Can you be perfect?

Nebraska needs to show something at Ohio State. Beating the Buckeyes might require something more than that.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

What qualifies as a disaster at Ohio State? Is it just any loss? Seems like it based on the probing questions of Ryan Day at this week’s press conference, his first since the Buckeyes lost 32-31 at Oregon. To my eyes, outside the Buckeye bubble, that looked like a “perfect loss” in today’s 12-team era. Ohio State fans didn’t seem to view it that way.

Fair enough. The Buckeyes have lost seven games since 2021. Five of those losses were to top-5 teams¹ and two were to the eventual national champion in those seasons. When a program with standards as high as its resources loses that infrequently, every loss might deserve a freakout.

At Nebraska, which has lost 26 times since 2021, the standard has remained high, but it just wouldn’t be healthy for every loss to earn maximum despair. I think maybe it’s just the first two losses of a season on the Huskers’ current run. That covers Illinois and Oklahoma in 2021, Northwestern (Ireland) and Georgia Southern in 2022, Minnesota² and Colorado last season and the Illini and Indiana this season. The loss to the Hoosiers was so complete that it would’ve been declared a disaster at any point in any season, to be clear. It just happened to happen before Nebraska’s game against the toughest opponent on the schedule, when both teams are coming in off their respective low points.

The curse of being the final boss in a conference and nearly unbeatable is that the only games that matter are the few in which a loss seems somewhat realistic. The luxury of being the final boss is there are usually only one or two games that matter. This is how nine wins comes to feel like a birthright.

Despite the recent losing streak to Michigan, and Oregon’s win two weeks ago, Ohio State is still the final boss in the Big Ten, out-recruiting and out-spending everyone. Nebraska always had Oklahoma in the Big Eight, but those two programs became co-final bosses in the Big Eight over the Devaney and Osborne eras. Their seasons, particularly Nebraska’s, were most often defined by what they did against the other conference heavy because everything else usually felt like a foregone conclusion.³

That version of college football appears to have been discontinued unless Ohio State is able to keep it alive in a lone-survivor-scenario.⁴ It’s Nebraska’s job this week to decrease the likelihood of that in whatever way it can. That may not mean a win for the Huskers, just speaking practically.

But I’m going to preview this game in the way I do all the others: What does NU need to do to win? Maybe that annoys some people given what we saw last week, but I’m big on consistency.

And Ohio State does occasionally lose. It just requires the most clichéd way possible. Let’s break it down.