ARLINGTON, Texas — A fair distance away from the stage where confetti would soon flurry, where Ohio State head coach Ryan Day would hoist the Cotton Bowl trophy and quarterback Will Howard and edge rusher Jack Sawyer would be named MVPs on their respective sides of the ball, a communications representative for the Buckeyes squeezed a football in the crook of his arm around the 9-yard line. He’d been holding it for quite some time, since at least the moment when the final buzzer sounded but perhaps a while longer, around the 2:13 mark of the fourth quarter, when Sawyer stripped it away from Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and galloped 83 yards down the sideline for an unforgettable scoop-and-score that propelled his team to the national championship game. There was an instant between those two snapshots when Sawyer, a revered senior and team captain, entrusted the memento to Jerry Emig, the program’s longtime sports information director, with very specific instructions.

“Jack gave it to me,” Emig recalled, “and he said, ‘Jerry, this is the ball I scored with. Hold onto it. Don’t give it away.”

So Emig hawked the ball through an on-field celebration that stretched from one side of AT&T Stadium to the other, from the formal presentation near the same end zone where Sawyer solidified a 28-14 win over Texas to the playing of “Carmen Ohio” by the Buckeyes’ marching band a few yards from the location of Ewers’ crippling fumble. Emig was still cradling that ball more than 20 minutes later, when Ohio State’s locker room opened to the media, and he repeated its origin story a time or two more. Whether it eventually ends up back with Sawyer, who will play the final game of his collegiate career against Notre Dame at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan. 20, or prominently displayed on a trophy case inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center remains to be seen. But its place in program history is unquestionable.

And what a whirlwind these last six weeks have been for Sawyer, one of the most passionate players on the Buckeyes’ roster who endured an emotional meltdown in the aftermath of a fourth consecutive loss to Michigan, his unraveling spread across three acts in three distinct locales at Ohio Stadium, all of them tinged with pepper spray from a melee gone wrong. There was the verbal confrontation with Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham, who incensed Sawyer by referring to Ohio State as a derogatory term for the female anatomy. Sawyer responded by reminding Graham that the Wolverines wouldn’t be participating in this year’s College Football Playoff. There was the theft of a Michigan flag that Sawyer ripped from the pole his opponents were attempting to plant at midfield for the second time in three years. Sawyer snared the maize and blue bunting in his right hand before hurling it to the turf in disgust. And then there was the close-range screaming at tight ends coach Keenan Bailey, whose shoulders Sawyer grabbed in frustration as Day watched in silence from a few yards away. “They’re not f—— planting a flag on our field again, bro!” Sawyer shrieked in Bailey’s face, his voice cracking on more than one occasion. “F— this s—, man. F— these guys. Plant a flag on our field? F— you!”

The rawness that poured from Sawyer on that frigid November afternoon reflected both his personal disgust as an Ohio native forced to stomach a career’s worth of losses to The Team Up North and the unshakable reminder that his historic 2021 recruiting class was continuing to fall short of every goal it set out to achieve. Sawyer and his classmates, many of whom he convinced to bypass the NFL Draft for the chance to finally right their wrongs, will leave Ohio State with zero wins over Michigan and zero Big Ten titles. Those blemishes can’t be erased. Which is why the Buckeyes entered the postseason keenly aware that anything short of winning the national championship would be viewed as abject failure — and might even cost Day his job.

The message has radiated from player to player across a star-studded senior class that finished second in the national rankings behind Alabama, a group bursting with seven five-star prospects — two of which were quarterbacks — and 14 players ranked among the top 100 recruits overall. There was five-star edge rusher JT Tuimoloau, a ballyhooed pass rusher who turned in one of the greatest individual performances in program history against Penn State two years ago but who has rarely harassed quarterbacks with any measure of consistency ever since. There was five-star wideout Emeka Egbuka, who is now the leading receiver in Ohio State history, but a player who told reporters earlier this week that, “I have absolutely no hardware to show for it.” There was outspoken cornerback Denzel Burke, whose March quote describing this season as “natty or bust” continues to generate conversation 10 months later, especially now that Ohio State is one game from either outcome. There was tailback TreVeyon Henderson, whose laundry list of injuries and sporadic difficulty running between the tackles justified the addition of Ole Miss transfer Quinshon Judkins in the portal. And of course, there was Sawyer, the first recruit who ever committed to Day on Feb. 3, 2019, and a player whose physical gifts never quite matched his statistical production. All of them entered the College Football Playoff with something to prove.

“This is why we all chose to come to Ohio State,” said left tackle Donovan Jackson, another member of the 2021 recruiting class. “This is why we all chose to come back to Ohio State.”

A trip to the national title game boiled down to this: Ohio State leading 21-14 in the latter stages of the fourth quarter; Texas clawing toward the goal line with a 27-yard completion from Ewers to wideout Matthew Golden and back-to-back pass interference penalties against the Buckeyes. It was at that moment — with 4:04 remaining and the ball on the 1-yard line in a goal-to-go situation — when someone’s voice piped through the phone line in the Buckeyes’ coaching box above the field. “Boy, they scored fast there,” the unnamed staffer said. To which defensive coordinator Jim Knowles snarled a retort that would prove astoundingly prophetic. “They ain’t scored yet,” Knowles replied.

From there, Knowles’ defense stuffed consecutive running plays to push the Longhorns back 7 yards, at which point passing became their only viable option. Sawyer knifed into the backfield on third-and-goal, pressuring Ewers to rush a throw toward freshman wideout Ryan Wingo, the ball falling harmlessly incomplete. It was the umpteenth time that Sawyer had come within a whisker of leveling his former roommate, the former No. 1 overall recruit in the country who spent four months with the Buckeyes as a true freshman in 2021 before transferring home to Texas. Time and again on Friday evening, Ewers nimbly flicked the ball away a millisecond or two before Sawyer could drag him down, twice completing desperation check downs on a drive that knotted the game at 14-14 late in the third quarter. But Ewers’ luck would soon expire.

On fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line, Sawyer dipped his shoulder beneath the pads of right tackle Cameron Williams and flung both arms toward Ewers as the quarterback searched for open space. He dislodged the football and shoved Ewers to the ground with jaw-dropping fluidity, the fumble ricocheting softly into his hands as he turned upfield. Sawyer rollicked and rumbled to the end zone with a convoy of teammates chasing him from behind.

“It was surreal,” Sawyer said. “I felt like I was in quicksand. I was just trying to get to the end zone so fast. I looked back and [thought], ‘Hopefully I had a blocker,’ because I knew a couple skill guys were right there, and I don’t got wheels like them. But man, it was just a special moment.”

And one that will never be forgotten. From the stage where Sawyer and Howard addressed the crowd, and where Day was cheered by a fan base that loathed him six weeks earlier, the celebration spilled onto the sideline behind Ohio State’s bench. There, players slipped on white championship T-shirts and black championship hats to pose for photos with fans in field-level suites. They shouted back and forth with loved ones in the nearby family section and signed autographs for fans who tossed memorabilia in their direction. “Let’s f—— go, baby!” Sawyer’s sister, Kyla, shouted from her front-row perch alongside parents Michelle and Lyle Sawyer, both of whom gestured frantically to their son. Had Sawyer not been clutching his trophy tightly in both hands — protecting it from the swarms of camera-wielding reporters shadowing his every move — he might have climbed into the bleachers to join them. The thought appeared to briefly cross his mind.  

Instead, Sawyer exited the field at AT&T Stadium through a tunnel above which a gentleman wearing a white Ohio State jersey contorted his body so the players could see its inscription. “NATTY BOUND” read the custom stitching across the shoulder blades where a name would traditionally be found. And the fan shouted to anyone who would listen that he purchased the item back in February. “Let’s go Bucks!” he yelled as a television reporter snagged B-roll of his attire.

The party that awaited Sawyer in the locker room was even grander, with teammate after teammate congratulating him on a performance for the ages. One by one, they clapped his shoulder pads and sang his praises and pulled him in for hugs. Because six weeks after Sawyer plummeted to an emotional nadir, his rebirth had pushed Ohio State to the precipice of a national title.

“You’re the No. 1 Buckeye of all time,” Egbuka said as Sawyer walked past his locker. “You’re Captain Buckeye.”

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.

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