Did God bless the Buckeyes? Ohio State players say toughness a testament to their faith

Posted by author January 25, 2025 Football

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Ryan Day won over many detractors when Ohio State defeated Notre Dame for the national title.

Did God do the same?

Among the undercurrents impacting the 2024 championship season was the faith the Buckeyes had in each other, in their coaches and, in many cases, in the God they worship.

That last part, the God part, makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Taken further, it makes them angry.

Keep that religious stuff in the church and off the football field.

And …

No wonder Ohio State lacks toughness. It’s all that preaching about Jesus Christ and God and “Working all things to the good” and similar mumbo-jumbo.

And …

Why must they talk about their spiritual beliefs so much?

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I’ve never fully understood that kind of derogatory thinking, except perhaps that athletes speaking passionately about what they believe forces others to examine their own beliefs, disbeliefs and doubts. The hypocrisy of some high-profile Christians likely also has something to do with it.

But my views are secondary to what the Buckeyes thought of the blowback they received and how they handled being labeled as soft and lacking toughness just because they played football to glorify God.

In a season of huge ups (the four-game playoff run capped by the natty) and debilitating downs (Michigan), OSU players time and again kept returning to their faith to fuel the perseverance necessary to stay strong.

And time and again they took it on the chin for speaking from their hearts.

“I’ve heard it over and over again that this team is soft and ‘I’m tired of these poser Christians. I miss the real gritty football players,’ ” senior tight end Gee Scott said. “I received so much of it, on the heels of losing. But when you win it’s, ‘Oh, we love God.’ Isn’t that just like the flesh? How we humans work? We lose and ‘Oh my gosh, this God thing, I’m sick of it.’ I saw that so much. My heart broke for those people.”

I asked Scott for specifics, to present the evidence.

“You probably don’t have enough phone storage to send all of them,” he said.

He was right, but I can relay a few.

“All this religion talk is tired. (TreVeyon) Henderson literally said beating Michigan wasn’t important because he’s winning with God,” another reddit posted ridiculed.

“I’ll start believing when they hit a field goal that counts,” wrote one snark-artist on reddit.

“Keep religion out of sports. Not everyone is a Christian,” came another comment.

To the writer of that last one, one need not be a Christian to be religious.

As Scott explained it, “It’s not my responsibility to convert the hearts of men. It’s my job to shine a light and be a light. … I respect people who may differ in beliefs.”

What chafes the Buckeyes more than anything is the assumption they lack toughness because they are “religious.”

“It’s crazy,” Henderson said. “The world calls us who follow Christ weak, but God calls us strong. So we have a choice who we’d rather believe: What God says or what the world says. I choose to believe what God says about me.”

I turned to John Hansel, a man of the cloth and former OSU track and field teammate, to help explain the vitriol.

“I think it comes from a weird idea that Christians are wimpy,” said Hansel, who serves as Ohio Statehouse chaplain.

The ridicule is nothing new, he said.

“They told us in Upper Arlington football that we were wimps because we were Christians,” he said. “That proved a negative (in 1974) when we beat all of the (top) five-ranked teams in the state of Ohio.”

Let’s be clear, the majority of Ohio State fans support the Buckeyes for voicing their faith beliefs. Most see a group of young men who keep their noses clean off the field and get down and dirty on it. You don’t become the first program in history to defeat five Associated Press top-five opponents in one season unless you have physical, mental and emotional toughness.

Scott, who has a future as a pastor-preacher, laid out the “You first, me last” sacrificial attitude of his teammates, the majority of whom he said are “walking in some capacity with God.”

“In my opinion, one of the toughest things, the strongest things you could do in your life is be a servant of Christ,” he said. “It’s literally one of the biggest commandments associated with following Christ – the idea of denying yourself.”

Some of you will say “Amen.” Some will say, “Aw, man,” as in enough already with the Buckeyes inserting faith statements into every sentence.

Scott, Henderson, Will Howard, Caleb Downs, Seth McLaughlin, Josh Fryar, Emeka Egbuka – need I go on? – would counter that bringing up God is no different than a musician humming a tune or an artist seeing beauty in a simple landscape. It is central to who they are.

McLaughlin, winner of the Rimington Trophy as the nation’s best center, took aim at the anonymous social media accounts that spew venom.

“But if you think I’m soft because I love the Lord? OK, hopefully the Lord finds you and touches you in the way he touched me,” McLaughlin said. “And I hope he finds them and lifts them up out of their dark, Twitter hole.”

McLaughlin knows one thing for certain: Football players simultaneously can be soft-hearted and tough as nails.

“There are a lot of really good dudes here, but mean football players,” McLaughlin said. “Like Latham Ransom, one of the best dudes in the Woody, he will lay your ass out.”

There you have it. But we’ll let Scott finish it.

“To turn away from self and serve others in the midst of a season that I don’t understand?” he said of the trials of 2024, particularly Michigan. “That takes the utmost strength, so it boggles me when people speak about us being soft and associate that with Christ.”

He paused.

“We’ll see what they have to say after (the championship win).”

Mostly likely … crickets.

roller@dispatch.com

@rollerCD