohio State did in these playoffs. Man, They blew out Tennessee, they blew out Oregon, they beat Texas by two touchdowns. They dominated Notre Dame last night. They won every game in

I met. That was the first question I asked this morning coming out of that last Calle said, so, any Ohio State fans, you still want Ryan Day fired it to score? Yeah, some of.

Those fans are insane. Ryan Day is seventy and ten as the head coach, he has the third highest winning percentage in history of any coach whes coached fifty games. He's right behind Newt Rockney. Okay, as far as winning percentage, he goes, so yeah, those Ohio State fans are crazier than SEC fans. And speaking of that, Big Ten has now won two straight national titles. They won it last night in Atlanta, in the heart of SEC country. The SEC was left out of the College Football Championship game

It sounds like our cup reporter has a column on his mind. Just a question, I'm just asking.

And by the way, Ohio State has the most expensive roster in college football. Reportedly, they've spent upwards of twenty million dollars of pay for play money. I don't call it nil pay for play money on this team, So they essentially bought themselves a national championship. Does that cheap it in at all?

In your opinion? This is the same opportunity that every team can do.

When's and and wait, when did this whole pay for play start instead of about thirty years ago?

No?

No, when did his little saying Because I remember as of a week ago you were saying nil when.

Yeah, but you know what it's not in IL I get tired of hearing it and reading it. It's pay for play. These guys are making salaries and yeah whatever. By the way, Ohio State and Texas are sort of the co favorites heading in the next season according to the oddsmakers to win the national title. You've got Texas at the top, right behind Devans, Ohio State, then Georgia, Oregon, Penn State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Tennessee, LSU the top.

Hey doing a little uh well at this point Tuesday morning quarterbacking. Would it have been smarter to schedule that game Friday night? I think so. They wouldn't have had any competition there.

I think they need to move the season up a week or two and try to get this done before the NFL playoffs start, because again, everything got lost in the NFL. I mean we were yesterday everybody was talking about the NFL playoff games. The College Football Championship game was sort of an afterthought. I think they need to do something to sort of tweak this to get it away from the NFL playoffs, or at least as best they can get them away from the NFL playoffs, What do you guys think.

I, at least in this case, I think with yesterday being the MLK Holiday, the inauguration, everything that's going on in the news, it did you said it. It got buried with everything. And had you had to have that Friday night, and then you would have had it Friday night, that would had the spotlight to themselves. You had your NFL playoff games on you know, Saturday and Sunday, and then you know, yesterday could have been just the holiday. Yeah, exactly.

I think I think the holiday and I think even the holiday was kind of overshadowed. The one thing that I realized that kind of really hurts is, guys, that was National Championship, which means.

Nations Football season, College football season's over.

That's done, and you know what that means around the corner. I don't even want to say these forbidden words. But the other one's gonna end soon to the NFL.

Yeah, but the NFL never ends.

It's a never ending a tenth mag In fact, speaking of the NFL, yesterday, the Bears hired meet Head's offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their new head coach. So Ben Johnson leaving the Lions to take over the Bears as the head coach. That's a big loss for Dan Campbell and his staff of the Lions. I mean, that offense has been unbelievable over the last two or three years since Ben Johnson took over the offense.

So it's not as big as big of a loss as Saturday was.

That was shocking. I've still my jaw hit the ground with that one. Man.

Yeah, that was a I meant the Commanders, Jay Daniels is the real deed.

He is, he really is. It looked great, so good for him, man. Good for the Commanders and their fans as well. They've they've been through the ringer for a while now.

So you know, no question, By the way, I need to ask you guys a question.

So they had Arnold Palmer the Arnold Palmer.

Invitational media day yesterday and they had Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, the chef. They had him on a zoom call with members of the local media. I asked him a question and he kind of looked at me like I was crazy. Well you ask him, I asked him. I said, in a weird way, was getting arrested last year, the best thing that could have happened to your reputation and your brand. And he looked at me, like, what

For putting a name with a face in that regard. If that's where you're coming from, perhaps the people who aren't you know, all tuned into golf bulldog, but I think he might have taken that as a bit of an insult. Yeah, well, I don't know.

But before that, before he got arrested, he was sort of just hey, he was a good, you know, great golfer, but sort of boring.

I think that gave him I think that's an insult, like that saying. I mean, I agree that that made him a little more well known.

And he wasn't just the you know that was.

Every but he was on his side. They thought, you know, they thought the Louisville police was wrong on them.

He wasn't like the wimpy world champion. He was, Oh he's a I get that, but dude, you can't ask him that boy?

Why not? Well he did? It's hey, bulldog, are the magic going to be able to get off this? This skid. They're on right now. They've lost three in a row. They're on the road in Toronto tonight.

Declaring tonight a must win for the Magic. It's a must win. Toronto's pitoful. The Magic have lost three in a row. They're three and seven in their last ten. They can't shoot their defenses showing cracks. They need to win tonight. They need to win.

They're turning it around. I can tell you a little behind the scenes stuff. They're turning around because the signs are back.

Bob found his Magic signs in the garage cleaning out over the weekend. Lightning Los speaking of Toronto lose in Toronto five to three last night. Yeah, all right, Mike the Bulldog being he always plenty to talk about on his show Open Mic over on AM seven tonight in the game, and we are much appreciative of the Dog giving up his time to bring us the sports page each morning here on JR R h huh Glinch.

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